Before you get too excited, this is NOT the album that gave the world - and "South Park" - the classic, epic 'Come Sail Away'. That was 'The Grand Illusion' Who can forget Eric Cartman being obsessed with the song and just having to sing the whole thing if he hears the beginning. He manages to squeeze the 6 minute song into 30 seconds! (see link below).
Trying to find a genre for Styx seems quite easy. Take the word 'rock' and stick anything in front of it - 'pop', 'soft', 'arena', 'hard', 'art', 'prog', 'album' etc etc etc. You get the idea, they're a rock band.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not and never was a big Styx fan. Just surface stuff, the abovementioned 'Come Sail Away' which is probably my favourite if I was to have one, and the FM radio tracks such as 'Lady', 'Babe' and 'Mr Roboto' (domo arigato anyone??). Having said that, my darling wife had a number of their albums including The Grand Illusion - used as a backdrop to today's photo.
The main reason this album became part of the collection is basically novelty value. The fact that it is a picture disc and does not have a physical cover made it hard to photograph, so it remains on the "Now Playing" plinth instead of on the turntable. There's just a clear plastic sleeve with the LP inside and a card saying "This is a numbered, Limited Edition Collectors Record of the STYX "Pieces of Eight" album." As the card also states "These records do not have sound quality equal to conventional records." and "This record is: No.045795". It seems rather unfortunate that the centre hole of the record goes into the nostril of one of the women on the disc-art. Talking of the disc-art (by Hipgnosis) did you notice all the women have Easter Island earrings?
So, keeping in mind the inferior sound quality I'm happy to report that there are still some good sounding tracks on here, despite what one critic wrote. Lester Bangs from Rolling Stone said "What's really interesting is not that such narcissistic slop should get recorded, but what must be going on in the minds of the people who support it ..." Wow, tell us what you really think Lester.
The highlight of the album for me is 'Renegade', one of those 'Gallows Pole' type songs. Definitely running behind the Led Zep track but not bad in it's own right. The other two singles from the album were 'Sing For The Day' and 'Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)'. The last track on the album is a throw-away instrumental called 'Aku-Aku' that seems totally out of place and slightly annoying, but the more you listen the more ear-wormy it gets.
An album that doesn't get played much, but I'm not embarrassed by it.
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