I discovered the music of Kansas in the early 1980s, as I was entering high school. By that time, Kansas already had eight studio albums, including the new one at the time, Vinyl Confessions. I eventually purchased their entire back catalog.
I knew immediately that Kansas’s music was “different”. Whereas Van Halen was singing about beer and women, the typical Kansas song dealt with spiritual and philosophical themes.
Some Kansas songs are so intellectual that I didn’t connect the dots until years later. For example: “Journey from Mariabronn” on the band’s 1974 debut album, takes its inspiration from Narcissus and Goldmund, a 1930 Herman Hesse novel set in medieval Germany.
I happened to read this novel just a few years ago, when I was already well into my fifties. I had a classic “ah-hah” moment when I made the connection between the Hesse novel and the Kansas song—which I’d enjoyed in partial ignorance for all those years.
Kansas songs are full of Easter eggs like that.
The above documentary covers Kansas from its foundation, through the height of the band’s commercial and critical success in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, Kansas suffered a decline, as the group’s members disagreed on their creative direction. (I’ve written a post about that here.)
All musical acts have their ups and downs, though, and none stays at the top of the heap forever. Kansas remains one of my favorite bands, more than 40 years after I first discovered them.
-ET