Kansas, by the Wolfgang Press
I saw this video on Night Flight back in the day and it disturbed me. Brits playing with violent American iconography and giving creepy closeups to J. Edgar Hoover and Jackie Kennedy over an insistent groove definitely falls right into what makes my neurons buzz. And the lyrics are evocative without giving an obvious narrative.
Most record stores didn’t have anything by them. I picked it up Queer at the Tower Records in Washington DC.
Their cover of Mama Told Me Not To Come is excellent.
Did you know Randy Newman wrote that song? The Three Dog Night version is a cover that predates Newman’s version. I remember an interview with Newman where he lamented he screwed up his version. He has a section where he doesn’t repeat the chorus, just a kind of non-bridge without the satisfying danceable chorus. Three Dog Night made it a pop song. Wolfgang Press’s version replicates that fix.
A Girl Like You is their most famous track in the US. It’s worth a listen.
I have mentioned before we lack music scarcity now. The internet changed everything.
Kansas knocked my socks off when I first saw it in 1989. And I looked for the band’s music at record stores. Found none until I did. There was no easy lookup of music and musicians. Bands might get a mention in a magazine, but not always. There was a latency. So this mysterious “Wolfgang Press” was added to the list of bands look for at record stores. Checking by genre. Checking by name. Looking for their name in compilations. It required serendipity to find music by a rare band. Maybe a weird DJ would play it.
