Styx- Kilroy was Here, and Petra- Beat the System

In this post I'd like to discuss two early '80s albums that are among my favorites: Styx: Kilroy was Here (1983), and Petra: Beat the System (1984).

I've been thinking about these albums quite a bit lately, and how they compare and contrast with each other, and the more I think about them, the more similarities crop up between them, not just with the albums, but also with the circumstances in which they came about, both in society and in the bands which created them. They were both very much a product of their time, but coming from two different music scenes- one secular, and the other Christian.

I'll start by talking about the Styx album. I first purchased this album on cassette (used, of course) in 1995, over a decade after Styx's heyday. I became a fan of this band as a teenager during the time when they were still considered "washed up," having lost their record deal and broken up again after the brief partial re-union (sans Tommy Shaw) album and tour for Edge of the Century, and it would be another year before the release of their Greatest Hits album would set the stage for their resurgence as a popular classic rock touring act in 1996. So for me at that time, Styx, along with other '70s bands, helped to fulfill my desire to go against the wave of so-called "Alternative" Nirvana and Pearl Jam copycats and listen to music that was out of style, making it my own personal alternative.

When I first read the liner notes, I found the concept of this album fascinating- that of rock music fighting for survival in an Orwellian dystopia. I had a fairly good understanding of the "backmasking" controversy, and though it was no longer in the current media at the time, I was aware of the accusations against bands such as Led Zepplin of hidden evil messages. However, at the time I did not know that Styx in particular had been targeted in these accusations, and I thought that "Snowblind" from the Paradise Theater album was only controversial because of its reference to cocaine addiction. Though I knew about George Orwell's novel 1984 and recognized the literary reference, it was only much later that I would fully understand what had pushed Dennis DeYoung to create the concept for this record.

The opening track, "Mr. Roboto," was such a big, catchy hit that I was already familiar with it, if only peripherally, despite the fact that it had first come out when I was a little kid. But as a teenager, the lyrics spoke to me of dystopian reliance on technology and the resultant loss of humanity in our cultural soul- a point that becomes ever more relevant in today's politically polarized, social media saturated, smartphone-addicted world. On the musical side of things, the electronics-heavy style of the song was a departure from the Styx sound I was used to in previous albums such as The Grand Illusion.

While I was very impressed by the concept contained in the liner notes and first track, I found the remainder of the album to be an initial disappointment in a way, perhaps because Tommy Shaw and James Young were not fully on board with Dennis in what he wanted to do, and the result was a very discohesive record that took a really long time to grow on me. The contrast between tracks was jarring from one song to another. And to put it simply, some songs just didn't have the style I wanted to hear at the time. For example, "Heavy Metal Poisoning," which was JY's take on the whole immorality of rock music deal. The message in the lyrics was fantastic, but the bluesy groove of the song lacked the kind of guitar riff in the style of "Miss America" that I had hoped for. The Tommy and JY songs that became my favorites on this album were "Just Get Through this Night" and "Double Life," both of which accentuated the dark, rather film-noir atmosphere of this album, and were high points for me in the record, along with DeYoung's memorable pop ballad "Don't Let It End." But despite the discohesiveness of the album, it did eventually grow on me, becoming a classic for me, even if it did not rise to the stellar heights of its predecessor, Paradise Theater.

Now for my take on the Petra album. In contrast with Styx, Petra is really only a recent discovery for me. While I have long been aware of their existence, and particularly of their connections with the Elefante brothers, I never actually heard any of their music unitl just a couple of years ago, when I bought this tape (used, of course) at a thrift shop. Initially, I listened to it only once, reading along to the lyrics as I digitized the tape into mp3s, and though I thought the Christian lyrics were very good, I was not initially impressed with the music, because it was a different style from what I had expected. It wound up being relegated to the least-frequented folders of my mp3 collection, and there it remained for a good long time.

All that changed by a strange quirk of fate a few months ago, when, by chance, I was watching a DVD of "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey." The song that played at the end of the film was a fantastic-sounding rendition of "God Gave Rock and Roll to You." I loved it, and I was thinking, wait... wasn't that a Petra song? I went online to investigate, and found out that the song on the movie was actually recorded by Kiss. I was sorry to hear it wasn't Petra, but further investigation brought up a Youtube video of the "Classic Petra" reunion concert from 2011. I was very, very impressed by the show, and once I heard the live version of "Adonai," I was hooked. These songs were so good, they were right up there with all my favorite classic rock bands, and I was thinking, where have I been this whole time? Over the next few weeks, I bought that live album and DVD,  four more studio albums (primarily from the Greg X Volz era), and the 1986 VHS concert video. You might call that a little bit obsessive, and I guess you'd be right, but the band is that good.

This, of course, meant that my opinion of  Beat the System changed significantly once I gave it a few more listens, having become more familiar with the live versions of "Clean" and "Adonai." The whole album is excellent, once you get used to the generous helpings of synthesizers.  Volz's sometimes exaggerated, Rush-like vocal delivery on the first two songs seems like a distraction at first, but it fits them. "Computer Brains" made an impression on me at the very first listen, mainly for the lyrics. Incidentally, for some reason, my 4-year old daughter found that song frightening. "Clean" is a great straight-ahead, crowd-inspiring rocker. "Hollow Eyes" is very thought-provoking, along with "Voice in the Wind." The Christianized cover of Argent's "God Gave Rock and Roll to You," which is Petra's second take on the song, has an updated sound from the late '70s version, though I prefer the first one from Come and Join Us.  "It is Finished" contains a moving account of the Crucifixion."Adonai" is a gloriously soaring, Journey-esque rock anthem of holy praise. But for the comparative purposes of this blog post, the two songs I really want to talk about are the opening title track "Beat the System," and "Witch Hunt".

Before I go deeper into that, I want to mention that the idea for this blog post came to me after I played this album in the car, and my kids remarked that "Beat the System" sounded like "Mr. Roboto." I explained to them that it was from the same time period and used many of the same instruments.

However, as I considered it more, I began to see more parallels with the Styx song. For one thing, both Styx and Petra were falsely accused of recording evil messages in reverse in their songs in the "backmasking" controversy. It was dumb enough that people would accuse a straight-laced, relatively sober band like Styx, led in large part by devout Catholic family man DeYoung, of doing such a thing. But it was downright ludicrous that Petra, a committed Christian rock ministry whose every song was like a bible sermon, would have televangelist preachers praying for their downfall, simply because they played what some considered to be the devil's style of music. One member of Petra described in an interview how hurtful it was to hear of preachers who he admired turning against him. The false accusations led the band in 1982 to record a reverse message on the song "Judas Kiss" that said, "What are you lookin' for the devil for, when you oughta be lookin' for the Lord?" "Witch Hunt" addresses this controversy futher, making the point that people were being distracted from the real work of saving souls by wasting energy looking for evil where no evil really existed.

Both "Mr. Roboto" and "Beat the System" reflect a general pop-cultural fixation on Orwell's futurist novel. As the world approached the real year 1984, it was fashionable to comment on it in one way or another. Other musicians such as Billy Squier, Europe, and Van Halen, to name just a few, made references to the year in their music. You also had such things as the famous Apple Macintosh commercial, as society at that time reflected on whether the fictional totalitarian dystopia was in fact coming true in some ways. But while "Mr. Roboto" is more a straight-up commentary on fundamentalist religous opposition to rock music, "Beat the System" uses the Orwellian symbolism in a spiritual sense, of the blind leading the blind, and rebelling against the spiritual oppression of an ingnorant, sinful world. The songs have a similar rythm and overall style, and the repetitive falsetto phrase "Wise up, rise up" in the Petra song is as nearly as memorable (and annoying) as the "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" chant of the Styx song. Viewing the music video for "Beat the System" also brings to mind the recent stupidity of the viral "bird box challenge", as there is now an increasingly urgent need for the youth of the world to learn how to take off a blindfold.

While the musical and cultural similarities are interesting, it was even more interesting to consider the parallels in the careers of each band at the time. Both bands embarked on grueling, expensive, elaborate concert tours in support of their respective albums, which caused friction in the bandmembers' professional and personal relationships. Both bands' respective tours for each of these albums were filmed and recorded as live albums and concert videos. And both bands ended up fragmenting afterwards, with Petra singer Volz calling it quits over business disagreements, and Styx breaking up completely for more than half a decade.

All in all, these two albums, both of which took time to grow on me, present an interesting comparison, portraying the musical perspective on the controversies and culture of their time from the contrasting positions of the secular and the religious, and at the same time showing that the experiences of classic bands in two widely differing markets and environments could end up being remarkably similar.