Tuesday, December 09, 2025
Twenty-Five (Or -Six) Minutes Before Four In The Morning.
NotQuiteCohen
TimeVille
When I was a teenaged kid, and just starting to pay attention to popular music as punk started to break, the band formerly known as the Chicago Transit Authority was so prolific and ubiquitous that their music seemed like wall paper.
And sometimes, like with the infamous and very popular compilation Chicago IX, which was released in 1975, it seemed like all the walls, in every single house everywhere, were being re-papered with, well, the same paper.
Anyway...
That particular compilation is 50 years old now, which means that it is being re-worked and re-released seven ways to Sunday.
But now, somehow, that old wallpaper is kind of comforting, and even a little bit interesting when you see and hear it done in more of a jam bandish-type way (see above).
And best of all, it means that two of the original horn players, Lee Loughnane and Jimmy Pankow are out and about talking about how they all got together at DePaul university and made all that music in the first place. They even talk a bit about the magic and the math of how the original horn arrangements were composed in a way that even a music theory dunderhead like myself can understand and enjoy.
You can listen to a long form conversation with Mess'rs Lougnane and Pankow...Here.
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Tangential allusion to an ear worm in the subheader, especially given that we're not that far from the 'end of December?...This!
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9 comments:
I loved Chicago until David Foster got involved, that was truly the night Chicago died!
The Generation Gap (haven’t heard that phrase for quite some time), wide as a CFL field is long back when Chicago were rocking the Free World, did not have parents and teenagers listening to much of the same music at all. Chicago were one of the notable exceptions. They were talented, tasteful and classy. Us kids were as likely to hear them at a sock hop as we were when the parents were partying it up.
Horn bands were having a moment, though there were variations...Saw Blood, Sweat, and Tears in March of '68 on a bill with Jeremy Steig and the Satyrs, James Cotton and Cream. Steig was a flautist, jazz straight up, and James Cotton toured with a smallish horn section, but BST was really eclectic and eventually found some considerable success. Lydia Pence and Cold Blood were prominent in the Bay Area about this time, and featured a horn section that was mostly pretty steady R&B. Then there was Sly Stone out of Oakland. CTA/Chicago managed to climb to the top and hang out there, though Terry Kath chose to make an early exit.
Good point...One of the original multilevel stratification bands!
Oh boy...I had forgotten about that. It did come a bit later though, I think.
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Holy Doodles Danneau!
BST, the Satyrs, James Cotton, and Cream on the same bill? That is almost impossible to fathom. Where did it happen and who put it together?
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March 9, 1968, Winterland (Post and Steiner Streets, within walking distance of our place at Clay and Divisadero), Bill Graham at the peak of his efforts to educate the listening public. Show started at 8:00, two sets for each act and, here's a killer, a ticket cost $3.00. Steig was a bit of an eye-opener, BST was fresh and new, and Cotton, who was a regular with Bill Graham, just killed it, a set for the ages, including a pronouncement by keyboardist Alberto Gianguinto that: "Beauty is only skin deep...but ugly is to the bone!" Cream was into REALLY long solos and didn't seem all that engaged with the crowd. Clapton turned a little too close at one point and ran into his Marshall stack.
Was going to bet on Graham, but thought it was too obvious!
Post and Steiner - Man, it was all still happening then, although I guess things were starting to unravel a little up the hill.
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He got involved in the eighties. I saw Chicago here a few years ago, and I think they played exactly one song from those (Foster) years.
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