Title: Middle ground
Review: Everybody seems to be giving this either 5 stars or 1 star, hailing the band as great, or condemning them as incompetent.The truth, I think, lies decidedly somewhere in between, with this album deserving 2 and a half stars (if Amazon would allow such). No more. No less.What Styx did, and did fairly well, was standard commercial radio fodder for the mid 70's to early 80's. Judging such by today's standards isn't entirely fair, but such is always inevitable.Great art is was not (not by any stretch of the imagination) and while the vocals of Dennis DeYoung and Tommy Shaw were not always pleasant to hear, the band had a modest way with the hooks that could overshadow such oversight.In other words here lies some entertaining, but hardly consequential music, and this album represents a time capsule of American pop culture circa 1975-1983. It isn't likely to be played in music appreciation classes in the year 2100, but some of it will probably get you humming along today.
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