Chicago Transit Authority

The band Chicago was huge when I was a kid in the seventies. They were very radio-friendly, and had a string of hits (20 top ten singles) that, over time, got more and more treacly, culminating in "If I Leave You Now," which I remember that the girls in my school liked, but not the boys. It's therefore useful to remember that when they got their start, Chicago was a hard-driving, bluesy, jazz-flavored acid rock band. They also had a longer name, Chicago Transit Authority.

They only had that name for one album, though, the eponymous one released forty years ago (protest from the actual Chicago Transit Authority was headed off by a truncation of the name--apparently the city itself didn't protest). The debut album was a double one, full of long, instrumentally heavy tracks, and when there were lyrics they were introspective and existential. A symbiosis of Jimi Hendrix and the big band sound, the album is one of the boldest rock debuts of all time.

Chicago is well known for their musicianship, particularly the lead guitar player Terry Kath (Hendrix claimed Kath was better than he was), drummer Daniel Seraphine, and a horn section of James Pankow, Leo Loughnane, and Walter Parazaider (how many rock bands had a trombone player, then or now?). The vocalists were bassist Peter Cetera and keyboardist Robert Lamm, who also wrote the songs that are remembered from this album: "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings," and "Questions 67 and 68." However, they weren't released as singles initially, and the album reached the top 20, based mostly on FM airplay. Also recognizable is the cover of the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man," and frankly I prefer Chicago's version, which has a looser yet more emphatic feeling to it.

I was pleased by some of the tracks that were new to me. Lamm also wrote "Poem 58" and "South California Purples," which are reminiscent of Hendrix. There are also some long, more avant-garde interludes, including "Free Form Guitar," which is Kath noodling on his ax, and "Liberation," which closes the album with a true-to-the-age revolutionary spirit.

Speaking of "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"--I realize this song is about how trivial the mundane aspects of one's day is while the war raged in Vietnam, but if I stopped a guy to ask him the time and he gave me this response: "Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? I can't imagine why, I don't have time enough to cry," I'd storm off, muttering "asshole" under my breath.