Sunday 3 January 2010

Kansas



I've always liked Kansas but the majority of their albums I had were on tape so I was mighty glad to get this cd set recently.
Beginning in the 70s from their hometown of Topeka, Kansas, the group produced a wild mix of rock anthems, introspective ballads, and loose jams on their studio albums.
Many of you have heard of "Carry On Wayward Son" on Classic Rock radio stations throughout Canada and the rest of the World which was a smash hit for the group back in '76. Well that's from an album called Leftoverture that happens to part of this extremely cheap 5 cd set."Dust in the Wind" (off the featured '77's Point of Know Return album) is hardly indicative of the full-bodied, keyboard-and-violin-fuelled anthems that grace most of their albums.
Why not take a chance on this group with an unique sound and buy this set. The albums included are:-
Kansas (S/T)
Song For America
Masque
Leftoverture
Point of Know Return
The discs are the Sony Legacy remasters from the 2000's that happen to sound extremely good to my ears and I'm something of a fussbudget about these things.

I also got the US older mastered version of Monolith from 1979 featuring the hit People of the SouthWind and the 1996 re-master of Audio-Vision which had the hit Hold On.

I first bought this as a lp record in August 1983 and following a selling off period in the late 80's while I was trying to build up my cd collection, I have been without a copy!
This was a pity as it was a enjoyable album the Prog rockers when John Elefante joined the band taking lead vocals.
It came out briefly on cd in 1996 but is out of print commanding a very high price a bit more than I can justify but by a struck of luck 7Digital had it available as a download so having installed the download manager and read the instructions, I bought the album download.
The song Mainstream takes a pot shot at the label people who stifle artistic development and Fight Fire With fire is a up tempo rocker.
YouTube - Kansas - Fight Fire with Fire




I also got the download of Vinyl Confessions the 1982 album with the hits Play The Game Tonight and Play On as this cd is also no longer available even though it was only issued in 1996.


7Digitals downloads:

Unlike some downloads 7Digital allow you to put them on whatever you want as many times a you like without restrictions. They come in Mp3 format that plays on practically all players and pc media players. The bit rate is either 256kbps or 320kbps CBR (Constant Bit Rate to reduce the file size) The download manager is available for Mac and Windows but Linus users can use the Zip file option
I have to be honest here and say I don't particular like Mp3 as a file format as it squashes the soundstage compared to lossless formats like Flac although it is popular for portable usage because it doesn't use much memory capacity on players.
Within the file formats restrictions it sounded tidy with good detail which was aided by the bit rate.

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