A Chronicle From the Closet

I've been listening to Kansas a lot lately, their best-known albums Leftoverture and Point of Know Return. I generally skip "Carry On Wayward Son" as it's one of those staples of classic rock radio that I've grown tired of yet I still listen to "Point of Know Return" and "Dust in the Wind". Go figure.

Kansas often get lumped in with contemporaries like Foreigner and Boston who filled arenas playing melodic hard rock that was a few more steps divorced from the rock's blues roots than their late-60s progenitors. But I think of them as being the American cousins of British symphonic progressive rock.

Last year former member Robby Steinhardt died and I wrote about how I view the band as the Aaron Copeland of progressive rock with their American take on a style of music invented by the British. I noted how their American sounds and lyrics about Native American peoples distinguish them from their peers on the other side of the Atlantic. But there are other lyrics that their proggy influences like Genesis, Yes, and ELP would never have committed to song, at least not until the 1970s were well in the rear view mirror. Take this lovely verse from "Opus Insert":

But there's too many empty lives my friend
And we just can't let them waste away
For this life is a precious thing my friend
And we just can't wait another day

That would never have appeared on a 70s Genesis album and, although it's a sentiment that Jon Anderson would have shared, no Yes lyric would dare express a humanistic statement of empathy this directly.

One song I've really come to enjoy is "Closet Chronicles" from Point of Know Return. I am not sure what the lyrics are about. For me, they depict a Howard Hughes figure as if portrayed by Terry Gilliam. The subject is described as "the king" but he gazes down at the world from the 42nd floor. A captain of industry, perhaps? One day "he journeyed deep into his mind". When he wasn't pondering life's great mysteries, he dreamed.

Daydreams filled his nighttimes
And night dreams filled his days
Confusion and uncertainty
A puzzled mind of haze

 Whatever the song is about, the music is wonderful with plenty of twists and turns.