Chicago Transit Authority as a whole
Chicago Transit Authority has been one of my favorite albums for a long time. Each piece is creatively composed and arranged, new, fresh, and performed with fire. The musicians are not only quite fine players, but are featured in often unusual ways - the free-form solos by piano and guitar, quite a few drum solos or long drum solo fills, horn section features, and more. The group featured three fantastic lead singers with drastically different styles and magnificently creative arrangements. In particular, I love the way the horn section is used - as a part of the rhythm section, as a solo instrument via an arranger, as solo instruments, and sometimes as a more traditional horn section.
The running order gives the album a very strong sense of direction. After "Introduction", which, of course, introduces the band, the album runs through the light, joyful tunes: "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings", "Questions 67& 68". From here, the album turns dark and descends into the dissonant, confined spaces of "Listen" and "Poem 58". Upon beginning side 3, "Free Form Guitar" takes us far out into space, before returning to earth with minor key blues rockers "South California Purples" and "I'm a Man". The darkness spirals out of control in the wildly unstable "Someday" before at last being released in the joyful excesses of "Liberation".
Chicago had a string of huge hits with slushy ballads, so it's surprising to note that their early albums had very few slow ballad-like songs, and this first one none at all! Instead, the album is balanced by a variety of rhythmic feels, like the relaxing shuffle of "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" and the slow grandeur of "Questions 67 & 68", that keep the whole album from sounding fast and loud. Even the second and third albums have little in the way of the obvious "slow song". Both double albums like the first, the only ones are the relatively obscure "Memories of Love" (never performed live) and "Once Upon a Time" (which is instrumental).
Chicago had been an active, successful performing band for a long time before reaching the recording stage. Because of this, they had a ton of music polished and ready before ever going into the studio for their first album. This is why their first three albums are double LPs! The group specifically wanted to make their first album a double album in black, as a deliberate counterpoint to the Beatles' recent double album in white. Spinal Tap didn't invent the black album - Chicago thought of it first!
Chicago had three main writers in the early days: Lamm, Pankow, and Kath, giving the music lots of variety. By the seventh album, the other band members were contributing great writing as well. However, on this very first album, Lamm's writing dominates. Kath is credited with "Introduction" and "Free Form Guitar" (which isn't really a composition so much as an improvisation), Pankow with "Liberation" and half of "Someday", and Lamm with the other half of "Someday" and the other six original songs. Chicago V would also be written mostly by Lamm (seven out of nine tunes, counting "Dialogue" as one song), but most Chicago albums have more of a balance of writing contributions.
[Okay, look, I know some jazz nutjob is going to get on and rant how improvisation IS composition and how dare I imply they're different, and that some famous composer said that improv is the purest form of composition and blah blah... Look, I'm as appreciative of both composition and improvisation as the next guy, but they're not the same thing. You can't improvise an orchestration unless it's extremely simple, you can't improvise a piece of music with any sort of harmonic or tempo changes or really anything that you want more than one person to do at the same time, unless it's an extremely simple, well-known format like the blues. This is why movies have scripts and storyboards and they don't just throw the actors and cameras together and hope they'll make something up. Also, does "purest" mean superior? No.]
This album, Chicago's first, came out shortly after Blood Sweat & Tears' second album, the immensely popular self-titled record which contained "Spinning Wheel", "And When I Die", "God Bless the Child", and "You've Made Me So Very Happy". Because of that timing, and because BS&T's second record was a monster hit, Chicago was often seen as copying BS&T. Not true: Chicago actually formed first, in February 1967, while BS&T didn't exist until that summer.
Besides the dates, however, I have a much bigger problem with the belief that Chicago could possibly have been derivative of BS&T. The two groups are so different that I find it hard to believe any person with a musical ear could possibly think either copied the other. Aside from the extraordinarily superficial fact that the two bands had similar instrumentations, they're not alike. I mean, do you think Chick Corea's music is merely copying J. S. Bach's music because they were both keyboardists? BS&T was a group of New York studio musicians whose membership rotated frequently. Their music was mostly covers arranged with wild creativity, and was technically quite difficult, especially for the horn section, whose charts were based on jazz orchestra techniques. Chicago was a group of friends who made album after album with no personnel changes, until 1978 when Terry Kath died. Their music was almost entirely originals, and the horn parts technically easier but musically more exposed and difficult; and used the horn section in new, original ways. Chicago had a vocal tag team and fantastic ensemble vocals; BS&T typically had one strong lead singer and weaker ensemble vocals. I could go on and on. Now, I am in no way taking sides. These two bands are both awesome and there's no reason I have to vote for one or the other. But, listening to the music, there is no way either band copied the other.
One more landmark I'd like to point out. There is a note in this album officially requesting fans call the band not Chicago Transit Authority, the name they'd been using up to that point, but simply Chicago.
PM
The running order gives the album a very strong sense of direction. After "Introduction", which, of course, introduces the band, the album runs through the light, joyful tunes: "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings", "Questions 67& 68". From here, the album turns dark and descends into the dissonant, confined spaces of "Listen" and "Poem 58". Upon beginning side 3, "Free Form Guitar" takes us far out into space, before returning to earth with minor key blues rockers "South California Purples" and "I'm a Man". The darkness spirals out of control in the wildly unstable "Someday" before at last being released in the joyful excesses of "Liberation".
Chicago had a string of huge hits with slushy ballads, so it's surprising to note that their early albums had very few slow ballad-like songs, and this first one none at all! Instead, the album is balanced by a variety of rhythmic feels, like the relaxing shuffle of "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" and the slow grandeur of "Questions 67 & 68", that keep the whole album from sounding fast and loud. Even the second and third albums have little in the way of the obvious "slow song". Both double albums like the first, the only ones are the relatively obscure "Memories of Love" (never performed live) and "Once Upon a Time" (which is instrumental).
Chicago had been an active, successful performing band for a long time before reaching the recording stage. Because of this, they had a ton of music polished and ready before ever going into the studio for their first album. This is why their first three albums are double LPs! The group specifically wanted to make their first album a double album in black, as a deliberate counterpoint to the Beatles' recent double album in white. Spinal Tap didn't invent the black album - Chicago thought of it first!
Chicago had three main writers in the early days: Lamm, Pankow, and Kath, giving the music lots of variety. By the seventh album, the other band members were contributing great writing as well. However, on this very first album, Lamm's writing dominates. Kath is credited with "Introduction" and "Free Form Guitar" (which isn't really a composition so much as an improvisation), Pankow with "Liberation" and half of "Someday", and Lamm with the other half of "Someday" and the other six original songs. Chicago V would also be written mostly by Lamm (seven out of nine tunes, counting "Dialogue" as one song), but most Chicago albums have more of a balance of writing contributions.
[Okay, look, I know some jazz nutjob is going to get on and rant how improvisation IS composition and how dare I imply they're different, and that some famous composer said that improv is the purest form of composition and blah blah... Look, I'm as appreciative of both composition and improvisation as the next guy, but they're not the same thing. You can't improvise an orchestration unless it's extremely simple, you can't improvise a piece of music with any sort of harmonic or tempo changes or really anything that you want more than one person to do at the same time, unless it's an extremely simple, well-known format like the blues. This is why movies have scripts and storyboards and they don't just throw the actors and cameras together and hope they'll make something up. Also, does "purest" mean superior? No.]
This album, Chicago's first, came out shortly after Blood Sweat & Tears' second album, the immensely popular self-titled record which contained "Spinning Wheel", "And When I Die", "God Bless the Child", and "You've Made Me So Very Happy". Because of that timing, and because BS&T's second record was a monster hit, Chicago was often seen as copying BS&T. Not true: Chicago actually formed first, in February 1967, while BS&T didn't exist until that summer.
Besides the dates, however, I have a much bigger problem with the belief that Chicago could possibly have been derivative of BS&T. The two groups are so different that I find it hard to believe any person with a musical ear could possibly think either copied the other. Aside from the extraordinarily superficial fact that the two bands had similar instrumentations, they're not alike. I mean, do you think Chick Corea's music is merely copying J. S. Bach's music because they were both keyboardists? BS&T was a group of New York studio musicians whose membership rotated frequently. Their music was mostly covers arranged with wild creativity, and was technically quite difficult, especially for the horn section, whose charts were based on jazz orchestra techniques. Chicago was a group of friends who made album after album with no personnel changes, until 1978 when Terry Kath died. Their music was almost entirely originals, and the horn parts technically easier but musically more exposed and difficult; and used the horn section in new, original ways. Chicago had a vocal tag team and fantastic ensemble vocals; BS&T typically had one strong lead singer and weaker ensemble vocals. I could go on and on. Now, I am in no way taking sides. These two bands are both awesome and there's no reason I have to vote for one or the other. But, listening to the music, there is no way either band copied the other.
One more landmark I'd like to point out. There is a note in this album officially requesting fans call the band not Chicago Transit Authority, the name they'd been using up to that point, but simply Chicago.
PM
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