It started me thinking: Styx has a place in the Museum for 1997's Return to Paradise tour (filmed in Chicago on the final night of the tour) and for the 1999 album Brave New World.
Time for a brief history lesson, in which I will make a lot of sweeping generalities from a quick glance at Wikipedia: Styx begins in Chicago (the suburb of Roseland, to be exact) in the early '60s with brothers Chuck (on bass) and John (on drums) Panozzo and their neighbor and friend Dennis DeYoung (on keyboard and vocals). The three of them went to my alma mater, Chicago State University, back when it was a teacher's school. (Class of 2011, by-the-by. I still say, to this day, that Chicago State shall always be better known for three-fifths of Styx than for Kanye West.) In 1970, the band picked up James "J.Y." Young; in 1976, Tommy Shaw. They achieved their big break with the success of "Lady" in 1972...and the rest is history.
Described by YouTube reviewer Todd in the Shadows as "pompous to the point of flatulence1" (I include this quote because it made me crack up completely when I first heard it and even now cracked up while typing it!), Styx is known for a few signature radio-friendly songs: "Come Sail Away," (my least favorite song, because WLS-94.7 insists on playing it twice a day every day) "Lady," "Renegade," and, if you're very, very lucky, "Babe," "Best of Times," and "The Grand Illusion." They had a string of hit albums through the 70s and early 80s, including Grand Illusion, Paradise Theatre, and Kilroy Was Here. This last one had a grandiose tour in which the band members portrayed rebels fighting against a neo-fascist regime. Acting turned out not to be the musicians' forte, and, at the end of the tour, the band split up until 1991's Edge of the Century, the re-recording of "Lady '95" for Styx Greatest Hits*, and the Return to Paradise Tour.
(*Styx's original label, Wooden Nickel Records, held the rights to the original version of "Lady;" within a few years' time, they had migrated over to A&M Records, necessitating a new version of "Lady" for the greatest-hits album.)
Return is notable for being the first tour since Kilroy, and (as far as I know) the last tour to feature the "Classic" lineup: Dennis, Tommy, J.Y., Chuck Panozzo, and new drummer Todd Sucherman, filling in for John Panozzo, who had passed away in 1995. All are in top form, performing perennial hits like "The Grand Illusion," "Rockin' the Paradise," "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)," "Lady," and, for the grand finale, "The Best of Times." Edge of the Century's "Show Me The Way" gets a special place in the show for John, friend, colleague, and a hell of a drummer.
The tour was successful enough that they reunited in 1999 for Brave New World. It's an interesting album, I'll say that much. There are traces of Styx's heritage throughout, but it's steeped in that crisp, clean, mid-90s pop sound. One could easily mistake "I Will Be Your Witness," the first track, for a Backstreet Boys song. Perhaps this was deliberate: A few of the other tracks, such as "Number One," "Everything is Cool," and "Heavy Water," read as a lament for, and vivisection of, the decade. "Everything" grouses about runaway consumerism, while the more thoughtful "Heavy Water" ponders over our relationship with technology in the coming century, and wonders whether or not it will outstrip us, which the earlier track "Mr. Roboto" only briefly touched upon in 1983. There, the concern was automation and loss of jobs; here, the concern widens out to the human race's self-destruction.
Also interesting is that DeYoung gets only five songs to his name out of fourteen tracks, and one of them is an early demo for what eventually became a concept album based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in other words, it has little to do with the overall "Brave New World" theme).
His final original track for Styx is "Goodbye Roseland," a quiet ballad which is at once a requiem for his father, who had passed away in 1997, and an elegy for a now-unrecognizable hometown. That we all have a Roseland of our own makes the song all the more poignant.
It could also be an elegy for a now-unrecognizable band. Styx supported the new album with a tour, but, in the tour's earliest days, he contracted a viral infection which rendered him exhausted and sensitive to light. The search for a replacement led the rest of the band to Canadian singer and keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, who had already enjoyed a successful solo career in the 80s and 90s. Styx to this day tours with new material and hits from the classic Shaw/Young catalog, and DeYoung tours with his material.
As 1999 ended one century and 2000 began a new one, so did those pivotal years do the same for this uniquely American band.
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvZPaH7QIVI
Time for a brief history lesson, in which I will make a lot of sweeping generalities from a quick glance at Wikipedia: Styx begins in Chicago (the suburb of Roseland, to be exact) in the early '60s with brothers Chuck (on bass) and John (on drums) Panozzo and their neighbor and friend Dennis DeYoung (on keyboard and vocals). The three of them went to my alma mater, Chicago State University, back when it was a teacher's school. (Class of 2011, by-the-by. I still say, to this day, that Chicago State shall always be better known for three-fifths of Styx than for Kanye West.) In 1970, the band picked up James "J.Y." Young; in 1976, Tommy Shaw. They achieved their big break with the success of "Lady" in 1972...and the rest is history.
Described by YouTube reviewer Todd in the Shadows as "pompous to the point of flatulence1" (I include this quote because it made me crack up completely when I first heard it and even now cracked up while typing it!), Styx is known for a few signature radio-friendly songs: "Come Sail Away," (my least favorite song, because WLS-94.7 insists on playing it twice a day every day) "Lady," "Renegade," and, if you're very, very lucky, "Babe," "Best of Times," and "The Grand Illusion." They had a string of hit albums through the 70s and early 80s, including Grand Illusion, Paradise Theatre, and Kilroy Was Here. This last one had a grandiose tour in which the band members portrayed rebels fighting against a neo-fascist regime. Acting turned out not to be the musicians' forte, and, at the end of the tour, the band split up until 1991's Edge of the Century, the re-recording of "Lady '95" for Styx Greatest Hits*, and the Return to Paradise Tour.
(*Styx's original label, Wooden Nickel Records, held the rights to the original version of "Lady;" within a few years' time, they had migrated over to A&M Records, necessitating a new version of "Lady" for the greatest-hits album.)
Return is notable for being the first tour since Kilroy, and (as far as I know) the last tour to feature the "Classic" lineup: Dennis, Tommy, J.Y., Chuck Panozzo, and new drummer Todd Sucherman, filling in for John Panozzo, who had passed away in 1995. All are in top form, performing perennial hits like "The Grand Illusion," "Rockin' the Paradise," "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)," "Lady," and, for the grand finale, "The Best of Times." Edge of the Century's "Show Me The Way" gets a special place in the show for John, friend, colleague, and a hell of a drummer.
The tour was successful enough that they reunited in 1999 for Brave New World. It's an interesting album, I'll say that much. There are traces of Styx's heritage throughout, but it's steeped in that crisp, clean, mid-90s pop sound. One could easily mistake "I Will Be Your Witness," the first track, for a Backstreet Boys song. Perhaps this was deliberate: A few of the other tracks, such as "Number One," "Everything is Cool," and "Heavy Water," read as a lament for, and vivisection of, the decade. "Everything" grouses about runaway consumerism, while the more thoughtful "Heavy Water" ponders over our relationship with technology in the coming century, and wonders whether or not it will outstrip us, which the earlier track "Mr. Roboto" only briefly touched upon in 1983. There, the concern was automation and loss of jobs; here, the concern widens out to the human race's self-destruction.
His final original track for Styx is "Goodbye Roseland," a quiet ballad which is at once a requiem for his father, who had passed away in 1997, and an elegy for a now-unrecognizable hometown. That we all have a Roseland of our own makes the song all the more poignant.
It could also be an elegy for a now-unrecognizable band. Styx supported the new album with a tour, but, in the tour's earliest days, he contracted a viral infection which rendered him exhausted and sensitive to light. The search for a replacement led the rest of the band to Canadian singer and keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, who had already enjoyed a successful solo career in the 80s and 90s. Styx to this day tours with new material and hits from the classic Shaw/Young catalog, and DeYoung tours with his material.
As 1999 ended one century and 2000 began a new one, so did those pivotal years do the same for this uniquely American band.
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvZPaH7QIVI
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