Oh, Styx. What am I gonna do with you? <\/p>\n
What is anyone to do with a band that wears the label of \u201carena rock\u201d like a badge of honor, strutting around like legends in their own mind 35 years after the somewhat modest high point of their career? I really want to believe these guys are in on the joke, though, that they laugh in the mirror when they realize how lucky they are to enjoy the level of success that they still do today.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Now in its fifth decade of existence (!), Styx at this point includes one full-time and one part-time original member. The sole remaining full-timer is James \u201cJY\u201d Young, guitarist-vocalist and the only man alive who could compete with founding keyboard player and singer-songwriter Dennis DeYoung in the department of over-the-top bombast. The part-timer is original bassist Chuck Panozzo, whose health issues limit him to four or five songs a night when he does sit in, as here. The rest of the lineup consists of longtime guitarist-vocalist Tommy Shaw, DeYoung soundalike Lawrence Gowan on keys and vocals, bassist\/third guitarist Ricky Phillips and drummer Todd Sucherman. <\/p>\n
For their 2010 tour, Styx decided to modify their normal setlist only a bit by playing their 1977-78 albums The Grand Illusion<\/i> and Pieces Of Eight<\/i> in their entirety, and to film their November 9 date at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis for this DVD. This makes some sense\u2014these two albums were the band\u2019s acknowledged commercial and creative apex\u2014but it does present some issues when it comes to pacing the show. This becomes apparent right away, when the first four numbers include three of the best songs in Styx\u2019s entire catalog: \u201cThe Grand Illusion,\u201d \u201cFooling Yourself,\u201d and what became their trademark song, the lighter-snapping #8 AOR hit \u201cCome Sail Away.\u201d Either \u201cGrand\u201d or \u201cSail\u201d would make a natural late-show highlight on a normal night, and indeed, the boys give the latter a full-on third-encore treatment with heavy vamping and an extended, multiple-crescendo finish\u2026 and then they\u2019re a quarter of the way through their set.<\/p>\n
Young\u2019s particularly aggro brand of arena-schlock is spotlighted on \u201cSuperstars\u201d and \u201cMiss America,\u201d the latter an especially disjointed, surrealistic train wreck. More interesting is when Shaw shares an anecdote ahead of \u201cMan In The Wilderness\u201d about how he was inspired by the music of Kansas\u2014with whom Styx toured in 1976\u2014to write this song, which makes perfect sense since it sounds like it fell off the back bumper of Leftoverture<\/i>. \u00a0As Grand Illusion<\/i> wraps up, penultimate power ballad \u201cCastle Walls\u201d provides a moment of unintentional hilarity when the camera catches Gowan looking bored enough to fall asleep during the supremely overcooked instrumental middle section, wherein he is called upon to play the same sequence of notes for two minutes straight.<\/p>\n
Pieces Of Eight<\/i> kicks off with Young\u2019s mortifying \u201cGreat White Hope,\u201d helping to explain why some of these songs haven\u2019t been played in public in decades, if at all. I thought it couldn\u2019t get any worse, and then \u201cI\u2019m OK\u201d arrived\u2014a song that would make any self-respecting cable-TV self-help guru double over and slap his thighs.\u00a0 Oh dear, what\u2019s that smell coming out of my speakers?<\/p>\n
\u201cSing For The Day\u201d tries to clean up the mess by featuring Shaw\u2019s hippie-folk-pop stylings on acoustic guitar\u2014he really is a talented player and singer\u2014but the song is among the most twee they\u2019ve ever recorded. Next up, the space-rock stylings of instrumental \u201cThe Message\u201d add a smidgen of prog cred to its otherwise embarrassing suite-mate, the misbegotten Tolkien homage \u201cLords Of The Ring.\u201d Put it this way: \u201cCome Sail Away\u201d is to \u201cStairway To Heaven\u201d as \u201cLords Of The Ring\u201d is to \u201cRamble On.\u201d Capeesh?<\/p>\n
\u201cBlue Collar Man\u201d is one of the five or so Styx songs I actually own at this point. The propulsive urgency has always been there; if only it wasn\u2019t undercut by the cringe-worthy lyrics. I confess I\u2019ve always had a soft spot for \u201cQueen Of Spades,\u201d thanks to untold hours in college spent playing cutthroat games of Hearts. It ain\u2019t rocket science, but it\u2019s a fun enough ride to take again. \u201cRenegade\u201d follows on its heels, helping with the overall pacing by delivering a one-two-three punch ahead of the quieter closing duo. As with \u201cBlue Collar,\u201d the music definitely tops the lyric, but there\u2019s at least some adventurousness in the rather unique Western\/AOR mindmeld the song attempts.<\/p>\n
The screechy, showtoon-ish \u201cPieces Of Eight\u201d goes by just quickly enough, bringing us to the closing, atmospheric instrumental \u201cAku-Aku,\u201d a track the guys ultimately decided they should play exactly like on the record, meaning at the end of the last and also most subdued song of the night they do a steady, live fadeout. A bizarre choice that works surprisingly well, as the crowd\u2019s applause swells to meet and then overwhelm the fade.<\/p>\n
In all honesty, I fully expected to loathe this cheese-fest, and did laugh time after time at the hoary arena-rock clich\u00e9s these guys continue to trot out in their 60s\u2014the three- and four-strong chorus lines of guitar players, the rotating keyboard rig, the double-necked guitars, the standing-on-the-keyboard-pumping-your-fist move, the self-congratulatory graphics. <\/p>\n
The thing is, though, every last one of the above gimmicks feels like it was made for (if not by) Styx itself, a band that lives and breathes and sweats and belches empty bombast like nothing could be more natural and desirable. Art, this isn\u2019t. But entertainment? For a certain fan of a certain age and certain musical tastes? I really didn\u2019t expect to arrive here, but\u2014yeah, I guess I can kinda see it. <\/p>\n
Count your blessings, gentlemen. And when you\u2019re done, count \u2019em again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5844],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-42538","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-styx","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42538"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42538"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}