Chapter 6 - Styx - Kilroy Was Here

Chapter 6 

Kilroy Was Here? Where? I need to see him about a thing and stuff. Never you mind what, that's my own business. 

It is totally fair to call the concept of a dystopian future where Rock & Roll has been outlawed cliche. 2112 springs to mind, but i'm sure there are at least a dozen others. I'm fine with that. There's only like 5 basic stories anyway. Levi-Strauss (not the guy on your denim jeans, the Structural Anthropologist) says the rest is all just playing around with diachronic/synchronic structures on a 2-dimensional intellectual axis. Big fan of non-chronological time and meaning, i sure am. Plus, mythology itself has cultural value as a means to get past an apparent contradiction (you know, like now admitting that you intentionally took the documents but complaining that investigators spread them out all willy nilly so they could take pictures, totally messing up your artfully treasonous feng shui); not solve that contradiction, merely keep moving forward in spite of it. It is, as we say, what it is. 

But is this album really that terrible? Rolling Stones albums sound terrible, but they aren't. Seether's first album is great, i just react to it by psychologically vomiting, i'm not predisposed to like Oak Ridge Boys or Finger 11, but i can't exactly argue those albums were intrinsically terrible. All the albums i hated on are basically only half terrible. Hard to hold all 900+ as an array in my brain, but maybe the only truly terrible album i've reviewed is Cricklewood Green by Ten Years After; everything else has at least 1 redeeming quality, even if that particular quality is also not my cup of bilge water. Case in point, Scritti Polliti's Provision. Being objectively terrible is literally its own redeeming quality. Kilroy Was Here can't possibly even scratch the surface of terrible by comparison. Let's find out. 

Well, obviously this isn't going to be a Prog Rock concept album, it's going to be a Pop-Rock-Opera made by Styx. I guess if Styx isn't allowed to do that in your mind, but i'm cool with it. Not so much pronouncing modern as "modren," but Styx is allowed to do whatever they want. They were bummed it only went single platinum in a week, but last i checked that's still a million something copies sold. 

So, we treat this like a musical, we expect a fair bit of corny and some gaping plot holes. What actually stuck a stick in Styx's bike spokes was that DeYoung wanted to do big sweepingly sappy soft-rock ballads while everybody else wanted to keep on rocking. I agree, stuff that, i'll take cheesy Rock Operas any day. 

I'll give you the fact that it sounds more like a Meatloaf album than Styx, and i'll also concede that the plot has more holes than Swiss cheese, but it's not bad. It's definitely variety Pop Rock, but it's still identifiably Styx. 

What's DeGagne's actual criticism? It's an REO Speedwagon album (two hits and a bunch of awkward filler). Ok, but it's an 80s musical, not a 70s Rock Symphony. You can't just decide to use the wrong criteria, it's like complaining your Vespa makes a lousy golf cart. Of course it does, that's clearly not its intended purpose. But let's look at the songs and see if they work for what it is. I fully enjoyed it, but i'll be willing to relent if it does in fact add up to nonsense. 

Kilroy escapes from his futuristic prison disguised as Mr. Roboto. There's a revolution a brewin'. Don't leave me, baby. We're sick of the moral majority claiming music is ruining the world. "Heavy Metal is the devil's music." Kilroy and Jonathan just trying to survive the night. This double life stuff is hard. Stick with me, we'll get through it, just don't give up hope. [Foreigner impression] now he needs to keep a-rockin'.... 

Look, i mean it's kind of hard to tell if it's a story about saving Rock from theocratic fascism, or if it's a story about the secret love affair between Kilroy and Jonathan, but correct me if i'm wrong, those are essentially the same story. I'm not saying they intentionally wrote it that way, i'm just saying it's so up the nose you can imagine every single staff writer in the country stretching out their collar, snorting a line of amphetamines, and whispering "whoo boy, rock and roll as a metaphor for homosexuality, how'm'i gonna get through this and still have a job tomorrow?" to the ceiling before panning it as untactfully as possible. 

For context, a year later Wormser kindly engineered a proper javelin for Lamar's limp-wristed throwing style, and a year after that Tipper formed the PMRC. This was topical stuff for the early/mid 80s. Best part of that whole kerfuffle was of course Dee Snyder pointing out that the title track from Under the Blade was about the fear of having surgery, so the only sado-masochism happening was in Tipper's own imagination. Hilarious. 

Anywho, saving rock and roll, defending gay rights, potato, potahto. I think it's lovely.

Interlude