Kansas  The Best of Kansas

• Carry On Wayward Son
  
• Point of Know Return
  
• Fight Fire With Fire
  
• Dust in the Wind
  
• Song for America
  
• Hold On
  
• No One Together
  
• Play the Game Tonight
  
• The Wall
  
• The Pinnacle
  
• The Devil Game
  
• Closet Chronicles
  

In High School, I was in a band called PHTER. I loved it - I played drums, and it was a good time because we weren't half bad and we loved playing.

Besides recordings we'd made on our own, we also tried on a few occasions to record at a friend's house - his dad was a gigging musician and had recently built a home studio. The first time was as an attempt to salvage a day when a live radio show we'd been scheduled performing on got rained out: We headed to our friend's basement studio and tried for hours to set up and get the instrument micing right, but by the time things were ready, we'd lost interest and went to see a Jackie Chan movie ("Supercop") instead. Another time, we successfully recorded rhythm tracks for two songs.

A third time, after we had dissolved the band, Andy and I went down to the studio while I was home from college on vacation: after running through some Led Zeppelin songs to warm up, Andy asked if I knew "Carry On Wayward Son." When I said no, Andy tried to walk me through it, but on first listen, it seemed to have too many changes for me to keep track of. Andy mentioned that it would be cool if I learned the song for the next time we were both home. Once back up at school, I got a copy of this disc when it was on sale at Media Play (later, I replaced it disc with the re-issued, expanded version that came out in '99).

The only Kansas song I was familiar with before getting this disc was "Dust in the Wind," which I always thought was a beautiful song, so I was happy to learn it was on here. "Carry On Wayward Son" is one of those monster songs that just rocks solidly the whole way through. All the other songs are great too, though the songs from beyond 1982 ("Fight Fire With Fire" and "Play the Game Tonight"), while good, are a departure from the earlier tracks and sound more like hair band music (Whitesnake, etc) than the violin-enhanced guitar-and-keyboard rock of "Point of Know Return" and "Song for America." That's not to say that stuff is bad... in fact, those two remind me a lot of Styx's sound.