It took the band Kansas three years to finally fulfill their promise to celebrate the anniversary of their classic Point of Know Return album, but after delays due to the draconian COVID lockdown, and members of the band getting the disease, the window finally opened for the legendary progressive rock band to demonstrate just what “classic” rock is supposed to sound like.
And what are the ingredients that (through the various personal, musical and spiritual changes) the band Kansas has put together to define and embody the genre? Well, the current team of Billy Greer/b-voc, Tom Brislin/key, Ronnie Platt/voc-key, David Ragsdale/vi-g and original members Phil Ehart/dr and Rich Williams/g show that the 1970s recipe of rich vocal harmonies, complex melodies, tricky times, dramatic climaxes and meaningful messages can stand up against the ravages of time, as well as rap, punk and indie.
The vocal harmonies were on wondrous display on the opening acoustic half hour, as with Ehart, the unplugged gents mixed folksy strings around the campfire tunes as Platt pleaded on “Hold On” and delivered a message on the moody and pastoral “Refugee” before lilting with Ragsdale’s violin on “Lonely Wind”, going all the way back to their first album, which still sounds as fresh as just cut wheat from the prairie.
With charter member Ehart joining in on the drums, the band plugged in and had Brislin mixing synth scapes to Ragsdale’s soaring violin on dramatic opuses like “The Wall”, “Icarus” and the fiendishly intricate “Miracles Out Of Nowhere” that had more climaxes than a Wagnerian opera. Vintage material such as “Can I Tell You” included messages that are still relevant today, while even brand new material such as “Throwing Mountains” had the thunderous mix of lyricism, rollicking guitar solos, throbbing bass and poignant climaxes.
The rest of the evening was a complete, in order, revisit of their classic 1977 album, even including the obscure and quirky moments like the instrumental “The Spider” while the team showed their claim to be the Great Plains version of Yes with the upbeat and supercharged “Point Of Know Return” and hyperkinetic “Paradox” that had the drums ricocheting off the guitars, while Radsdale seared like a Cold Steel knife on “Closet Chronicles” A metallic jig of “Portrait (He Knew)” and hard rocking “Lighting’s Hand” lead into the gorgeous Ecclesiastic mood of the reflective “Dust In The Wind” and the pretty “Nobody’s Home”. The anthem “Carry On Wayward Son”, with its fist pumping musical refrain, hopeful chorus and gothic glow closed the evening, and even if you didn’t know all of the lyrics to the songs by heart (a minority member of this audience), you would still walk away by wondering “where did American rock make its wrong turn?”. Everything from Nixon’s era seemed all right, at least musically, in retrospect.
Upcoming shows at BAPAC Thousand Oaks include 09/30 Boogaloo Assasins, 10/07 Chicken Wire Empire, Jontavious Willis 10/15, Ron Artis II & The Truth 10/21, 10/29 Dave Mason, and Jeff Beck 11/05