Track Listing

1. Put Me On
2. Mademoiselle
3. Jennifer
4. Crystal Ball
5. Shooz
6. This Old Man
7. Clair De Lune/Ballerina

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6666 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Happy Customer
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A Fan's Favorite STYX Disc!
As a long-term STYX fan, I found myself playing this 1976 release more often than the others. I found it highly upbeat from the opening tracks("Put Me On"- "Mademoiselle"), which always made me feel good. It ends with a romantic Dennis De Young composition- "Clair De Lune/Ballerina", which showcases Dennis's writing tallents- who else could write a beautiful love(rock)song to tie in with Debussey's classical masterpiece? Five,no SIX Stars!

Tommy Shaw says hello to Styx on this masterpiece!
In November of 1976, Chicago based rockers Styx released their sixth album, and second for A&M, entitled Crystal Ball, which was also their first album with new guitarist and singer/songwriter Tommy Shaw (a Birmingham, alabama native), whom joined in late 1975.
Once again, the band produced the album themselves and is still a classic.
The album starts with the hard rocking "Put Me On", which was written by Shaw, singer/keyboard player Dennis DeYoung and guitarist/singer James JY Young whom also does lead vocal on the track. The track has JY singing the hard rock section and the slower section was sung by Dennis and the drum sound changed to the drum sound that would be synonymous with the band in later albums. Then, the track goes back to the hard rock section and ends with the ending riff speeding up on the tape which then segues into Tommy's first lead vocal for the band, the Top 40 hit "Mademoiselle" which was a great Shaw/DeYoung collaboration. Dennis' ballad "Jennifer" is a great song with excellent guitar leads by JY and Fender Rhodes and ARP synth playing by DDY. The first half of the album ends with Tommy's classic title cut which is one of the best Styx songs ever and featured excellent rhythm section work by the bass playing and drumming twin brothers Chuck and John Panozzo respectively and one of DDY's best synthesizer solos.
The rocker "Shooz" starts the second half and Tommy sings and screams his heart out on this track and cooks some excellent slide guitar work and JY does a Hendrix type of guitar solo on the track. Dennis' "This Old Man" follows and was a homage to his hard-working father. The album concludes with Dennis' piano arrangement of the classic DeBussy piece "Clair De Lune" which is changed from C# to C natural as a lead into the epic DeYoung/Shaw collaboration "Ballerina" (with a classic DeYoung vocal) which ends the album in a majestic way.
When it was released, it actually sold less than Equinox but eventually went Gold in 1978 after the success of the next album.
If you like all of Styx's albums between 1975 and 1999, I recommend this album.