There are times in your life when you will face decisions that have an immediate and lasting personal impact. These life choices will stick with you — and people will remind you about them — for decades. The little old lady you helped across the street when you were 10, the decision you made to not cheat on that high school test, your decision to take the tough road at work — those actions all matter, and together they constitute your personal integrity.
This is why I had to stare at the computer screen for so long Saturday, when I found out that Kansas, Styx and Foreigner were all playing nearby that night. Clearly, here was a decision by which I might be judged.
On the one hand, I like to think I have some fairly significant musical taste, even at this stage in my life. But Kansas, Styx and Foreigner haven’t had any hits since Martha Quinn was the hottest thing on MTV, and no one confused them with musical tastemakers even in their heydays. In fact, “dated” and even “cheesy” are the phrases most likely to be spouted by critics when discussing these bands.
But when the 1970s were fading into the 1980s, these were the groups I listened to — and I quite frankly loved Styx and Kansas. Roll your eyes if you want, but I was a small-town Midwestern boy and Joe Strummer wasn’t coming around in 1979 to hip me to anything. This is what they played on KSHE and KFMZ and KJMO, and this is what I liked. So did everyone I knew at the time.
And so, I stared at the screen Saturday. The same screen also told me I could see Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller at the 9:30…the perfect kind of alt-country/folkie/Americana show that would keep my integrity intact and give me an excuse to go to a club that I’m usually too old to enter any more.
But there they were…Kansas, Styx and Foreigner…Kansas, Styx and Foreigner…Kansas, Styx and Foreigner.
My wife, who has been known to spontaneously belt out AC/DC covers for no apparent reason, weighed in with her opinion. “I WANT TO GO. BUY THE TICKETS,” she said.
So I bought the tickets, and I am unashamed to admit I enjoyed myself. Styx put on a particularly strong show — and, yes, like Eric Cartman, I sang along to “Come Sail Away” (which was my high school senior class song). Kansas also was quite good and Foreigner…well, I never was much of a fan, and their new lead singer imagined himself to be Steven Tyler, and we got annoyed and left a little early.
But I’ve got no real complaints about the show. I feel a little dirty, but those bands still can play, and I guess I’m trying to hold onto 16 for as long as I can. You can knock my music creds down a few pegs, but it’s probably been 25 years since I sang “Too Much Time On My Hands” out loud and I still remembered every word Saturday. If this music is cheesy, then I’m cheesy. So be it.
Heh, I petitioned for “Come Sail Away” to be my class song, but alas had nowhere near the popularity to convince a Bob Seger-happy peer group. But my effort wasn’t lost; friends kept the dream alive and it turned out to be the class song the year after my graduation. As has often been the case in my life, I was a year off.
A while back, after one too many failed efforts to rejuvenate some element of lost youth, I decided I would not buy any piece of music that was over five years old and, for the most part, have kept to that promise. But that doesn’t stop me blowing the dust off The Grand Illusion once every two or three years when I get an earworm for one of my favorite bands of my junior high days. Honestly, the band never quite impresses me as cheesy as a lot of hair-mongers from that era; DeYoung’s feeble 1984 / 2112 attempt with Kilroy Was Here is a pretty sad pinpoint in time, but a good version of Crystal Ball can still make up for pointless robots.
Foreigner was another favorite of mine from the day, but I think they smell like Munster much more in retrospect. I saw a video of Lou Gramm a few years back; he has apparently been rather ill over the years and looked and sounded just terrible when trying to belt out “Star Rider” (or any tune, for that matter). While Styx strikes me a as a band trying to milk money out of people who have grown up to the point where they can now afford to pay it at such a show while still putting on a decent show, the thought of even listening to a Foreigner song these days just makes me sad. I hope it wasn’t that bad.
Do you have any thought as to why it was Kansas, not Loverboy, completing the trilogy? Dust in the Wind seems almost too…I dunno…respectable?
When it comes to Styx, I honestly can’t think of another band that was so huge in its time (four double-platinum albums in a row — the first time that had ever been done) and so shat upon by critics afterward. I’ve got ‘The Grand Illusion’ in a box in the shed; it might be time to pull out that album and digitize it.
See, that’s one of the hidden benefits to getting older–you can listen to music that you actually *like* without worrying too much about your coolness quotient (which for most of us, I suspect, is long gone anyway).