This.
Though it had a couple of good tunes the entire “Kilroy was Here” thing was completely ridiculous. I saw one of the concerts. It was more like a badly written and badly directed play instead of a concert. It was obvious the other members of the band hated what they were doing and were unmotivated and bored. DeYoung had these long speaking parts that had no entertainment value.
I’d just like to point out that the drum breakdown before the last verse in Renegade is excellent, that is all.
I find that the prog sensibilities in rock can be annoyingly conceited, but this can be overcome if the band really rocks hard.
That’s the experience I have when I listen to something like Mr. Roboto. I cringe at the entire concept of a renegade robot song, like the opera it’s embedded in. But I can overlook it because the song really just rocks.
This is how I engage with most of Styx, like I’ll do an air-drum solo in the car while simultaneously being embarrassed for myself. Really a guilty pleasure.
IMO, they were certainly a great band but I found the material completely bombastic – bombast to 11 at all times. ELP pulled this off a couple times, but Styx kinda didn’t IMO. It was wearing to listen to and I’d tire of it less than halfway through a song.
There’s something to be said for being able to understand all the lyrics of a song but Dennis DeYoung’s over-enunciation gets tiresome after a while.
Dennis DeYoung: the anti-Bob Dylan.
Sooo right.
I double-dog-dare you to tell me what the hell “the modren man” is.
His over-enunciated mispronunciation was tiresome as well 
The existence of Styx is justified if only for this, which was a perennial favorite on the “Dr. Demento Show.” Most people do not believe it really exists until they hear it, and sometimes not even then.
Once upon a time… I bought an 8-track collection from someone. This included The Serpent is Rising by Styx. I heard the plexiglass toilet song and my thought was the person had recorded this over the real song.
The other side of the LP ends with this. The first 1:10 is borderline unlistenable, but the rest is great.
To me, Styx is of a piece with other late 70s bands that I liked when I first started getting into music. I did a thread a year or so ago asking “what were your 12 albums for a penny Columbia / BMG purchases?” For me it was bands and albums like ‘Styx: The Grand Illusion’, ‘Boston: eponymous’, ‘ELO: Out of the Blue’, and ‘Journey: can’t remember the album name offhand but the one with all the hits’.
Those were some of my first albums at 12 or 13. At that age they were pure ear candy. Then, in high school when I got into music like the Stones and Ramones, I turned on those bands I first enjoyed as overproduced, phony, corporate rock. I hated everything they stood for as only a teenager can hate things. Journey was enemy #1 in this regard, with Styx and ELO not far behind. I still did like the Tommy Shaw songs-- didn’t change the station if ‘Blue Collar Man’ came on the radio, that song just rocks. And Boston’s first album got a bit of a pass from me, I seem to remember.
Nowadays, I’ve kind of come full circle to appreciating those bands again, though I’m not sure if my modern appreciation of them is a new musical maturity, an ironic level of appreciation, nostalgia, or a mix of all of the above.
The trouble with Mr Roboto as a stand alone song is, who da heck is Kilroy? And why is it so important that the revelation is delivered like a major shocker?
Mr Roboto always reminds me of one of the lesser Stainless Steel Rat novels. In the book, the SSR is besieged in some mansion/hotel/something, and all he has to defend from imminent attack is a bunch of robobutlers. Since they follow the three laws, they can’t actually hurt the attackers, or even carry a weapon. So he has them stand in formation holding brooms. As they advance, they are all “Thank you very much.” “Thanking you, sir.” I don’t know if the book was inspired by the song, or vice versa, or if it just one weird cozmik coincidence.
Thank you very much.
I love progressive rock.
For quite a long stretch, rock-‘n-roll purists and punk rock fans and even grunge rock afficionados tended to sneer and roll their eyes about the very things I liked about progressive: the sophisticated instrumentation, the classical style complex motifs and chord structures, the bombastic emotional gestures and high drama, the attention to detail. They liked to claim that it was “overproduced”, implying that it was the music engineers in the recording studio who very carefully turned knobs to create these tracks where every sound feels utterly deliberate. And that four people flailing on their instruments and screaming their defiance into faulty microphones in their parents’ garage was real rock, gutsy and raw in its lack of polish and ambiguous musicianship.
Before I began to like rock, I loved classical. And not Mozart and Bach quartets and motets but the high-drama stuff that evokes mysteries and exotic landscapes and theological confrontations, passion and pain and the intensity cranked to 11. So that’s the kind of rock I love best. Pink Floyd, Kansas, Styx, Yes, Genesis, all that stuff.
I’m a Prog Head at heart, too, for the reasons AHunter3 gives above, and others. I have of course “always” been aware of Styx, but haven’t listened to them much at all. Inspired by this thread, I listened to some of Styx’s finest at YT.
It just doesn’t work for me. I don’t like Dennis DeYoung’s semi-comical voice, there is none of the masterful instrumentation that I so like, and I feel the songs only attempt to be adventurous and grandiose, but are quite lame and ridiculous in fact. Even Blue Collar Man is an impotent rocker, to my ears.
I’ll give Styx another go, but things aren’t looking good.
Styx was kind of an odd group, because of the difference in musical interests and visions within the group.
Dennis DeYoung clearly wanted to do artistic, theatrical, and sometimes prog-y sorts of music; he was the driving force behind Kilroy Was Here, as well as songs like “Come Sail Away.” Guitarists James Young and Tommy Shaw, on the other hand, preferred straight-ahead rock songs. Thus, you have rocking songs like “Renegade” and “Miss America” from the same band that did “Come Sail Away” and “Mr. Roboto.”
From what I see and hear, most of the “hate” for Styx is directed at the bombastic, DeYoung-led songs and concepts.
I recommend The Grand Illusion, Pieces of Eight, and/or Equinox
I have heard / read that Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight are the best Styx albums. I did listen to most of Pieces of Eight yesterday and some other songs, and you already saw how I felt about it.
Fair enough!