1970

Chicago "Chicago"

Sooner or later a group would come along to spoil the double album more-of-a-good-thing-is-an-even-better-thing theory. All of Chicago's lps are double albums apart from those that are quadruple albums but thankfully this is the only one that I have heard. Dear God, this is dreary stuff. Dad rock at its worst. Republican rock, like straight edge creases in jeans, tucked in T shirts, blue jeans and black shoes. Choose your own mix of naffness.

All excitement has been sucked out of this music. All innovation. All fun. It exists but I have no idea how it is supposed to make me feel. In fact, I doubt it intends to make me feel at all. It's like the musicians are doing an impression of being a group without understanding what makes a group a group.

Its not that the music is played badly. It is played well, proficiently. But it is badly written. Or overwritten. Or underwritten. Or something. Bloody awful is what it is. The melodies are wholly unmemorable, the lyrics are terrible, the performances lifeless. You want it all to stop but it continues for four sides.

I have listened to this about 5 or 6 times and this may be the only record in this whole project that I will never willingly listen to again. The horns parp and fart and the singer groans like he is on the bog. Time signatures vary widely. The guitar makes rock guitar sounds. It is all supposed to sound very sincere but the group convince in the way that hippies in an episode of a Hollywood TV series convince, i.e. not at all. It is all so utterly, utterly pointless. And then we come to the sleevenotes.

"This endeavour should be experienced sequentially" it says on the sleeve. Well, I will be the judge of that. I will listen to it in whatever order I choose. In fact, there is no discernable sense to the order as presented on the original lp that I can find. No reason, either thematicaly or melodically, why one song should be followed by another. Rather, it seems a measure of the musicians' pretentiousness - they see themselves as semi-classical composers who can determine how their creations should be experienced. Not even groups whose albums tell a narrative story felt the need to dictate to their listeners the order in which the songs should be listened to.

Their classical pretentions are also by the fact that they name one of their songs "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon". Yuck! They dedicate it to a girl in the title as if to make us think that they, like, know a girl (but you don't know her, she goes to a different school). And some of their songs have numbered separate parts and even movements to them. Could they get any more desperate to impress?

Worst of all, following the lyrics to "It Better End Soon" printed on the album cover, there is a note which says "With this album, we dedicate ourselves, our futures and our energies to the people of the revolution...And the revolution in all of its forms." This really makes you just want to scream "Wankers!" at them. There is the arrogance of asserting that they will dedicate themselves to the people of the revolution (whoever they are) rather than just keep making albums, which is what they did do. The revolution referred to is of course the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Chicago are claiming their place in the revolution and claiming to support it, whatever it is. Yet they also seem to cop out of it. They are non-specific in identifying what it is they are revolutioning about. One could be generous and say they are trying to extend the definition of the revolution to encompass many different things. But it does feel a bit like saying that the revolution includes whatever I say it does.

Then there are the lyrics. The group have printed the lyrics to "It Better End Soon" on the album sleeve so they seem to be proud of them. Here are the lyrics:

Can't stand it no more
The people dying
Crying for help for so many years
But nobody hears
Better end soon my friend
It better end soon my friend
Can't take it no more
The people hating
Hurting their brothers
They don't understand
They can't understand
Better end soon my friend
It better end soon
Hey, everybody
Won't you just look around
Can't anybody see?
Just what's going down
Can't you take the time?
Just to feel
Just to feel what is real
If you do
Then you'll see that we got a raw deal
They're killing everybody
I wish it weren't true
They say we got to make war
Or the economy will fall
But if we don't stop
We won't be around no more
They're ruining this world
For you and me
The big heads of state
Won't let us be free
They made the rules once
But it didn't work out
Now we must try again
Before they kill us off
No more dying!
No more killing
No more dying
No more fighting
We don't want to die
No, we don't want to die
Please let's change it all
Please let's make it all
Good for the present
And better for the future
Let's just love one another
Let's show peace for each other
We can make it happen

Let's just make it happen
We can change this world
Please let's change this world
Please let's make it happen for our children
For our women
Change the world
Please make it happen
Come on
Come on
Please
Come on
It's up to me
It's up to you
So let's do it now

Yeah
Do it now
Can't stand it no more
The people cheating
Burning each other
They know it ain't right
How can it be right
Better end soon my friend
It better end soon my friend

This reads like a parody of an anti-war, anti-capitalism song. Like one of Rik Mayall's protest poems in "The Young Ones". Chicago have been quite a popular group over the years and this is held to be one of their best lps so perhaps the fault is in me. I do think that their song "If You Leave Me Now" is one of the loveliest pieces of music but this lp is really desperate stuff.