Discography Thread Resurrection!!
Because they went and released a new album.
"Now" Chicago XXXVI (2014)
Keith Howland - Guitar, Vocals
Tris Imboden - Drums
Robert Lamm - Keyboards, Vocals
Lee Loughnane - Trumpet, Background Vocals
James Pankow - Trombone, Background Vocals
Walt Parazaider - Saxophone, Background Vocals
Lou Pardini - Keyboards, Vocals
Walfredo Reyes, Jr. - Percussion
Jason Scheff - Bass, Vocals
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Now
5:03More Will Be Revealed
5:11America
4:04Crazy Happy
5:02Free At Last
5:13Love Lives On
5:21Somethings' Coming, I Know
3:48Watching All The Colors
4:15Nice Girl
4:02Naked In The Garden Of Allah
4:24Another Trippy Day
4:04First impression: Hmm, pretty good. That opening track with the strings and semi-disco sound (or whatever that was) kinda scared me, though.
Second impression: Wow, lots of horns; that's cool. And they've still got it, and even sound different sometimes. Pankow's obviously been experimenting and/or has learned some new tricks in arranging them.
Third impression: Man, Keith Howland's guitar sounds great. Like Terry would if Terry was still around. Ah, that's right; Keith literally grew up listening to Terry Kath, and he was hired
because he sounds like Terry. I'm glad he's still with them.
Fourth impression: Okay, I'm just gonna skip that first song from now on. I really can't stand Jason Scheff or his shitty ballads.
Fifth impression: This is a great album, improved considerably by starting with Track 2 and going from there. It sets a completely different tone, focusing on the guitar and the horns, the rock and roll. The other ballad makes a nice contrast, coming halfway through the album. I don't know why they feel the need to start each "side" with a ballad, especially now that no one from the 80's or 90's cares anymore, and the rest of the album is rock and roll.
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I ripped it lossless to my iPod and have been listening to it pretty much non-stop for the past four or five days. I miss the old days of listening while absorbing the credits from the liner notes, but this is cool, too, because it allows me to listen to the music and focus on that without thinking about who wrote what and who's playing what. I did a quick skim through the credits when I opened it and saw that there are individual songwriting, playing, and production credits for each song. This reflects how the album was made, which was rather unconventionally. More on that later.
It's growing on me, as you can tell. And really, that opening title track is really deceiving. A flourish, a piano glissando, and strings hit you first, followed immediately by horns that sound great, in a mellow Sinatra kind of way, then Jason Scheff's "kinda like Peter Cetera but whinier and no balls" lead vocals come in and you think you've made a horrible mistake. And you have. You forgot to skip the first track. Remember to skip that track, and you'll be fine. I'm actually keeping this on my iPod, but without the title track.
Chicago's website and message boards have been very busy the past year or so, as news of the band working on a new album trickled out. How were they making a new album? Aren't they on tour right now? What will it sound like? Who's even in the band any more?
And the title of this one is different. They've kept the Roman numerals, since it's their thing, but also added a title, in quotation marks, and up front. The proper title of this album is
"Now" Chicago XXXVI. Weird huh?
But it also makes a statement. This is how Chicago sounds now. This is what they are now. This is how they do it now. They still tour pretty much constantly, doing hundreds of shows a year, so they developed a studio-quality mobile recording setup that they can take with them on the road. They record tracks in hotel rooms and people's houses, and it sounds great, and it all gets cleaned up in production anyway. They call it "the Rig".
Here's the thing, though. Walter Parazaider, original woodwind player and often considered the founder of the band, does not tour with them all the time. He was sick for a while, and has taken some time off. Also, in at least one of the countless interviews over the years that always ask the same questions, the answer was "We thought we'd be retired by now. No one thought we'd still be doing this 40 years later." I'm sure that's true, but the more people ask, and the more they have to think about it and answer it, the more often it's gonna hit them: I'm 70something years old. I should be home playing with my grandkids and chilling and enjoying life, but I'm still working. It's the greatest job in the world, playing music, but I still do it and I do it every night, and I'm getting really old.
These guys were playing sold out shows in Carnegie Hall when I was growing up, and I'm old, so what does that make them?
Anyway, the point is that despite the official band roster I've given above, taken directly from the CD jacket (alphabetized to make it consistent with other discographies), Walt Parazaider isn't on this album very much. Each song has individual writing and playing credits, as they were recorded in bits and pieces while on the road (and sometimes in the studio), and since Walt wasn't on the road most of the past few years, that's not him on saxophone. James Pankow, who always arranged the horns for all songs, doesn't do that anymore either, and doesn't always play trombone here.
In fact, if you read the credits carefully, only half the songs are played by Chicago and only members of Chicago. That opening sappy 80's-sounding ballad by Jason Scheff is just him, Howland on guitar, and a bunch of session guys. Lamm, Pardini and Loughnane do some vocals. Those aren't Chicago horns (which is why they sound so different) and that's sure not them on strings. That's also why I have no trouble skipping the title track.
The real opening track is "More Will Be Revealed", a Lamm song featuring mostly the actual band Chicago. Ray Herrmann is credited on saxophones, and he's the guy who tours with them when Walt's not with them, so I'm sure we're listening to horns recorded on the road. But it's a good song, and it's actually Chicago "now".
"America" is deceiving. A Lee Loughnane composition, it starts with the words "America, America is free. America, America is you and me" being sung in lush major-seventh harmonies, and critics have already blasted it for being the obligatory ultra-patriotic song that's so common nowadays. But that's because they stopped listening once they heard that. That's the refrain, and it's meant to be ironic. The first verse follows immediately:
The dream is fading before our eyes
Take some time to revive it
"We the People" must start right now
Don't expect our leaders to show us how
They don't have a clue what to doYeah, kind of a different message there. A good song, mostly Chicago, except Lee is the only Chicago horn player. Session guys on sax and trombone.
"Crazy Happy" is a Scheff/Lamm collaboration. They share lead vocals, and Scheff not only plays bass but also keyboard bass and some regular keyboards. Same sax and trombone player as on the previous track (Larry Klimas and Nick Lane, respectively) but otherwise Chicago.
"Free At Last" is old-school Chicago. A Keith Howland song, featuring his awesome Kath-like guitar and actual Chicago horns. Okay, mostly. Herrmann on sax, but remember, that's as close as we usually come these days. Horns are arranged by Pankow, so they sound great, like Chicago. I should mention that Pankow doesn't seem to be the sole horn arranger anymore. Most of the horn arranging credits go to Lamm and Loughnane.
"Love Lives On" is the other Scheff ballad. I'll probably nuke this one from my iPod, too. Scheff, Imboden on drums, Pankow and Loughnane on horns, the rest are session guys. Really, what is the deal with recording an album, calling it Chicago, and having half the songs basically solo tracks by individuals and whoever they felt like getting? If Scheff wants to make a solo album and fill it with his crappy ballads, let him. Why muck up Chicago albums with them, when Chicago doesn't even play on them? Oh yeah that's right, because no one would buy a Jason Scheff solo album. They'd sell even worse than Peter Cetera solo albums did, and people actually liked him.
"Something's Coming, I Know" is another Lamm song, and it's all Chicago, including Walt on sax. A little bit cheesy, but it sounds great, and I love hearing those horns.
"Watching All The Colors" is a Lamm song from another side of his writing book, the psychedelic side. But it's good, and it's all Chicago once again.
"Nice Girl" is a Howland/Scheff collaboration, and once you know that, it kinda sounds like it. Howland's the rocker in the band, and that balances out Scheff's wimpiness. Catchy song, poppy but with some nice guitar work and their "road" horn section.
"Naked in the Garden of Allah" is weird song, but kinda cool. Another Lamm experimental thing, its lyrics are sparse and impressionistic, but the idea seems to be that we are all the same, all children of whatever creator we may believe in, however we perceive Him to be, and really, getting along shouldn't be that hard. This concept is reflected in the title itself. All Chicago, plus a session guy named John McFee on fiddle. Yes, fiddle. It's an interesting addition, and sounds cool.
"Another Trippy Day" is Lamm being not-so-serious again, and having some fun with vocal effects. It's listed as a "bonus track" which doesn't seem to mean a lot when the album is only released on CD anyway, but whatever. All Chicago, plus John Van Eps (who has co-writing credit) on synths.
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Listening to this album multiple times before digging into the credits turned out to be a good thing. I likely would have focused too much on who's playing, or not playing, on individual songs, and tried to hear differences. Instead, I was able to enjoy an album of great music and not worry about that. It does bug me that it says Chicago on the cover and some members of the band don't feel compelled to actually record their songs with the band Chicago. Each member also has production credit on their own songs. You'd think that this would result in a disparate collection of songs with no cohesive sound to them, but the results are remarkably consistent. What part of the process is that, the mastering? I don't know. But somewhere between recording each of the individual tracks and putting a final version of the album together for CD cutting, somebody made it all sound really good and consistent. It sounds like an album that shows off the different sides of a band, which it is. And I probably should stop making such a big deal about all the session guys appearing on all the songs. Looking at it now, it's not that many, and it does add some color and variety to the songs.
Overall, I like it. It's a good album, and a good Chicago album. No, it's not 70's Chicago. That band is gone, that time is gone. But this is a good representation of Chicago now.
Topic: The Chicago Discography (Read 62069 times)
