Movement for The Common Man (Styx, 1972)

ELP were not the only band fascinated by Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for The Common Man", a brass and percussion piece of music written in 1942. Also Styx included in their debut album a four sections mini-suite, including Copland's composition as the third movement. Styx created a rather strange and highly interesting song, based on a composite pattern and lining up four very different moments, apparently ill-matched, but actually forming a pleasant and coherent musical fresco. 

 

The "Movement" suite opens beautifully this album.

The mainstream rock elements are set up as the core of a broad and brave exploration of so many faces of musical culture as it was established in the early Seventies. You'll find the classical side, the folk tempations, the USA Southern rock influence, the pop canons and so on. Such a manifold recipe is wisely cooked by Styx, balancing rock riffs, dreamy melodies and mid-tempo ballads... so enjoy your meal... pardon, I meant your music!

A Day (Styx, 1972)

Many progfans I know, usually listen to this band's music, but they rarely admit they do. Styx are between prog (or art) rock and plain pop, nonetheless they wrote many excellent songs I could easily put in my blog. That's the case with this "A Day", full of soul and bluesy influences, but also featuring a clever architecture, including starting with beautiful instrumental passages and a lot of liquid sounds in the first, down tempo part. Then, the mood changes and the tempo rises up, with an excellent electric guitar solo well supported by the rythm section.

"Styx II" is probably one of the "proggest" albums by Styx.

Some keyboards take the foreground scene at minute 5:49 and show up a brief, devilish progression. The sung theme reprise with a little more pop rock arrangement ends up a track that's definitely worth a progger's attention. That said, I also like the easier side of the band, but songs like "A Day" officially label them as a prog related band. IMHO, of course.