Tonight's the night we'll make history, as sure as dogs can fly

January 24, 2018 7:26 PM

Prog-Lite band Styx scores their only #1 album with their 1981 release Paradise Theater [YT playlist ~40m], a loose concept album about the decline of America from the 60s into the emerging 80s. Side A: A.D. 1928/Rockin' The Paradise [video], Too Much Time On My Hands [video], Nothing Ever Goes As Planned, The Best Of Times [video]

Side B [which owners of the original vinyl release know was laser etched (in 1981!)]: Lonely People, She Cares, Snowblind, Half-Penny, Two-Penny/A.D. 1958/State Street Sadie

Bizarre bonus: the Credits Reel that Styx ran at the end of their Paradise Theater tour in 1981 [4m30s]

posted by hippybear (62 comments total)

Like.
posted by Melismata at 7:30 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

This was one of the first albums I ever owned as a kid-- in all its LASER ETCHED GLORY
posted by gwint at 7:31 PM on January 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

Kilroy was here was one of my first album. Secretsecret, I gotta secret...
posted by umbú at 7:39 PM on January 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

The lyrics to "Rockin' the Paradise" tell you everything you need to know about how to give an effective political speech in America without taking any position or saying anything at all. For those not familiar, here they are almost in full.

Whatcha doin’ tonight?
Have you heard that the world’s gone crazy?
Young Americans listen when I say
There’s people puttin’ us down
I know they’re sayin’ that we’ve gone lazy
To tell you the truth we’ve all seen better days.

Don’t need no fast buck, lame duck, profits for fun
Quick trick plans, take the money and run
We need long term, slow burn, getting it done
And some straight talking, hard working son of a gun

So Whatcha doin’ tonight?
I got faith in our generation
Let’s stick together and futurize our attitudes
I ain’t lookin’ to fight
But I know with determination
We can challenge the schemers who cheat all the rules

Come on and take pride, be wise, spottin’ the fools
Big shots, crackpots bending the rules
A fair shot here for me and for you
Knowing that we can’t lose
posted by escabeche at 7:41 PM on January 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Also: Styx was neither prog nor lite. Discuss among yourselves.
posted by escabeche at 7:41 PM on January 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

damn hb you're killing it lately!!
posted by stinkfoot at 7:43 PM on January 24, 2018

Also: Styx was neither prog nor lite. Discuss among yourselves.

You could make an argument that they were more Glam than Prog, given the theatrics.

Either way Dennis DeYoung was an incredible talent.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:48 PM on January 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

damn hb you're killing it lately!!

I've found a niche where I can post to MF and have it be fun and not be the total outrage/politics/sexharassment/shitshow that dominates lately and I'm trying to be responsible with it. Thanks!
posted by hippybear at 7:57 PM on January 24, 2018 [20 favorites]

Also: Styx was neither prog nor lite. Discuss among yourselves.

I always put Styx in the same basket with Kansas. Bands that took on aspects of prog but never descended into Tales From Topographic Oceans levels of madness.
posted by hippybear at 8:03 PM on January 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

Too Much Time On My Hands [video]

Surely this was the URL intended for the [video]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs

If so, the mods would be performing a great service to the gods of 80s cheez rock if they could please amend it.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:21 PM on January 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

(Also, cheez rock? This was like DA TOTAL BOMB at the time. I saw this tour! I was only 14!
posted by hippybear at 8:26 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Don't know where he got to, Mr. Roboto.

Oops, wrong album.
posted by lagomorphius at 8:42 PM on January 24, 2018

This post isn't about Kilroy Was Here, but if we're going to mention any song off that album, it should be Just Get Through This Night. I think it's one of the finest songs of its era.
posted by hippybear at 8:50 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Boy, I never listened to side 2 of this, did I? But I listened to side 1 constantly. "She Cares" sounds like the heavy number on a Billy Joel album. Except actually not quite as heavy!
posted by escabeche at 8:55 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

My dad had this and I’d just stare at it for hours and hours as a kid.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:56 PM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Midwestern Queen with prog-rock narrative aspirations? I waited in the airbrush T-shirt shop with my friend while she had that cover memorialized on a 50/50 cotton-poly blend.... we listened to the whole album on the way to and from, on cassette, drinking milkshakes from Sonic and knowing we had unlocked some serious wisdom ... ~sigh~ ...
posted by pt68 at 8:57 PM on January 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Everyone, if I ever meet you, I will sing "The Best of Times" right at your face. I am not kidding.

I will make you love it with my aggressive sprechgesang vocal performance.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:59 PM on January 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

Also: Styx was neither prog nor lite. Discuss among yourselves.

Well, Stephen King described them as a heavy metal band in Christine ("Just lately she had developed more ominous tastes: heavy metal rockers like Deep Purple and a new group, Styx.") which never made any sense to me - either at the age of 12 or now, when I've realized I've gotten too old to care about how people classify their music; I just like to listen to what I like.
posted by nubs at 9:10 PM on January 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

This post makes me a little sad.

I've loved Styx forever. Then I married a guy who worshipped them. They broke up before he got to see them live...then they got back together for Edge of the Century, and I took him to Cleveland for the show in the Flats. Later, we caught the Return to Paradise tour - once ourselves, once with 5 year-old ElderMonster in tow. We bought t-shirts, which ElderMonster has since stolen and wears with gleeful abandon.

Three years ago, the Monsters and I bought the husband tickets to the show in Windsor. Lawrence Gowan is no Dennis, but he's no slouch, either. It was an energetic, joyful show.

Last summer, though...we took YoungerMonster and his BFF when they came to Centennial Terrace in Sylvania...and it was AWFUL. The band was not into it. They were visibly bored, and it completely ruined the evening. The husband turns the station when they come up on the local "we play everything" station now. They broke his heart with that bored, perfunctory shamble through the old hits. They clearly did not want to be there, and even the surprise appearance of Chuck Panozzo couldn't rescue the evening. The damage is done.

Sometimes, bands should stay broken up, if only to spare their fans that kind of heartbreak.
posted by MissySedai at 9:11 PM on January 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

Yeah, I saw them a few years ago in central Washington and they were astounding. They weren't doing a jukebox set, but they were doing deep cuts and they did a 20 minute rendition of Suite Madame Blue that was transcendent. But it's like, imagine being in a Broadway show and having to produce that energy every 8x a week? Bands have off nights, and I'm sorry you saw one.

I continually recommend that people go see Styx if they liked them back then and they're playing somewhere near them. I thoroughly enjoyed the show I saw. I hope that is the norm. :|
posted by hippybear at 9:17 PM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Also, I must c.f. Bob Dylan. Sadly.
posted by hippybear at 9:18 PM on January 24, 2018

Was never really into this band for different reasons, but I very clearly remember hearing Babe on the radio when I was I think eight years old and thinking "This is what being in love with someone is like", and then wanting that more than anything. Finding out decades later that DeYoung originally wrote that song as a birthday present for his wife that he didn't even intend to release was bittersweet; it confirmed for me that it was a sincere love song, but also reminded me that I'd never done something that epic for a loved one's birthday.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:20 PM on January 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I recall that Alan Dean Foster, in his novelization of The Last Starfighter, also classified Styx as a heavy band.

I think Alex pines for an appropriate soundtrack when he's pwning the Ko-Dan Armada. Def Leppard is mentioned as well.

This is only one of a dozen embarrassing personal revelations I could make in a metafilter thread on Styx.
posted by Sauce Trough at 9:44 PM on January 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Dennis DeYoung was an incredible talent.

He's not dead yet.
posted by fairmettle at 9:56 PM on January 24, 2018

I liked Styx as a teen in the late 70s. When this album came out, though, I wasn't particularly interested - my tastes were undergoing a sea-change at the time. Then I read that they (or their record company) sent a copy of this album to each of the Americans held hostage in Iran when they were finally released and came home. Ostensibly it was supposed to be a welcome home gift, but they were so obviously trying to tie themselves in to the euphoria of the hostages' release and the impending American Revival (TM) under Reagan. Ugh, so lame and cheesy, I was turned off Styx forever - I can't even like them ironically now.
posted by e-man at 10:01 PM on January 24, 2018

Fooling Yourself looks like prog, swims like prog, and quacks like prog (indulgent keyboard solos with portamento and arpeggios, a bridge in 7/4, about 10 different chords). It might be diet ELP, but I'd call it prog.
posted by kurumi at 10:02 PM on January 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

One of my favorite cassettes as a child.

Yeah, “Too Much Time On My Hands” is heavy. It’s really depressing in a way even three-year-old me grokked.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:06 PM on January 24, 2018

This was the first album I ever purchased with my own money! It was my favorite album, and I spent so much time comparing the art on the front and back of the sleeve, Paradise Theater in its heyday and after it had gone to seed. And then a couple of years ago I was at a party, holding forth drunkenly about how amazing it was that we all had devices in our pockets that we could use to instantaneously purchase any album we could imagine, and I purchased Paradise Theater again at that moment as a demonstration.

A week later I deleted every track off my phone. The nostalgia hit was too jarring when the tracks came up in shuffle.

(Then last month I downloaded “Music Time.” I’m not a monument to justice.)
posted by ejs at 10:42 PM on January 24, 2018

Dennis DeYoung was an incredible talent.

He's not dead yet.

only one of these comments is accurate
posted by philip-random at 11:48 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

If Styx wasn't prog, it was mostly because they lacked that deadly self-seriousness that makes hard-core prog so joyless. The bit late in "Come Sail Away" where they're like, whoa, they're not angels, they're aliens! Or "I'm OK", which is both self-affirming and somewhat mocking of same, and if you listen closely to the final chorus, they stop singing the lyrics and just sort of go "na na na na" along to the music.

Also, I caught a little bit of DeYoung's show a few years back, and he's still got it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:30 AM on January 25, 2018

I actually worked with a guy named Dennis DeYoung. I managed to never ask him about his namesake.
posted by tommasz at 4:50 AM on January 25, 2018

Styx was freakin' huge in my high school (1978-81). Everybody loved them from the shoppies and stoners to the preppies and jocks.
posted by briank at 5:14 AM on January 25, 2018

I've seen Styx live twice - both times since 2010, so what I really saw was a Styx tribute band with 1.5 members of the classic lineup still involved. Both times they totally mailed it in. The first show they headlined but only played about 70 minutes. The second time they were wedged between Tesla and Def Leppard in a 3-band bill. But this album was huuuggeee when I was in 8th grade, and as one of the first rock records I was really into, it was the first step in a journey that led to me going to see Anthrax this coming weekend.
posted by COD at 5:44 AM on January 25, 2018

Kansas eventually became a Christian band, btw.

I actually worked with a guy named Dennis DeYoung. I managed to never ask him about his namesake.
entire catalog = celebrated
posted by thelonius at 5:51 AM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

that deadly self-seriousness that makes hard-core prog so joyless
counterexample
posted by thelonius at 5:55 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Midwestern Queen with prog-rock narrative aspirations?

I've always regarding them as the Neil Sedaka of prog rock.
posted by juiceCake at 7:03 AM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

My next-door neighbor, who was about 8 years older than me, was my idol for a while. He had one of those record players that could hold multiple records and drop them onto the platter when the previous one had finished. He had a keyboard and could play "Right Here Waiting." He also owned Killroy Was Here. As a result, I loved Styx. When I realized that "A.D. 1928" and "The Best Of Times" and "A.D. 1958" were all the same song it blew my (young, unsophisticated) mind and I became enamored of the bookend. They were also all over early-80's MTV, which was my de facto babysitter during the latchkey hours.

I still love me some "Come Sail Away" and can't deny the appeal of "Too Much Time On My Hands" but other than that they fall flat for me now, largely due to the lazy production and De Young's Broadway yowl.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:18 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

...heavy metal rockers like Deep Purple and a new group, Styx

King was probably thinking about "Renegade" in the time that book was set. They look just like Spinal Tap in the flashbacks in that video.
posted by 445supermag at 7:33 AM on January 25, 2018

And don't forget "Heavy Metal Poisoning".
posted by 445supermag at 7:40 AM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Tap, y'all know there's a Derek Smalls solo album coming out, this year, right?
posted by thelonius at 7:43 AM on January 25, 2018

Also: Styx was neither prog nor lite. Discuss among yourselves.

Chuck Eddy called Styx, along with Kansas, early REO Speedwagon, and forgotten bands like Starcastle and Shooting Star, "Prairie Prog." It's a description with some explanatory value, I think, because it highlights the connections between the period's prog rock and hard rock and also later varieties of pop prog and pop/hair metal.

I bought Paradise Theater and Moving Pictures at the same time. As near as I can remember they were the first records I ever bought with my own money.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:53 AM on January 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

Re: Heavy Metal and Styx.

In the 70's Heavy Metal was a lot different than what it was in the 80's.

Consider 1981's "Heavy Metal" Soundtrack.


No. Title Artist Length
1. "Heavy Metal" (Original Version) Sammy Hagar 3:50
2. "Heartbeat" Riggs 4:20
3. "Working in the Coal Mine" Devo 2:48
4. "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" Blue Öyster Cult 4:48
5. "Reach Out" Cheap Trick 3:35
6. "Heavy Metal (Takin' a Ride)" Don Felder 5:00
7. "True Companion" Donald Fagen 5:02
8. "Crazy (A Suitable Case for Treatment)" Nazareth 3:24
9. "Radar Rider" Riggs 2:40
10. "Open Arms" Journey 3:20
11. "Queen Bee" Grand Funk Railroad 3:11
12. "I Must Be Dreamin'" Cheap Trick 5:37
13. "The Mob Rules" (alternate version) Black Sabbath 3:16
14. "All of You" Don Felder 4:18
15. "Prefabricated" Trust 2:59
16. "Blue Lamp" Stevie Nicks 3:48

posted by mikelieman at 8:01 AM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

Well that was a filmic version of the comic magazine, not a rockumentary, right?
posted by thelonius at 8:15 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I can tell you as an '80s kid that the Heavy Metal soundtrack wasn't even held up as an example of metal in its day. Mostly, we just knew it as the music from the cartoon that had naked ladies in it.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:22 AM on January 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

I remember standing at the sink washing dinner dishes as a teenager. The local station played AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds", Styx's "The Best of Times", and one of the tunes from Xanadu—I don't remember which one—every evening, in the same order, at the same time. I've had a really good life (so far, anyway), and that was a good era. Thanks for the memories.
posted by phrits at 9:12 AM on January 25, 2018

Sauce Trough: "I recall that Alan Dean Foster, in his novelization of The Last Starfighter, also classified Styx as a heavy band.

I think Alex pines for an appropriate soundtrack when he's pwning the Ko-Dan Armada. Def Leppard is mentioned as well."

I felt compelled to check on this - I had the novelization, too - and there are two references to Styx in the novel.

First, when Alex's android double tells Maggie what he is:

"You're a robot?"

"A robot." He searched Alex's memory for additional references. "Like in the stories by Asimov. Like in the GM factory in Detroit. Like in the song by Styx. More complicated than any of those."

And later during the climactic battle:

Lights brighter than the distant stars suddenly filled the void around the charging vessel. Alex thought the display was beautiful, like a laser show at a rock concert. All he needed to make the dizzying attack Grig was conducting complete was a good tape of AC/DC or Styx or Def Leppard. Although even if he happened to have one along, he couldn't have done much more than stare at it. He didn't think gunstars were equipped with cassette decks.

posted by Chrysostom at 9:44 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

I loved this album, but I'd forgotten most of it outside the radio hits.

Listening to "She Cares" just now... I'm dealing with having just recently shown my now-ex-SO my absolutely worst self and, while she's not my SO anymore, she is still here, still supporting me, still caring for me, and jesus that's a really good song.

I'm not crying in my cubicle, YOU'RE crying in my cubicle.
posted by hanov3r at 10:01 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

it has to be said. Styx were not even a good band. And I tried very, very hard. Because they seemed to be everything I'd been searching for when I first really listened to them in 1976-77. The hard rock of Aerosmith crossed with the sonic ambitions of Yes (or whatever). It was a prog-rock that everybody could get into, or so I thought ...

Because then I saw them live twice. And it was painful. They just weren't that good. They were an A-list Chicago bar band that had somehow stumbled into The Big Time. They were not remotely in the same league as Yes, Queen, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Elton John, Electric Light Orchestra, Bachman Turner Overdrive, all of whom I'd recently seen. They were strictly minor league, and thus embarrassing, because they were swinging big for the fences and repeatedly just grounding out ...

I gave up after Pieces of Eight.

Jump ahead a year or two and I'm in Seattle having a rotten night, my friends having decided they want to go to a bad and expensive nightclub. So I'm kicking around downtown, killing time ... and suddenly, there are all these younger teens wandering around wide-eyed, full of awe. I end up surrounded by a bunch of them at a bus stop, and, because the bus is late, I eventually get to talking to a few of them. Turns out they've just seen Styx, The Paradise Theater extravaganza, and their lives will never be the same.

How do you tell someone like that they're wrong? You don't, because they're not, even if they are. Because epiphanies don't lie (even if they oft prove fleeting, but that's another topic). So I just ended up being a fan again, if only for a few minutes, talking about the earlier albums and whatever. It killed some time and now, more than thirty-five years later, here I am remembering it with a smile. Which is more than I can say for anything else I did that day, or week, or most of 1981 for that matter (not one of my better years).

So thanks for that, Styx. And Renegade is a pretty good song.
posted by philip-random at 10:28 AM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've got too much *clap clap* time on my hands.
posted by ShakeyJake at 10:39 AM on January 25, 2018

Unrepentant, unironic lover of Styx.

Dennis DeYoung clearly wanted to write Broadway musicals. The bizarre blend of lite prog and show tunes-esque sound hits my sweet spot. No apologies. Play me some "Renegade" or "Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)" or "Show Me the Way" and I'm happy.
posted by tzikeh at 11:22 AM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Great post. So many memories.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 12:08 PM on January 25, 2018

My very first concert was Styx during the Paradise Theater tour, at the Providence Coliseum (?). I am not sure I can listen to them again, but oh the memories.
posted by suelac at 12:17 PM on January 25, 2018

So there's this weird theory I have about big arena bands and big prog-rock bands, and how they age and whether they survive it: they may start out with big grand ideas and concepts, but at a certain point, they have to get over themselves a little or else everything falls down and goes boom. And I don't mean "get over themselves" in a bad way either; more like, they have to develop a sense of humor about themselves. The various members of Genesis hit that point at about the time Peter Gabriel left; U2 hit that point somewhere during the Pop tour (probably when they had that show where the entire band got trapped inside a giant lemon-shaped set piece). They may still do some moments of self-aggrandizement here and there, but somehow you know that they've figured out that they aren't the Grand Renegades With Artistic Ideas they once maybe thought they were when they were younger. They're still just as talented as they were - and for the record, they were indeed talented when they were younger. But the Grand Ideas about rock operas and Big Concepts are more things that you do when you're young and you think that you've Invented The Art Wheel or whatever.

I say that because...I get the sense that part of what turned Styx from being a Big Thing to being not quite so much of one now is that Dennis DeYoung never really got over himself in this way. He really does still think that he's trying to do some revolutionary combination of Rock and Opera and Musical Theater and whatever, and someone needs to sit him down and be like "dude...relax a little."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:04 PM on January 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

Also: Styx was neither prog nor lite. Discuss among yourselves.

Wikipedia classifies them as, variously, progressive rock, hard rock, art rock, pop rock, and arena rock. That musical fondue is, I submit to MeFi, the essence of cheez rock.

They were an A-list Chicago bar band that had somehow stumbled into The Big Time. They were not remotely in the same league as Yes, Queen, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Elton John, Electric Light Orchestra, Bachman Turner Overdrive, all of whom I'd recently seen.

I agree wholeheartedly, though I'll allow that, when all is said and done, whether progly or poppily, artily or hardily, at a bar or in an arena, Styx rocks.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:20 PM on January 25, 2018

"Dennis DeYoung clearly wanted to write Broadway musicals."

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please:

Hunchback of Notre Dame - A Musical by Dennis DeYoung

(He also played Pontius Pilate in a touring revival of Jesus Christ Superstar - Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times.)

I'm really sorry to hear about shows where they were phoning it in - I've seen them several times and they always seemed to be doing their best to give a great show.

(I'm a big enough Styx fan that I have met pretty much all of them (except Gowan and Ricky) (but including both Glen Burtnik and John Curulewski!) and have seen the band live in pretty much all their configurations since the late 70s, including Dennis solo and Tommy solo (but not, alas, J.Y. solo). )

I loved Paradise Theatre and was thrilled to get to go to the live show.

I was always a Tommy fan, myself, and am amazed that I'm, like, the first person in this thread to mention him. I love the soulfulness and distinct melodic sense and dual strengths of acoustic and rockin'-out guitar styles he brought to the band.

J.Y. joined Styx in 1970 (while he was still finishing up his degree in aerospace engineering!), so he's been playing Styx music live for nearly 50 years. That's quite a career.
posted by kristi at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2018

He had one of those record players that could hold multiple records and drop them onto the platter when the previous one had finished.

The popularity of said players probably explains why sooooo many records at thrift stores look like someone skated on them.

Back to the regularly scheduled thread: I used to have a soft spot for Styx in my jr high days, but eventually I came to realize it was more due to "Mr. Roboto" and a few other songs rather than their entire oeuvre. Then I came across the Ramones and the Repo Man soundtrack and never looked back.

Not to say I don't still have a soft spot for "Mr. Roboto" or "Music Time" though.
posted by gtrwolf at 2:12 PM on January 25, 2018

This was the first album I listened to seriously. I was 7 or 8. Good memories. I told my parents I wanted a Styx record, and they got me greatest hits, which was pretty early Styx. I liked it, but it wasn’t Paradise Theater.
posted by persona au gratin at 4:34 PM on January 25, 2018

I've seen Styx live twice - both times since 2010, so what I really saw was a Styx tribute band with 1.5 members of the classic lineup still involved.

So, is it Tommy Shaw or James Young that you're counting as half a person?
posted by hippybear at 7:22 PM on January 25, 2018

Without checking my work on Wikipedia, I think it was Shaw that was there for the heyday, but technically not a founding member of the band.
posted by COD at 7:44 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Shaw and Young I think both joined later but are both still members of the band touring as Styx. One of the P brothers died (the bass player?) from AIDS and the other has health problems that let him drum in the studio and not in person. So the current touring band contains (I believe) a bassist, a drummer, and a pianist/vocalist (replacing DeYoung) with Shaw and Young still touring.

I saw them maybe 5 years ago and they were outstanding. The band members replacing previous band members (esp DeYoung) were perfect in their roles and the show they played was not a jukebox show but featured deep cuts and was great fun for me as someone who had been listening to them basically all my life.

I don't know what your parameters are for "being a part of the band", but I think I saw a sold show by people who were in a band. And while Shaw and Young were the only original two members, the keyboardist/singer met my expectations of how the songs should be performed and I had a great time.

I hiope you had moire than an -3.5 of expectation time.
posted by hippybear at 7:59 PM on January 25, 2018

I don't know what your parameters are for "being a part of the band"

I wrote a blog post addressing this question a couple of years ago, although my views have evolved a bit since them.

Generally speaking, I think if less than 1/2 the classic lineup is still around a band is getting dangerously close to tribute band to itself territory. But it's not a hard and fast rule. A band that is still making new music gets more leeway Likewise, a band that has been constantly touring and just has had a natural flow of people in and out of the band over the years gets more leeway. A lead singer that after 10 years of inactivity decides to put a band together and reuse his classic band name without any of the other classic members is a tribute band.
posted by COD at 5:44 AM on January 26, 2018

deYoung me didn't realize different leads did the vocals of some of those songs. Mid-to-Now me splits them like night and day. Tommy Shaw, so much so now, usually hitting deep within.
posted by filtergik at 6:05 AM on January 26, 2018