Middle America produced a handful of prog bands in the mid Seventies who wore their English inspiration on their sleeve and all over their early vinyl: Styx, Kansas, Starcastle, Mannheim Steamroller. Following in their footsteps, Indiana-based Light kicked off the Eighties with an album that sounded uncannily like the work of Alan Parsons Project and Supertramp. Unfortunately, that album was released on Abintra Records, and you really have to wonder how many copies of Keys made it out of Indiana. Like Alan Parsons or Chip Davis, Skip Paton plays the role of Light’s master puppeteer: composing, producing, playing a supporting role as an instrumentalist but generally leaving the heavy lifting (guitars/vocals/keyboards) to a professional band. The material on Keys is solid progressive pop with instrumentals (“Move On, Move Up”) and songs (“Tryin’ To Reach You”) that would have felt right at home on an APP or Supertramp album from 1981. There is the occasional, mawkish MOR misstep (both horrible halves of “It’s For You,” for example), but generally Light follows the high road, or at least as high a road as other progressive pop bands have followed. Given that Supertramp/APP fans are likely a more resilient lot than, say, Yes fans, the progtasters who venture into Light’s Keys may not be blinded by the same loyalty that obscured Starcastle’s achievements. While it’s not as proggy as it looks (the cover had me thinking Starcastle out of the gate), Keys is a fair adventure for anyone who thinks Supertramp never released a bad album. Despite a promising enough beginning, Light never released a second album, although keyboardist Jeff Lantz did release a solo album in 1993, Beyond Forever...............
Credits
Bass Guitar, Vocals – John W. McDowell III*
Drums, Percussion, Vocals – Steve Walker (2)
Engineer, Mixed By – Bill Brown (20)
Guitar, Vocals – Jeff Hornbeck
Keyboards – Jeff Lantz
Percussion – Kevin Kaiser, Robin Steele
Producer, Engineer, Mixed By – Skip Paton
Saxophone – Jim Farrelly
Tracklist
A1 Keys 2:00
A2 Do What You Gotta Do 4:37
A3 Light Of The World 4:06
A4 Wild Goose Chase 1:03
A5 Tryin' To Reach You
Vocals – Karl Hinkle
4:24
A6 It's For You Part I
Vocals – Shawn Phillips (2)
2:10
B1 It's For You Part II
Vocals – Shawn Phillips (2)
4:40
B2 Say What You Mean 5:06
B3 I.B.S. 0:43
B4 Won't You Come Home 4:34
B5 Move On, Move Up 4:07
