"Stand Beside Me" Released: October 31, 1988 (US) [1]
In the Spirit of Things is the eleventh studio album by Americanrock band Kansas, released in 1988 (see 1988 in music). It is a very loosely organized concept album, telling the story of a flood hitting the real Kansas city of Neosho Falls in 1951.[2][3] It was the first Kansas album since 1975's Masque to lack a hit single.
History
According to the author Dan Fitzgerald, Rich Williams was inspired to create this album after having read the book Ghost Towns of Kansas, Volume II (1979), specifically the chapter on Neosho Falls.[4]
The album is Kansas's last studio effort for a major label. It didn't receive much promotion, as MCA Records dropped a slew of "older" artists shortly after its release and famously switched its attention to current younger acts such as Tiffany. Kansas got caught in that decision and the album was a commercial failure. The label did produce several promotional materials for the record, including a glossy video for "Stand Beside Me". The song was played regularly on MTV and allowed the single to hit the album rock charts, the last Kansas single to chart in any format. Other songs were released in odd formats, such as a 12" promotional single of "I Counted on Love", an import edited CD single of "House on Fire", and a small-sized CD single of "Stand Beside Me". The album would also be the last Kansas release to appear in vinyl format until the release of The Prelude Implicit in 2016.
A tour in support of this album included a broadcast by the King Biscuit Flower Hour, which many years later released the show as a CD.
In its retrospective review, AllMusic deemed the album "one of the group's more consistent albums and easily a latter-day highlight." They criticized the album's dated production and the lack of a single to compare to their 1970s hits, but argued it to be one of Kansas's most focused efforts.[5]
