Artist – Album: Chicago Transit Authority – Chicago
Transit Authority
Released: 28th
April 1969
Sounds Like: One big bluesy rock jam
It’s hard to imagine
that this jazz-infused rock jam band would go on to become the M.O.R balladeers
responsible for the fluffy pop of ‘If You
Leave Me Now,’ released just seven years after this landmark debut.
Blending freewheeling rhythm
& bass and euphoric horn sections with the guitar chops of Terry Kath – a
guitarist so talented that even the great Jimi Hendrix was a fan – and the trio
of bluesy vocalists courtesy of Kath, Robert Lamm and Peter Cetera, Chicago
Transit Authority created epic soulful rock and roll jams that meandered
between the banal and the brilliant. Of the former, frenetic fourteen minute
wig out ‘Liberation’ may not be
overly bad, just overlong and overwrought, but ‘Free Form Guitar’ is as horrifically pretentious as its title
suggests. Meanwhile, nothing, here or elsewhere, gets much more brilliant than
the funky cover of the Spencer Davis Group’s ‘I’m a Man’.
Although most of the tunes here are energetic muck arounds
from the seven piece, there are softer elements and more structure in a couple
of the tracks chosen as singles, such as ‘Does
Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?’ and ‘Questions 67 and 68’. Other highlights are the blues rock belter ‘Introduction’ and the politically
charged ‘Someday (August 29, 1968)’.
Ultimately, the album serves as a great snapshot of a
prodigiously talented group before they mellowed out and lost that edge, and,
shorn of a few minute long solos and a few regrettable tracks, this would stand
as one of the very best rock records around.
Albumaday... rating: 7/10
1. Introduction
– 6:35
2. Does
Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? – 4:35
3. Beginnings
– 7:54
4. Questions
67 and 68 – 5:03
5. Listen
– 3:22
6. Poem
58 – 8:35
7. Free
Form Guitar – 6:47
8. South
California Purples – 6:11
9. I’m
a Man – 7:43
10. Prologue,
August 29, 1968 – 0:58
11. Someday
(August 29, 1968) – 4:11
12. Liberation
– 14:38
Listen to ‘I’m a Man’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8vY3vAbAdQ
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