This Day in Music History: Styx/Kilroy Was Here (02/22)

On this date in 1983, Styx basically destroyed their career with the release of Kilroy Was Here (covered in more detail here: Side One, Side Two) Yeah, you know THAT one. The one that brought us this:

Styx and Yes have always gone back and forth as being my favorite band. It was hard for me to recover from this album though, which had a tour that was a financial disaster. I mean they had reached their pinnacle to me just two years before with Paradise Theater. When I got this album (I still have it in my collection) I was just utterly confused. It just didn't sound like Styx and quite frankly it was embarrassing to me. Side Two is actually decent to me, but the band has never been the same ever since.

No, please. Let it end.

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This Day in Music History (06/16): Styx/The Mission

The Mission is the sixteenth studio album by the band Styx, released on this day in 2017. It was also a nice surprise for their fans, who basically had no idea a new album was being worked on. It is the band's first studio album since 2005's Big Bang Theory, their first album of original material since 2003's Cyclorama, and their highest-charting studio album in the United States since 1983's Kilroy Was Here, reaching #45 on the Billboard 200. 

A concept album, it tells the story of a mission to the planet Mars in the year 2033. The album's story was written by Tommy Shaw and Will Evankovich.

The album was conceived in 2015 when Tommy Shaw composed the guitar riff that became the record's closing track "Mission to Mars". The first lines Shaw wrote were "Now we can say it / This is the day / We'll be on our way / On our mission to Mars". The story was then formed around this idea.

Styx announced the album in conjunction with the release of the lead single "Gone Gone Gone", while "Radio Silence" and "Hundred Million Miles from Home" were later made available prior to the album's release.

My fave track:

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Friday and the Random 10 (Styx Edition)

Welcome to a new and improved, simplified and stripped down Random 10! 

Here's a picture.

Music Monday: Styx/Kilroy Was Here (Side Two)

In the previous post covering side one of Kilroy Was Here I detailed how Dennis DeYoung came up with the story for this concept album. Now it is time to take a look at side two and see how it finishes out.

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