I’ve never much liked the entire “Seventies Midwestern Arena Rock” genre. <\/p>\n
But among the bands in that genre, it’s Styx that’s always gone beneath and below the rest, the one whose impression to me swerves from apathy into active dislike. <\/p>\n
It’s not that they couldn’t play<\/em>. They certainly had live game. <\/p>\n But unlike REO Speedwagon, or Head East or Trooper or April Wine (I know, they’re Canadian, but they fit the genre) or Michael Stanley Band or any of the others that were more or less like them, Styx’s Dennis DeYoung spent most of the late seventies and eighties whining about how awful being a pop star was, how degrading the machinery of the stardom industry was, and what mindless sheeple the fans were. <\/p>\n To which I eventually responded “OK – then go to work in a meat processing plant and quit your whining”.<\/p>\n We’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n This is the Sinead O’Connor I suspect most of us remember:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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