Got into a discussion on social media last week about live albums, and the band Styx came up. After a bit of back and forth, I remembered, "Oh yeah. Sally and I are going to see Styx with REO Speedwagon live later this summer."
Heh. I'd completely forgotten.
Anyway, that sent me down the rabbit hole, and I've only just come back up for air.
I did not realize how much studio music Styx has produced over the years. I mean, it's been since the Ford administration at least, but still... Spotify lists fully twenty-four albums, including three or four live separate live sets. The biggest of these was Pieces of Eight -- we just bought this album on vinyl over this past weekend -- but there are a lot more with a song or two that hit the charts or at least received some airplay.
The first time I saw Styx was on the Edge of the Century tour late in my senior year of high school. I literally broke open a piggy bank and rolled quarters to get enough money to buy tickets to the show. And for my money, Edge of the Century is a perfect example of what makes Styx great. The band has a bunch of members, several write songs, three different guys sing lead, and each different arrangement produces a completely different sound. This gives us everything from operatic fantasy wackiness (think: Mister Roboto and/or Come Sail Away) to power ballads (Babe or Lady) to 70s-style acid rock a la Suite Madame Blue or Crystal Ball to more straightforward pop-rock like Renegade or Too Much Time on My Hands. Edge of the Century itself has NO mega-hits, but the whole thing is at least solid, and several cuts are really terrific. The title track, Edge of the Century, was maybe the biggest release off the album, and it's the most operatic, but I'll take the stripped down All in a Day's Work as the unsung b-side that never got its due. Or you can do Homewrecker if you're just missing classic 80s-style heavy metal.
Interestingly, Styx has never stopped recording in studio. They lost their record deal way back in the day, but they continue to release new music -- and tour to support it -- through a network of independent record stores. Which is awesome.
So. I spent the weekend listening to Styx live sets, and I didn't even get through them all! Even so, I was amazed at how varied some of the set lists were. Usually a 40-year-old band is gonna trot out the hits and get the Hell out of there. That's not exactly the case here.
Some thoughts.
Probably my favorite of the weekend's live sets. They laid this down in 2001, right after guitarist Tommy Shaw formally took control of the band from keyboard/vocalist Dennis DeYoung. DeYoung wrote most of the band's biggest hits, and he sings on all of the really big, operatic stuff, but he did not exactly see Styx as a rock band. His stuff tended to sound like it ought to be part of a Broadway musical. Some of it's great, but a lot of it is also really weird. By contrast, Shaw had just come back to Styx from a stint with Damn Yankees, and he's in full Rock 'n' Roll mode here.
Fantastic set, and they spend most of the first half of the show playing forgotten b-sides plus High Enough from the Damn Yankees. They even play Love is the Ritual off Edge of the Century. But the last five songs blast into the hard rock hits, and they close with Shaw singing lead on Come Sail Away to send the crowd home happy. Awesome.
Live at the Orleans Arena Las Vegas
Same basic set-up as on Styxworld Live, but now it's 2015. And it's a totally different set list. Like, amazingly different. This is almost not even the same band.
There are more straight-up hits on this one -- Too Much Time on My Hands, Blue Collar Man, Renegade -- but they open with The Grand Illusion (!) and include Light Up and Rockin' the Paradise.
It's a twofer. You have to listen to both albums to get a full sense of who this band is in my opinion.
Arch Allies - Live at Riverport
This is the first half of a double-album that Styx released with REO Speedwagon. These bands tour together a lot, apparently, and yeah, this is the set-up we'll see this summer.
Styx has the first half; Speedwagon has the second.
It's all pretty good.
This is a pretty standard, shortish set-list, but again, we've got a three-song bit in the middle that goes from Brave New World to Edge of the Century to Heavy Water... That whole bit made me feel like I needed to spend a little time in some of their more recent studio albums. I am very much looking forward to doing exactly that.
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