Michigan Girl wrote:Thenightbull wrote:That you liked styx back in the day? It's no secret that they were not the most popular band back then so just curious if any of you guys had to hide the fact that you liked the band back then. In case your wondering where i got the idea for this thread it's from re watching that episode of that 70's show which featured the aforemeantioned band.
I have heard this mentioned w/Journey and REO too!!
When you say
guys are you referring to males
or do you mean everyone in general?!?!?
I've never felt the need to lie about what band I liked and
I'm not ashamed to admit that I love
BABE too!!
I'm curious to know, why do you all think Babe was bad for
the band?!?...I've only heard this here!!
You can probably find the Styx 'Behind The Music' episode on YouTube where this is talked about. In a nutshell, up to that point in time Styx' radio success was because of a particular type of sound; ie melodic, commmercial pop-rock with a dash of hard rock and a dash of progressive rock as evidenced by 'Equniox' through 'Pieces of Eight'. With 'Cornerstone', after Styx went to England and failed there and was labelled a dinosaur act, Dennis came back to America convinced progressive rock was dying (which it turns out it was, by the way). He wanted Styx to make an album that didn't rely on those kinds of arrangements so much, and so he led the band toward more of a natural-sounding production approach with less signal processing and more of a focus on straight pop-rock songs without as much instrumental embellishment. Look at what he and Tommy each wrote for the album and you'll see what I mean. But when Dennis came in with "Babe", it was something not everyone wanted to do. They could have voted against it but they did not, because it was a likely hit single written by a guy in the band. And it became the band's only #1 hit, won the People's Choice Award for Song of the Year that year. But any time a band that's been known for one thing changes styles, it creates a split in the fan base between those who discovered the band early on and are attached to one approach, and those who discovered it later on BECAUSE of the style changes and prefer THAT approach. Same thing happened with Journey, REO, Foreigner, Yes . . . and so from that point on Styx has struggled, both internally and externally, with the perception of "rock" vs. "ballads" and all of the nonsense baggage that people read into that. Did it hurt the band? Well, 'Cornerstone' was a huge record and the following record 'Paradise Theatre' was the band's only #1 album, so it's hard to argue that "Babe" harmed the band from that perspective. On the other hand Styx is peceived as "uncool" (whatever that's supposed to mean), and maybe "Babe" has something to do with that, who knows? It's not like the band was hip before that and then it all went to hell. Styx was ALWAYS uncool. But nonetheless the "Babe" debate never ends, LOL. It never will.
Hopefully somewhere in my long-windedness I managed to answer your question!?
Sterling
j/k or am i?
How was jc live?