The Grand Illusion Alaska

The Grand Illusion

Styx

A & M Records, 1977

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 08/08/1998

There are certain songs that you hear when you are a child thatstick in your mind as you grow older. One of these songs for me wasStyx's "Come Sail Away," a song that I enjoyed listening to in 1977on good ol' WLS-AM (Larry Lujack, come back... please), though in my 6-year-old mind, I thought that DennisDeYoung was singing for someone to "take that drum set away". (Callme a fool, but I still like my version better.)

The album where that song can be found, The Grand Illusion, contains many other songs that Styx hasbecome known for over the years, but while it doesn't have muchmore than that to offer, it still is a guilty pleasure.

You can hear how the band tries to link certain songs together;at the end of the title track, if you're listening carefully, youwill hear a snippet of the rhythm that would become theintroduction to the following song, "Fooling Yourself (The AngryYoung Man)", and on the album's closer "The Grand Finale," not onlydo you get the melody of "The Grand Illusion," you also get "ComeSail Away" partially tied into the track.

I'm not ready to declare The Grand Illusion to be a concept album, because frankly, Ican't tell what it was supposed to be. (It wouldn't surprise me ifthere was some common theme running through the album; Styx mostdefinitely did this on Paradise Theatre and Kilroy Was Here later on in their career.) And seeing thatDennis DeYoung isn't talking to me these days - see if I ever helphis daughter on a test in college again - we may never know.