Chicago: Chicago VI

CHICAGO VI (1973)

1) Critics' Choice; 2) Just You 'n' Me; 3) Darlin' Dear; 4) Jenny; 5) What's This World Comin' To; 6) Something In This City Changes; 7) Hollywood; 8) In Terms Of Two; 9) Rediscovery; 10) Feelin' Stronger Every Day.

General verdict: I guess this is pretty much like your sixth album is expected to sound, unless you're David Bowie or Tom Waits... you know.

Despite some changing circumstances (for instance, the fact that the album was recorded in Guercio's new studio in Nederland, Colorado, rather than in New York City), the difference between Chicago V and Chicago VI is relatively nominal. Still short, still dominated by Lamm, still continuing the transition to a softer and smoother sound — although, all things considered, I think that I would recommend VI over V anyway, even if this time around there is nothing to take the place of ʽA Hit By Varèseʼ and prove Chicago's weakened, but ongoing allegiance to the experimental schools of music-making.

By this time, critical thinking had decidedly turned against Chicago, prompting Lamm to begin the album with an angry response to the critics — "what do you want, what do you want, I'm givin' everything I have, I'm even trying to see if there's more locked deep inside". (For some reason, he preferred to arrange it as a heart-on-sleeve piano ballad, so if you do not take note of the title, you may easily mistake it for a rant against an ex-lover). Naturally, the response did not work well, and the lyrics themselves only do an easy job of setting the band up for a new round of retorts and sarcastic puns. However, neither this song nor most of the others on the album are worth hating or despising: at this point, the band still works as a well-oiled machine, and the grooves they keep pumping out often succeed in elevating mediocre songwriting.

For instance, Pankow's ʽJust You 'n' Meʼ, the album's second and most successful single, starts out as a typically bland Latin ballad with the usual annoying vocals from Cetera, but midway through it picks up pace and steam, and eventually the brass riffs begin to walk all over you with the very best manner of Chicago's tightness and braggadocio: not for long, and we still have to return to the ear-withering "you are my love and my life and you are my inspiration" bit before the end (what I'd give for an extended instrumental coda instead!), but it is this kind of develop­ment that separates Chicago, even at the beginning of their downward slide, from genuine mediocrities. A cheesy ballad invades your personal space, ignorable and pitiful; then, suddenly, something lively and exciting springs up to life, and you're all like, «hey, perhaps I was wrong to give up on these guys so soon».

Pankow also wrote the first single, ʽFeelin' Stronger Every Dayʼ, which they also used for the position of hope-giving grand finale — and again, despite all the cheese, its sped-up, boogie-soaked finale, with piano and horns rushing forward in perfect unison, is infectious just because of the general tightness and energy. Next to it, Terry Kath's only contribution to the album, the jazzy ballad ʽJennyʼ, is very disappointing: no memorable guitar lines, slight energetics, and it seems like the man put most of his strength into coming up with the hookline "there's always someone waiting just to shit on you", which does not work anyway because strong language does not come easily to Chicago. The best thing about the song is its solo section, with several over­dubbed slide guitars «drizzling» away in a psychedelic style — but on the whole, the album continues the trend of diminishing Kath's role in the band.

As for Lamm, he is still trying, particularly on the second side of the LP, where he contributes a couple attempts at social commentary — ʽSomething In This City Changes Peopleʼ puts the blame for broken relationships on "flashing cars and money, funny faces, egos magnified", and ʽHollywoodʼ continues the subject by lambasting the glitzy Californian lifestyle (and they lived happily ever after in their hidden log cabin deep in the woods, alone with Nature, away from all sins and temptations of corrupted society... NOT). Needless to say, musically these songs do not feel at all like poisonous social critique — in fact, they are among the album's weakest material, just a couple of limp soft-rock compositions with nominally pretty harmonies: ʽSomething In This Cityʼ could appeal to major fans of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and ʽHollywoodʼ only begins to show marginal promise toward the end, when the rhythm section kicks into gear — Cetera's bass pumping on that coda is amazingly fast and fluent — by which time you have already probably been wondering for about three minutes whether yoou should not have thrown on some Steely Dan instead of these guys.

Ultimately, I feel forced to return to Pankow and state that, at this time, he is the best... well, if not song-writer, then at least groove-churner in the band. The best song here is ʽWhat's This World Comin' Toʼ, not because it asks us the question, but because it sets up a tight, exciting white-funk groove with the horns doing an admirable job of walking all over it. The last couple of minutes, with all the band members equally active at their instruments, is one of the last truly great jams in Chicago history — I feel very sorry that they did not dare stretch it out, because this is the one time that they were truly in the zone during those recording sessions. In a perfect world, this should be placed on any «Best-of-Chicago» compilation instead of the limp pop ballad hits, because this was really the band's true strength: loud, flashy, multi-instrumental jams with so many individual minds molded into one glorious collective whole. And while the market ate them up back at the time, it is only fair that we extract all those glorious, but forgotten moments from the past and give them a proper chance.

Chicago: Chicago V

CHICAGO V (1972)

1) A Hit By Varèse; 2) All Is Well; 3) Now That You've Gone; 4) Dialogue, Pt. 1; 5) Dialogue, Pt. 2; 6) While The City Sleeps; 7) Saturday In The Park; 8) State Of The Union; 9) Goodbye; 10) Alma Mater.

It feels weird to state that, after three sprawling, excessive, bombastic, narcissistic double LPs in a row, Chicago's first compact, restrained, «humble» single LP feels a little... disappointing. In terms of style, Chicago V is not at all a departure from the band's classic sound: still firmly in the mildly-experimental jazz-rock ballpark, with tasteful touches of funk, soul, and pop and no signs of cheap sentimentality. It was also an unexpected commercial mega-hit, taking them to the top of the US charts for the first time — see, all it took was to lower the cost from double to single vinyl to get things going — and, heck, it may have been the only album ever with the name Varèse in one of the song titles to achieve such popularity with the average buyer.

Yet, strange enough, I have always found it fairly hard to get into it. On the surface, it's all good: there's brave sonic experimentation (ʽA Hit By Varèseʼ could not have not contained any, right?), multi-part mini-suites merging jazz, funk, and R&B like there was no tomorrow (ʽNow That You've Goneʼ), a couple vehicles for Kath's guitar fireworks (ʽDialogueʼ), bombastic anthems (ʽState Of The Unionʼ), and a catchy pop single (ʽSaturday In The Parkʼ). However, somehow much, if not most of this, ends up sounding like rather limp background muzak to my ears, with few moments forcing you to pay attention.

It is not quite clear what happened, but I guess everybody is entitled to a bit of burnout after three double albums in a row. Even the catchy pop single, first time ever in Chicago history so far, does the unexplainable — straightforwardly rips off Paul McCartney's ʽYou Won't See Meʼ for its base melody, though the overall mood of the piece is inverted, so that instead of wistful melancholy we have tepid, toothless, furry-cuddly excitement (it was reportedly inspired by a walk Lamm took through Central Park — as somebody who really enjoys a good walk through Central Park whenever I am in the neighborhood, I can certainly relate, but there is no guarantee that the feeling will necessarily translate to music). The song is not necessarily worse than any of Lamm's previous optimistic, sunny pop singles, but the direct lifting of the chords is jarring: truly, there is just no need to shove their «poor man's Beatles» side so directly in our faces.

As for the bluesier / jazzier / funkier stuff, it just sort of sits there. None of these tracks seem to have the same level of creative ambition, nor the same amount of energy and passion as the earlier records — compared to the I-II-III punch, the band sounds tired (which they probably were) and out of ideas. Even the ʽVarèseʼ thing, as nominally experimental and «anti-commer­cial» as it is, seems more like a desperately self-conscious gesture — "okay, boys, this doesn't really work out so well, let's pull ourselves together and concoct something that Frank Zappa could be proud of and put it out front, so no piece of shit critic can lay a finger on us!" It is not awful, it just lacks a sense of purpose, because the album as a whole is not in the avantgarde plane of things, and there does not seem to be much of a plan behind the music.

Things get a little better with ʽDialogueʼ, a two-part suite with Kath's best lead guitar parts on the album and the whole band whipping itself up into a socially conscious frenzy ("we can make it happen, we can change the world now") — and even so, the experience seems perfunctory, not even on the level of passion that you could see on ʽIt Better End Soonʼ. At least Kath's work gives it an edge over the utterly dull six minutes of ʽState Of The Unionʼ, a paralytic funky monster, with Cetera stubbornly clinging to the same bass figure and the brass section huffing and puffing at the brick house of boredom.

Perhaps most of the blame for this should be laid upon Lamm, singlehandedly credited for eight out of ten tracks on the album; but the problem is that everybody, including simple players, seems tired and sparkless — even Pankow's ʽNow That You've Goneʼ is a rather stereotypical piece of R&B, whose formulaically desperate lyrics ("how can I go on in emptiness, feeling so alone every day") would feel strangely at odds with the brash liveliness of the arrangement, were not this liveliness itself so stiff and robotic. Finally, Kath ends things with ʽAlma Materʼ, a bland, preachy piano ballad that is oh so not saved by its ponderous lyrics ("we must not lose control / of the possibility of the discovery / that would let everybody see / that we were just meant to be" — what is this, Hegel for dummies?).

As subjective as this impression truly is — I doubt that even a professional musicologist could have transparently described the significant differences between I-II-III and V, since they transcend basic melody and harmony — it leaves me with no choice but to give the album a decisive thumbs down, and mark it as the beginning of the decline: most importantly, it shows that Chicago eventually perished as a respectable act not because it had betrayed its winning formula for sap and pap, but precisely because it drifted towards sap and pap upon becoming incapable of maintaining that formula. «Objectivists» who judge Chicago on a two-basket basis («jazz-rocky Chicago = good, sentimental poppy Chicago = bad») will probably want to disagree, but you'd really, really have to love jazz-rocky Chicago in order to allow Chicago V all the time it takes to grow on you and lure you in with alleged subtle nuances.

Chicago: Chicago IV - At Carnegie Hall

CHICAGO: CHICAGO IV - AT CARNEGIE HALL (1971)

1) In The Country; 2) Fancy Colours; 3) Free Form Intro; 4) Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?; 5) South California Purples; 6) Questions 67 And 68; 7) Sing A Mean Tune Kid; 8) Beginnings; 9) It Better End Soon; 10) Introduction; 11) Mother; 12) Lowdown; 13) Flight 602; 14) Motorboat To Mars; 15) Free; 16) Where Do We Go From Here; 17) I Don't Want Your Money; 18) Happy 'Cause I'm Going Home; 19) Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon; 20) A Song For Richard And His Friends; 21) 25 Or 6 To 4; 22) I'm A Man.

«How do you get to Carnegie Hall?» «Fairly easy, if you're from Chicago». Okay, that wasn't very good, but you are not expected to retain a particularly sharp sense of humor, having just sat through 2 hours and 48 minutes of live performances from a band that used to specialize in double LPs. I mean, for some reason, whenever anybody mentions «Seventies' excess», the usual stuff that crops up in satirical discussions are triple live LPs by Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but how about this: a quadruple live album, originally released in a boxset so large, you had to commission a van to drive it home? Definitely not for workless teenagers, this band.

Come to think of it, it does make sense that three double studio LPs in a row could only be fol­lowed by a mammoth of a live performance — not only does this package include every single moment of the show, tune-ups and lengthy applause periods and all relevant banter comprised, but it is hardly coincidental that the recordings were taken from Chicago's Carnegie Hall gig: no Fillmore West or Fillmore East for these guys, they had to make a point by playing America's single most celebrated musical venue, even if, as they eventually found, it was not very well suited for amplified electric performances in the first place. Also, the uniformity is somewhat of a setup, since the tracks were really chosen from a week-long series of gigs at the same place; the 2005 Rhino CD release respects that explicitly, with an extra disc of bonus tracks, some of them overlapping with the original selections (another ʽSouth California Purplesʼ, for instance).

Of course, six LP's worth of material cannot be crammed into the space of eight sides (not to mention that some of the original tracks are predictably stretched out into jam mode), so Chicago IV omits some of the material — the classical-influenced suites, for instance, for which they'd need additional budget for an orchestra, or some of their least accessible avantgarde pieces like ʽFree Form Guitarʼ (although there is some free form guitar gratuitously added by Terry in some spots). But pretty much everything that mattered on their first three albums is all here, and now you have a chance to witness whether that big, flashy, vivacious Chicago sound could be repro­duced on stage without losing any of its edges or colors.

It can, of course, be safely predicted that it could; and since Chicago was very much a pop group at heart, it could also be safely predicted that the music would not be gaining any extra or alter­nate edges or colors. True enough, some of the songs are stretched out so that we could see the great Chicago shake the world down with their improvisational talent — ʽSouth California Purplesʼ, for instance, once its main heavy-strolling body is exhausted, becomes a lengthy funky / bluesy jam with Kath at his best. But overall, if there is a single reason to prefer the guitar-heavy tracks on this live album to their studio originals, it should probably be uncovered in the area of guitar tone rather than guitar notes: without the studio processings, Kath's sound, embellished only by the use of an occasional wah-wah pedal, is rawer and snappier, appealing to the rocker side of the average Chicago fan — that is, provided the average Chicago fan does actually have a rocker side, and gravitates towards ʽ25 Or 6 To 4ʼ rather than ʽColour My Worldʼ.

Perhaps subsequent listens might uncover subtle additional nuances, but good luck sitting through a quadruple live Chicago album once, let alone twice or more, and I am certainly not going to spend three more hours of my time painfully thinking of what to say. All I can offer now is The Layman Opinion — it sounds good, none of the songs are butchered, the brass section, guitars, and keyboards mesh and mix as good as in any qualified prog band's performance, and, oh yes, there is exactly one song here that you will not find anywhere else, and it is interesting: ʽA Song For Richard And His Friendsʼ is more than just an anti-Nixon political satire, it is a rather crazy mix of jazz, blues, vaudeville, and avantgarde that Frank Zappa himself might have approved. Most likely, it never appeared on any of their studio albums due to political censorship issues, but it is also far more musically daring than anything on Chicago III — I particularly like the syn­thesis of Kath's ʽfree-form guitarʼ, Hendrix-style, with Zappa-like carnivalesque jazz elements. Not that President Nixon would have been in any way endangered by this artistic statement, but at least its musical challenge ensures that it might still sound exciting to your ears when nobody remembers anything about Nixon any more.

Other than that, what else is there to say? Oh yes, there have been frequent complaints about the poor sound quality of the original tapes — but I am listening to the original CD release (not even the Rhino remasters from 2005) and do not see any particularly dreadful problems: instrument separation is good, so that, for instance, I can easily concentrate on either Kath's finger-flashing guitar «noodling», Cetera's free-flowing bass, Lamm's quiet keyboards, or Seraphine's maniacal drumming during the jam section of ʽSing A Mean Tune Kidʼ without any problems (by the way, this is one instrumental section that has been almost completely redone compared to the studio version — made much more jazzy rather than bluesy). Pankow, allegedly, hated the brass sound, saying that the horns ended up sounding like kazoos, but if what he means is a tiny smudgeon of distortion, I couldn't even say that it detracts from the performance; maybe, on the contrary, it gives things a sharper edge?.. ah, whatever. Audiophiles will, no doubt, prefer the later Live In Japan — an album that, disgracefully, even lacks its own number in the Chicago catalog! — but the setlist on that one is shorter and weaker. At the very least, the plus side of this eight-sided monster is that you can always make your own playlist. Want a kick-ass Chicago? Throw out the wussy suites. Want a pop-style Chicago? Discard the long guitar-based jams. Want to focus on the odd aspects of Chicago? Umm... play ʽA Song For Richardʼ on repeat for 2 hours and 48 minutes. Or edit out everything except the stage banter. It's your choice — you are the people, and Chicago have always been a people's band, for better or for worse.

Chicago: Chicago III

CHICAGO: CHICAGO III (1971)

1) Sing A Mean Tune Kid; 2) Loneliness Is Just A Word; 3) What Else Can I Say; 4) I Don't Want Your Money; 5) Flight 602; 6) Motorboat To Mars; 7) Free; 8) Free Country; 9) At The Sunrise; 10) Happy 'Cause I'm Going Home; 11) Mother; 12) Lowdown; 13) A Hard Risin' Morning Without Breakfast; 14) Off To Work; 15) Fallin' Out; 16) Dreamin' Home; 17) Morning Blues Again; 18) When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow; 19) Canon; 20) Once Upon A Time; 21) Progress?; 22) The Approaching Storm; 23) Man Vs. Man: The End.

Theoretically, we are supposed to endorse this record, I think. After the noticeably softened-up Chicago II and its sentimental hits, the follow-up clearly jumped one notch up in terms of artistry. The multi-part suites here get lengthier and even more imposing; the song structures are less accessible and more challenging; and last, but not least, Kath's fiery guitarwork is back in full force, while the horns find themselves slightly downgraded in status. It is almost as if the prog virus, rampant in the air of 1971, finally infected the band and temporarily deflected them from the path of cheap romance and starched soulfulness.

Unfortunately, «more challenging» does not necessarily mean «rewarding», and given that the album was rather hastily put together during a short break in their hectic touring schedule (and once again puffed up to double LP length due to coercion by their producer, James William Guercio), it would not be prudent to expect any special flashes of brilliance. It is quite consistent­ly entertaining, diverse, and experimental, yet I cannot locate even a single song here that would be as obviously brilliant as ʽ25 Or 6 To 4ʼ. It is a record that I can admire just for the sheer number of influences synthesized — jazz, blues, Latin, rock, country, folk, modern classical, avantgarde, even spoken poetry bits, you name it, it's all in there, on a scale that is pretty hard to match these days (in fact, it was pretty hard to match it even back in 1971). A swirling, head-spinning kaleidoscope that should, by all means, guarantee the band a rightful place in every hall of fame there is, regardless of what anybody thinks of Chicago MMCCCXLV. But not a single individual piece here really matches the highlights of the previous two albums.

Almost the entire first LP is dominated by Lamm's songwriting, although, to be fair, some of these songs are more like vehicles for Kath — beginning from the beginning: ʽSing A Mean Tune Kidʼ is a satisfying chunk of raunchy funk, though not crunchy enough for my tastes until it reaches the four minute mark, at which point Terry takes over and gives us one of the best solos of his entire career. If only he'd chosen a less muffled tone (for instance, switched over to the wah-wah), that performance would have kicked even more ass, but even as it is, it is every bit as good as any solo ever played by... well, Frank Zappa in his Hot Rats stage is probably the closest parallel (and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this performance was influenced by ʽWillie The Pimpʼ in person). It is strange that he was not co-credited for this as he was on ʽI Don't Want Your Moneyʼ, a shorter, heavier, more lumbering blues-rocker that would feel perfectly at home on a Grand Funk Railroad record — and actually gets some blood pumping toward the end, when the brass section and the guitar find a common vibe and lock in on it, but is still inferior on the whole to ʽSing A Mean Tuneʼ.

On the album's second side, Lamm gets softer and more down-to-earth: his ʽTravel Suiteʼ is an attempt to probe the turf of Californian folk-pop — ʽFlight 602ʼ borrows a page directly from the Crosby, Stills & Nash textbook, as is the prettily harmonized ʽHappy 'Cause I'm Going Homeʼ. At the same time, it also further explores the realm of funk (ʽFreeʼ), piano balladry (ʽAt The Sunriseʼ) and even free-form improvisation at the intersection of jazz and minimalism (ʽFree Countryʼ). Throw in a gratuitous drum solo from Danny Seraphine (ʽMotorboat To Marsʼ), and you get an oddly construed monster whose chief underlying idea seems to be the prospect of freedom from an exhausting life of touring obligations — however, the music pieces are so dis­jointed that it never really comes together as a cohesive entity. (Well, maybe neither did the Abbey Road medley, but that one actually made a naughty, defying point of the disparity of its constituents: ʽTravel Suiteʼ does not exactly revel in that disparity). He makes his last point with ʽMotherʼ, a somewhat tepid jazzy eco-anthem with clichéd lyrics and a level of energy that does not quite agree with the message of "Our Mother has been raped!" (as good a spot as any to remind the population of how efficiently, in comparison, Jim Morrison had tackled the same issue in ʽWhen The Music's Overʼ).

Kath's suite is the smallest of all — in fact, it is not really a proper «suite», essentially just one song of a moderate length, divided into several consecutive sections as the protagonist goes through all of his daily motions. The only real musical «point» of the song is to have the soft, monotonous, tepidly funky drive replaced for a minute by the slow, cuddly psychedelic section of ʽDreamin' Homeʼ — signifying that dreaming is the most (the only) marvelous time in the life of the poor overworked hero. It is not difficult to get it all, but it is rather difficult to get excited about it, maybe because Kath's vocals are so unattractive, or maybe because there really isn't that much of anything to the melody beyond the basic groove: Terry hides his lead work mostly behind the brass and the vocals here, so that we could all sympathize with the working man's problems without getting distracted by some instrumental show-offs... too bad.

Finally, there's Pankow again, whose instrumental suite ʽElegyʼ might be the most original piece of music on the entire album and far more aptly adheres to the definition of «jazz-rock» than anything else here. You might, in fact, call it a sort of brass concerto, incorporating elements of classical, jazz, folk, avantgarde, and funk, all of them transferred under the dominion of trumpets, trombones, and flutes. I cannot say that I truly love any of the parts, but they do a good job lightly evoking a whole spectrum of emotions, from solemn sadness to tenderness to confusion to anger, and the entire suite should probably grow on the listener with each new listen, unlike ʽHour In The Showerʼ, which, conversely, becomes more and more tedious with each such listen.

To recapitulate — Chicago III could have been much better, perhaps, had the band not been so strongly pressed for time; on the other hand, Chicago were always at their best when they did not have enough time to sit down and write something expressly and utterly commercial, let alone the fact that in 1971, the general public could fathom something a bit more experimental. Thus, even though the album lacks the freshness, the rock energy, and the memorable hits of Chicago Transit Authority, it still captures the band at the peak of their genuinely creative potential. You may or may not like it, but there is absolutely no denying that at this point, the band was a literal living musical encyclopaedia, open to just about anything and not giving a damn about it — for this alone, the record merits a thumbs up. For each of these ideas, you can probably find some­body who did it better, and they don't even stack up perfectly against each other, but the hodge-podge is intriguing and challenging anyway.

Chicago: Chicago II

CHICAGO: CHICAGO II (1970)

1) Movin' In; 2) The Road; 3) Poem For The People; 4) In The Country; 5) Wake Up Sunshine; 6) Make Me Smile; 7) So Much To Say, So Much To Give; 8) Anxiety's Moment; 9) West Virginia Fantasies; 10) Colour My World; 11) To Be Free; 12) Now More Than Ever; 13) Fancy Colours; 14) 25 Or 6 To 4; 15) Prelude; 16) A. M. Mourning; 17) P. M. Mourning; 18) Memories Of Love; 19) It Better End Soon (1st Movement); 20) It Better End Soon (2nd Movement); 21) It Better End Soon (3rd Movement); 22) It Better End Soon (4th Movement); 23) Where Do We Go From Here.

Less than eight months after the completion of their first double LP, Chicago, now having drop­ped the Transit Authority extension, went back into the studio to make a second one — also a double one, and it took them less than a month to complete it... what can you say, though, about the adrenaline-heavy year of 1969? What is actually most stunning about this situation is that Chicago II is a completely different record from its predecessor, in many respects.

For starters, look at the number of tracks: twenty three, as opposed to a mere twelve on Chicago Transit Authority. Never mind that some are counted as individual «movements» of a larger suite — this is genuinely significant, in that the length of CTA was largely achieved by extended improvisational grooving and jamming, with an extra sonic experiment or two like ʽFree Form Guitarʼ thrown in. On the second album, a radical change of direction has occurred: here, Chicago are already moving away from the realm of «possessed improvisation» and leaning towards a far more calculated and composition-based approach. This means, almost necessarily so, that the record is much more poppy — poppy enough, that is, to ensure the presence of many people in this world who refuse to recognize any Chicago album other than CTA as an actual piece of artistic expression. But, in all honesty, Chicago II is an artistically expressive album, and once one manages to adjust oneself to the relative downplaying of Terry Kath's guitar and the near-complete purging of Cream / Hendrix influences from the band's guidebook, the end result emerges as a compositionally and conceptually stronger statement than CTA, even if it is nowhere near the former's level of kick-ass energy.

For starters, together with the follow-up III, this is one of their most naturally band-like albums: of the seven credited members of the band, four emerge here as accomplished songwriters, as Peter Cetera closes the record with his first songwriting credit, and trombonist James Pankow steps into the limelight as more than the provider of the ʽLiberationʼ jam, but even as a contribu­tor to the band's pool of hit singles. Meanwhile, Lamm and Kath are both on a roll, contributing everything from hook-based pop songs to exercises in easy-going classical music (the ʽMemories Of Loveʼ suite, cowritten by Kath with Barbra Streisand's arranger Peter Matz... okay, not the highest possible recommendation, but I guess Leonard Bernstein just wasn't available). And, like it or not, there is no denying that the guys were on a roll — even if you dislike their sunny style in general, almost every composition here has something to trap your attention.

Actually, it's not that sunny: much of Chicago II is quite bittersweet, and its most hard-hitting and gripping song is the single ʽ25 Or 6 To 4ʼ, whose descending melody bears a distinct simi­larity to ʽWhile My Guitar Gently Weepsʼ — even Kath's guitar solo is very notably Clapton­esque, making the song seem like one last relic of their Cream-inspired beginnings. The lyrics, bawled out by Cetera in exaggerated desperation, deal with the rather mundane problem of experiencing a writer's block around midnight, but just as George Harrison could turn the issue of a floor that needs sweeping into a tragedy of cosmic proportions, so does this song open a chan­nel to some much grander dimension — and the brass section is no slouch, either, echoing each of Cetera's lines with a blast of doomy solemnity. This is still Chicago, not the Beatles or Led Zep (the song has also been compared to ʽBabe I'm Gonna Leave Youʼ for a good reason), so do not expect the utmost depths of human emotion; but in any case, this is the real thing, not some limp simulacre from a bunch of untalented fanboys.

Lamm's yearning for social justice also comes out on the four-movement suite ʽIt Better End Soonʼ: the "let's-all-get-together-and-put-an-end-to-evil" lyrical invocations here collect just about every cliché available to the English language in 1969, but the progressive composition itself is fun, riding a soft funky brass groove that is alternately punctuated by guitar and flute solos. In the end, I think that the whole thing is saved by Cetera's bass work: the suite's «bottom» layer is what gives it the proper grim grittiness to be convincing as a pissed-off outburst, rather than Kath's endless ranting invocations (and it does not exactly help that shouting out "it better end soon my friend" near the conclusion to a 60+ minute album might give the listener a some­what wrong idea of the suite's overall purpose).

On the opposite side of things, there's a couple of completely different suites. Pankow steps for­ward with ʽBallet For A Girl In Buchannonʼ, twelve cutesy minutes of jazz-pop that manage to incorporate two of Chicago's best-known songs: ʽMake Me Smileʼ, which runs from a tense, paranoid, ʽTill The End Of The Dayʼ-like verse melody to a rainbow-colored happy-dappy reso­lution in the chorus — and ʽColour My Worldʼ, the first, and far from the worst, in a series of slow sentimental ballads. Somehow it manages to survive, despite being based on a trivial piano chord progression; maybe it is its totally childlike disarming innocence that makes it endearing rather than cringeworthy, although Kath's vocal performance is an acquired taste (his timbre really gets on my nerves every time he tries to sustain a note for more than half a second). How­ever, do not make the mistake of concentrating exclusively on hit single material: the little inter­ludes that Pankow piles up around the big arias can be just as interesting, or even more so, with lots of unpredictable twists and melodic complexity that rivals any of the upcoming symph-prog heroes (like, replace the brass on ʽWest Virginia Fantasiesʼ with a Steve Howe lead guitar part and you get yourself a ready-made movement for any respectable Yes suite).

Next to this, Kath's little exercise in classical music falls short of the mark; yet at the very least the ʽMemories Of Loveʼ suite actually sounds like a suite, not as «incidental music to a film», which is typically the fate of most of pop artists' attempts to dabble in classical themes. The main vocal theme is fairly corny, though; I'd rather prefer the effort remain completely instrumental than hear Kath act out the feelings of a broken-hearted lover on the grave of his loved one (spoiler: a bad case of over-acting). On the other hand, he does contribute two pretty good pop songs for Side A (ʽThe Roadʼ and ʽIn The Countryʼ), and his main transgression on this album is not so much an overdose of sentimentalism as it is the conscious de-emphasis of his guitar talents, something that is not easy to overlook or forgive, because this is still a pop-rock album, and there is only so much distance to rock'n'roll nirvana that you can cover with brass riffs.

In other words, what this album desperately needed to live up to its predecessor was at least two or more three songs of the caliber of ʽ25 Or 6 To 4ʼ. Without them, Chicago II is largely a pleasing and tasteful listen, but completely lacking the intensity and aggressive passion of its pre­decessor. Naturally, aggressive passion should not be a prerequisite for a masterpiece; but without it, the prevailing mood is sunshine, sunshine, and even more sunshine, until your feathers melt and you start drowning in an ocean of cuddliness. I give the record a thumbs up because it is such an intelligently crafted ocean of cuddliness — revealing a ton more musical ideas than their chief competitors in this business at the time (Blood, Sweat & Tears); but if the seeds of future disasters were only barely noticeable on CTA, Chicago II makes these future disasters seem imminently inavoidable — and the question posed in the final track, ʽWhere Do We Go From Here?ʼ, even though its "we" really means "you, the listeners", takes on an almost prophetically ironic character. Nevertheless, no record should be judged by the perilous road that it has set its creators upon: on its own terms, Chicago II is a masterful self-reinvention and a big bubbly bubble of musical creativity that still sounds fresh and challenging even today.

Chicago: Chicago Transit Authority

CHICAGO: CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY (1969)

1) Introduction; 2) Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?; 3) Beginnings; 4) Questions 67 & 68; 5) Listen; 6) Poem 58; 7) Free Form Guitar; 8) South California Purples; 9) I'm A Man; 10) Prologue (August 29, 1968); 11) Someday (August 29, 1968); 12) Liberation.

Chicago (or, rather, Chicago Transit Authority, as they were called until the silly mass transit operator without a sense of collective humor threatened to sue) cannot lay claim to inventing «jazz rock» as such — even if one separates «jazz rock» from «fusion» and defines the former as «white guy rock'n'roll with a brass section», Blood, Sweat & Tears came well before them and laid down all the necessary blueprints. But for a few years, when it came to defining the quintes­sential spirit of this musical style, nobody did this better than Chicago: in terms of ambition, diversity, playing technique, and even that old elusive restless rock and roll spirit, Chicago Transit Authority blows everything that BS&T ever did out of the water. (With the possible exception of those BS&T tracks that were completely dominated by the artistic personality of Al Kooper, but we are talking collective spirit here, not individual).

Naturally, that legendary gap between «classic Chicago» and «horrible Chicago» that typically serves as a classic example of artistic greatness mutating into corny embarrassment was prede­termined from the start: Chicago Transit Authority positioned themselves from the very outset as a good-time band, more bent on generating happy vibes and giving the good people a cause for optimism — rather than a band that was specifically bent on exploration and tapping into the mysterious and the unknown. The major, if not the only, innovation of their debut LP was an attempt to cross Cream and Jimi Hendrix with Duke Ellington: an attempt that succeeded admi­rably, but nothing about it was particularly challenging or innovative. Even Terry Kath's ʽFree Form Guitarʼ, a seven-minute long investigation of guitar tones and feedback, comes across more as a polite and almost mainstreamish tribute to Hendrix than a daring statement; and, of course, not a single of these Hendrix-inspired tunes shares the breakthrough vision of their inspirer.

But — blame it on a Sixties bias if you wish — such was the musical magic of 1969 that even such a whitebread-bourgeois-conformist-you-name-it outfit as Chicago, when swept into the general maelstrom, was capable of producing large chunks of inspired and inspiring music. From the opening notes of ʽIntroductionʼ, with the rhythm section of Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine grimly counterbalancing the lively brass riffs of the trumpet / trombone / saxophone section, you know you are going to be entertained. "This is what we do / Sit back and let us groove / And let us work on you", Terry Kath addresses his audience, and who could resist these grooves? The first half of ʽIntroductionʼ does indeed sound somewhat like late Duke Ellington transposed to a rockier setting; then, once the guitar properly settles in, the rhythm section becomes a reincarna­tion of Cream, and the guitar player assumes a middle-ground stand between Clapton and Hen­drix. In these six minutes, you get a perfect understanding of what «classic Chicago» is all about, so you could just as well dump the rest of this behemoth altogether...

...joking, of course, because at this point Chicago (or, more accurately, Chicago's keyboard player Robert Lamm, to whom most of the original tunes are credited) were also quite accomplished songwriters. On the whole, Chicago Transit Authority is more about the grooves than the hooks, and the album did not even generate any hit singles at first; but ʽDoes Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?ʼ, for instance, seems to me like a transparent attempt to write an uplifting pop song that echoes McCartney's ʽGood Day Sunshineʼ and ʽGot To Get You Into My Lifeʼ at the same time — it does not rise to the same levels of catchiness and sharpness, but it is reasonably nice (and has a very pretty piano intro that might actually be the best part of the song). Same with ʽQuestions 67 & 68ʼ, which sounds more like a folk-pop ballad, fattened up with a brass section, and with ʽSomedayʼ, the fastest of the three that almost screams for a disco rearrangement (for­tunately, it never got one — not to my knowledge, at least). All of these are good pop songs that one could never find on a Cream, Hendrix, or Duke Ellington record, and all of them benefit greatly from the tightness of the rhythm section and the versatility of the brass section, because the hooks on their own are rather flat, and neither Lamm nor Peter Cetera can rank among the great pop singers; they have more of an R&B color to their voices, and even in that respect they could hardly compete with most of the R&B greats.

As I said, though, the heart of this album lies in its grooves, not its hooks, and even out of all the songs credited to Lamm, I would always take ʽListenʼ, ʽPoem 58ʼ, and ʽSouth California Purplesʼ over the pop stuff. ʽPoem 58ʼ, in particular, starts out as quite a beastly groove, with Kath and Cetera battling each other in a fashion that would make Bruce and Clapton proud, before slowing down and settling into a bluesy-hallucinatory-sunny-psychedelic pattern à la ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ, «woman tone» and all. Again, that riff is nowhere near as deep and disturbing as the ʽSunshineʼ riff, just like Lamm's pop hooks are nowhere near as sweet and touching as Paul McCartney's — but on the other hand, Cream did not have a brass section, now did they? And the slow, heavy riff of ʽSouth California Purplesʼ is no Black Sabbath when it comes to slowness and heaviness, but it is the contrast between the gruffness of the riff and the cockiness of the brass fanfare that matters (and while we're at it, I'm pretty sure Black Sabbath nicked the riff for ʽBe­hind The Wall Of Sleepʼ from the mid-section of ʽSouth California Purplesʼ, so there). All in all, it's just wicked fun to hear a song that predicts both Sabbath and Deep Purple ("since I lost my baby, I been losing my mind") while at the same time quoting from ʽI Am The Walrusʼ — pro­bably for no reason other than somebody thinking, "hey, we have been carried by the current into ʽI Am The Walrusʼ territory, why don't we just acknowledge that?".

Sometimes the band's feel of a good groove betrays them, most notably at the end of the other­wise very uplifting and HeyJudean ʽBeginningsʼ — with two minutes of a forcedly enthusiastic percussion-only Latin jam that should have much rather been left to the likes of Santana (a.k.a. people who really have that in their blood). But more often, it works, and I can even endorse the nearly side-long jam, ʽLiberationʼ, which ends the album: this is where the brass section largely fades out, and the rest of the band simply becomes a four-headed jam monster, with Terry Kath leading the way. Jimi Hendrix was being modest and polite when he spoke of Kath as being a better guitarist than himself (provided he even said that at all: there's at least half a dozen urban legends about Jimi endorsing various guitarists), but that does not mean we should not give credit where it is due: if you get blues-rock jamming at all, it is hard to admit that Terry is not genuinely possessed during the first lengthy wah-wah solo, and on the wildness scale he should be rated higher than Clapton, though Eric himself might have already written that style off as too flashy and self-indulgent. To me, though, it's fun.

Which gets us to our last question: should this — or, in fact, any other — Chicago album not have been trimmed to the length of a single LP? With so many tracks running over 6-7-8 minutes, it is clear that there is a lot of pure sprawl. Yet the band did not record a double album simply because they thought that double albums were all the rage: they recorded it because they did not want to condense the songs to three-minute hit single lengths, and because they instinctively understood that their major power was the power of their collective groove, that the songs had to play out for as long as they played out, and not a minute less — an ideology that I understand perfectly, though with some reservations as to drum solos (I'd rather hear more Terry Kath goodness on their extended cut of Steve Winwood's ʽI'm A Manʼ than another percussion groove: apparently, though, if you're really a man, drum solos are obligatory). In terms of sheer numbers, Chicago Transit Authority is actually pretty short — just eleven compositions in all, it's just that they do not really work as songs, they work as those slightly bombastic guitar-brass extra­vaganzas. As it is, the album is one of the many unique artefacts of 1969 — and, unquestionably, the best record that this band ever produced, though in light of their future discography this comes off as an almost abysmal conclusion. But for now, just steer clear of dark thoughts for the future ahead and join me in my thumbs up rating.