The Live Album Project might’ve started with a bunch of live albums, but it has very much transformed into a wholly new personal music philosophy. Which is to say that I’ve made an effort to cut loose from Spotify’s computer-generated playlists in favor of listening to albums in the order in which they were recorded.
If you’re wondering, I had to change several settings in the app to make this easier.
Most of this new approach has been driven by our new record player. I enjoy listening to records a lot, basically because it’s a more contemplative experience than is listening to a bunch of algorithm/genre-generated best-of playlists. I’ve now heard more new-to-me music from the 1970s in the past week than I’d heard in the previous decade, and not to put too fine a point on it, but this has absolutely reignited my love of music from the ground up.
There may also be a qualitative difference in analog music -- we discussed this a couple of weeks ago -- but that might also be in my head. I mean, I think I can hear a difference, but whatever differences might exist in the waveforms, those are 100% getting swamped by the differences in the various speaker platforms on which we listen, so… Bottom line, I don’t want to make too much of it.
Mostly, I think the difference is down to contemplation. Sitting down with a record, flipping through the little book, looking at the pictures, and just trying to live in the moment all mean way more than whatever micro-perceptions we might *maybe* pick up via differences in waveform. If we control for speaker quality, then those differences must surely exist at a purely mathematical level. Else professional sound engineers wouldn’t record via electronic media. I mean, I’m quite sure they care about this stuff more than we do.
By comparison, finding time for actual contemplation in the Year 2022 can be damned hard.
Anyway. We bought Styx’s classic 1978 album Pieces of Eight at a used record store in Milford maybe two weeks ago. We’re going to see Styx with REO Speedwagon in concert this fall in Bridgeport, and as I was looking through some of their recent live albums on Spotify, I realized that they’ve been playing a lot of their new studio music at shows in addition to some of the old standards. In fact, Styx has released a whole collections of new albums over the past twenty years, none of which I had ever heard before. Come to think of it, I soon realized, I’d never actually heard most of their older albums in their entirety, either.
Fixing this went against the grain of Spotify’s algorithm to the point that I wanted reprogram the damn thing completely by way of personalizing it, but this was still very much a problem that Spotify could solve.
I’m about halfway through the band’s complete discography, though the only really notable album that I’m missing, I think, is 1975’s Equinox. This was the band’s first really big album, featuring a bonafide hit in Lorelei as well as contemporaneous radio staples Suite Madame Blue and Light Up. I’m not sure I’ve heard any of the album’s other tracks, and honestly, if you don’t queue the album yourself, there’s probably no way to actually hear them.
What a world.
The Live Full Album Project: Styx Discography
Crystal Ball came after Equinox, but it was the first record that featured soon-to-be iconic guitarist and co-lead singer Tommy Shaw. I didn’t love the album as a whole, though the song Crystal Ball itself is awesome, and the closing Claire de Lune / Ballerina was also really cool. Still, Crystal Ball is the only song on here that you’ll hear when the band plays in concert.
The Grand Illusion is the first of Styx’s four mega-hit, triple-platinum-type albums. This is absolutely peak Styx. I mean, I loved this record with such an abiding passion that I immediately purchased it on vinyl and am now impatiently counting the days until it actually arrives.
You’ve heard The Grand Illusion, Fooling Yourself, Come Sail Away, and Miss America. Add to that Man in the Wilderness and Superstars, and you’ve got an all-time great record. The backside of this, in particular, is just so, so good.
Pieces of Eight was technically a bigger record than The Grand Illusion. We already owned it; we bought it last week at the used record shop, though I’d never heard it from start to finish.
I liked the back side a lot. The front side was just okay for me personally.
The band played The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight live back in 2012. That’s such a great show that even my only-Taylor-Swift-listening daughter liked it.
Technically, I think this was the band’s biggest record. It’s a good bit more pop-rock than hard rock, which maybe had something to do with its commercial success. It’s also a concept album about an old theater from the 1930s and/or the state of America as it existed in the late 1970s and early 80s.
Great album, and it’s probably peak Styx in terms of mixing theme and time period. It had a lot to say about its particular moment. I remember this from when I was a kid and appreciated the artistry of it when I listened to it earlier in the week.
Kilroy Was Here went double-platinum with Mr. Roboto and Don’t Let It End, but the band’s theatrical sensibilities jumped the shark here as well.
I wrote much more about this on Twitter, so check that out if you’re curious.
Finally listened to Styx’s 1983 concept album #KilroyWasHere from start to finish.
— Danno E. Cabeza (@DannoECabeza) May 11, 2022
Really enjoyed it. My initial thought was, “Damn. I wish this wasn’t quite so timely in the year 2022.”https://t.co/3wHAo6CF8r
Caught in the Act - Live (1984)
This is a band with a bunch of live albums. This is the first, and it comes from the height of their popularity.
For what it’s worth, this is not remotely my favorite of their live sets.
A surprisingly hard-rocking record considering that Tommy Shaw left the group for Damn Yankees when it was recorded.
As I’ve said many times, I like this album a lot. However, looking at the band’s current set-list, I see nothing on it from this particular record.
For what it’s worth, I wish we lived in the timeline where Tommy Shaw stayed with the band, Styx recorded Coming of Age, Come Again, and High Enough as part of Edge of the Century, and that gave the band a fifth triple-platinum record, permanently cementing them on the same level with bands like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones. Come Again especially sounds like it could have been a Styx song.
Also: fuck grunge. Not because grunge itself sucks but because it pushed everything else off the radio, and I really liked a lot of that other stuff.
A very cool concept album about a manned mission to Mars. I had no idea that they’d released this thing until I started going through their discography.
This, by the way, is why we can’t have nice things. Freaking STYX puts out a concept album about going to Mars and no one even notices?!
What are we doing here, people?
This country’s tastemakers have jumped the shark just as thoroughly as Dennis DeYoung.
This is another album that I liked so much I ordered it immediately. Eighteen bucks on Amazon.Com.
Very cool, and they’re playing quite a bit of it on their current tour. My only issue, and it’s minor, is that all the songs are in the 2-3 minute range, which is weird. Styx is, like, the original 10-minute jam band. Maybe some of these will be jam-type songs live, too? Who knows? I’m really curious to see how the new show plays out.
 |
| Crash of the Crown |
I’d also very much like to see the show where they play this whole record, but I’m not counting on that one actually becoming a thing, alas.
I bought their Greatest Hits album a few years ago which I think has most of the songs you mentioned from their 20th Century albums. But I suppose for a band which did a few concept albums the greatest hits format is not necessarily the best way to listen to them.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I like concert albums. You get all the hits -- or at least MOST of them with a band like this -- but the concerts also feature some selected b-sides and are therefore also a statement of what the band itself likes and where they are at a moment in time.
DeletePlus, Styx now has four or five "best of" type albums, all covering the same time period, more or less. Which of those collections come from the band, and which come from the label trying to do cheap cash grabs?
Speaking personally, I had to sort of get outside that Greatest Hits/playlist headspace because I felt like I was just hearing the same stuff over and over and over again. Meanwhile, I really liked songs like MAN IN THE WILDERNESS, QUEEN OF SPADES, and HEAVY METAL POISONING. But those are *never* gonna show up randomly on Spotify or whatever.