Kerry Livgren - Seeds of Change

Told you i'd find Waldo, on a freshly reborn Kerry Livgren solo album, of all places. 

I told you the story about Kerry's fascination with the Urantia Book, and how it infiltrated Monolith, but during the tour for that album he had nightly debates with their opening band, and Jeff Pollard finally convinced him that The Bible was a more authentic chronicle of Jesus than that other book of space alien dream sermons, so Livgren's an Evangelical Christian now. Spoiler alert, there's two more Kansas albums in this run, and one of them is the last "with Livgren" album before he tornadoed himselves to Oz. No, i don't need to explain that joke, Skip. They get it. Get back to your actual work.

Where was i? Oh yeah, Seeds of Change. Ahem, excuse me waiter, but what's this baby doing in my diamond? 

The backstroke, sir. Shall i fetch you another?

No, no, we're cool. Wait. What's Diablo Dio doing here? 

Ah, a common misconception, sir. Though Mr. Ronnie James built a substantial career singing ABOUT Satan, he himself was not "a Satanist." It was in fact his vocal versatility with which tonight's guitslinger was enamored.

Oh, ok. Sure, we'll give it a try. Well. It's an unexpected flavor. There's some interesting things going on. This album needs some serious contextualization, for sure.

Musically speaking, this is fun. The Dio tracks are spectacular. The part that's hard to deal with is the "evangelical" part. You have to make a choice. Is this Kerry Livgren telling you about his honest experience of life and how accepting Christ solved so many of his own psychological crises and existential angst, or is this annoying, self-righteous, hard right proselytizing? 

How can you live when nothing's there?

Just fine, Kerry, 41 years and counting. Like i've told everyone a thousand times, there's no empty space in my soul. I'm Stuart m'f'in Smalley. I'm super happy if this is working for you, but i'm telling you man to man, face to face, it doesn't work for me. No negotiation. I can meet you halfway at Whiskey Seed, alcoholocally treating the pain isn't good at all. I'd be happy to compare and contrast my theory of complex causality, discuss the underlying metaphors, fully appreciate what it does for you, but Space Dad and Metatron aren't allowed at the Bottle of Beef Omni-Holiday Office Party. My brain, my rules. 

I couldn't listen to this thing all the time, it takes a lot of work to filter out the condescension inherent in this ideology, but as part of the story of Kerry Livgren, or even a playlist of the weird stuff Dio did, it's a completely enjoyable listen.