Where Were You In 1974? (from someone who was there)

Answer: If you went to high school in the 1970s (like me), where ever you were, you were listening to Chicago (neeChicago Transit Authority). Especially if you were FROM Chicago (like me). They were on the radio. They were on your turntable. They were on the cassette deck that your best friend hardwired underneath the dashboard of his Dad's Ford. And they were played, incessantly, at high school dances, where desperate teen-agers gyrated the joys of Make Me Smile, the threateningly sexual pounding of 25 or 6 to 4 (never figured out what that title meant), the cuddly pop of Just You N Me, and most importantly, played grab-a$$ (or had your a$$ grabbed) to the strains of that mother-of-all-wedding songs, Colour My World.

Old Days, indeed.

Chicago was formed out of the wreckage of a couple of 60s era Chicago bar bands by a bunch of DePaul University music students, most notably bassist Peter Cetera (my dad used to work with his dad WAY back when), keyboardist Robert Lamm, and guitarist Terry Kath (none of whom could really sing), along with a drummer and three horn players whose names no one knew back then and certainly no one recalls now. The idea was a melding of rock guitar and jazzy horns, a thought just catching on then with another group called Blood, Sweat & Tears. They moved to LA, became the house band at the famous Whiskey-A-Go-G0, came to the attention of David Geffen, and the rest is history.

Under review here is the 5 CD + DVD Chicago, brought to you by the wonderful archivists at Rhino Records, a compilation of Chicago's greatest hits over the XXXVIII or so years that the band has been around and the CXVI or so albums they've released, most using Roman numerals (get it? Do YOU?). It includes a well-written and informative soft cover book about the band. While this music is a voyage to the past for a man of a certain age like me, the first two CD's and some of the third contain a litany of essential top 40 hits from the 70s as well as some important if not ground breaking jazz/rock/pop from the period.

As for the rest of the set, I have two words: unlistenable dreck. Don’t waste your time. If ever there was a band that should have broken up after the first nine years, it was this one.

But the first seven or so Chicago albums are often a joy to imbibe, even when they are inexcusably self-indulgent (like a lot of III and the whole first disk of VII, not to mention almost the entire 4-disk Carnegie Hall live set). The first album, the self-eponymous Chicago Transit Authority* (the band dropped the “Transit Authority” moniker after the real CTA started making unpleasant noises) is the most deliberately jazzy of the “good” albums. A two-album set (the first three and seventh all had two records), it didn’t start getting serious AM air play until Chicago II broke out in 1970. Ironically, it got its best exposure on FM radio due to the lengthy (seven-minutes plus for many songs) tunes. (These were the days when FM radio was free-form and “underground”, as opposed to the market-researched play lists you get these days—and God willing, someone will guillotine the corporate horrors who brought us “Jack FM”).

By 1971, however, the band had completely broken out, thanks the Chicago II and the re-release of some terrific singles from the first album, and the Top 40 hits were rolling. In the meantime, Chicago promoted itself by relentlessly touring, no longer in bars but now hitting the arena circuit. Along with Elton John, the band had few other serious competitors between 1970 through maybe 1976 on the AM bandwidth. The string of hit singles is impressive, both in number and in quality: Beginnings, Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?, Make Me Smile, Lowdown, Free, Dialogue, Saturday in the Park, Just You N Me, Wishing You Were Here (this last inspired by the Beach Boys, a couple of whom sang on it; the bands would often tour together, this time with Chicago as headliner) and others.

As an aside, the standard of musicianship is very high. I don't know much about horns, but the lines are interesting and they harmonize well. Danny Seraphine is a first-rate drummer. Terry Kath was a very fine guitarist, except that his sound was lamentably distorted. Peter Cetera reminds me a lot of Paul McCartney, his bass solo on Do You Know What Time It Is? bringing to mind McCartney's on Eight Days A Week and his work often high in the mix. Robert Lamm, on the other hand, wasn't much beyond the high school stage and I have no idea how he managed to graduate from DePaul.

This music is now part of the culture. You can’t go to a white-suburban wedding without at least hearing SOMETHING by Chicago.

Alas, all good things come to an end, and the band slowly then quickly collapsed. Punk, new wave and disco didn’t help. The untimely death of guitarist Terry Kath via a self-inflicted gunshot would didn’t help (”Baby What a Big Surprise/Shot Myself Between the Eyes--OK, that was tasteless) and they never found a real replacement. Singer Peter Cetera left after the band’s last big hit, Stay the Night (a real atrocity, that) and now performs songs whose major purpose is to be played while seducing fifty-five year-old women.

But Chicago did its duty. They stand proudly among the pantheon of almost great, truly American bands. I give these collection four stars—five for the first two and half CD’s, minus one half for the rest of the music, and minus one half because the CD’s won’t stay in their holders (sloppy packaging, that).

Recommendation: if you don’t want to lay out major bucks for a lot of dreck, which this collection has (who thought that ANYTHING by this band made after 1978 was worth listening to?), spend your hard earned cash on Chicago I, II, V, and maybe VI for starters.

Trivia and stuff: The booklet has some really cool nostalgia like a picture of a ticket from a concert at Chicago’s Arie Crown theater, where the cheap seats were just $3.50. And there’s a great poster from the famous three-day Isle of Wight music festival in 1970, with Chicago playing on Day 1, prog-rock maniacs Emerson, Lake and Palmer playing on Day 2, and Jimi Hendrix on Day 3 (plus a huge host of others, it must have been a fabulous set of concerts). The story goes that Hendrix listened to Terry Kath wail on guitar and exclaimed, “Your guitarist is better than me!” High praise, from one who would know. R.I.P. to both of them.

Guitar Head Note: The production on the first album is really strange sometimes, there's an AWFUL lot of echo (NOT reverb) on the horns and I never have figured out why. I think part of it is that they recorded this in only five days and didn't really know what there were doing.