CHICAGO [AKA: CHICAGO II]

Chicago

Jazz Rock/Fusion

4.18 | 254 ratings

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Evolver
Special Collaborator
Crossover & JR/F/Canterbury Teams

Chicago? That band mostly known for cheesy love ballads, with horns? With that "The ladies love Cetera" guy? Them? Prog?

Well if you go way back to their first few albums, sure they had those cheesy ballads, but listen deeper, and you will hear the lush jazz phrasing, especially in the horn sections, and occasional true prog passages.

The first side of this double album stays in the pop realm, albeit with the above mentioned horn sections. It isn't until side 2, and the seven part Ballad for a Girl in Buchannon that you hear the band really go prog. Sure, two of the parts were hits as singles, Make Me Smile and Colour My World (a better song than the sappy one I remember - maybe it was tainted by being the song every kid taking piano lessons in the early seventies had to learn), bit it also contained the Zappa-like West Virginia Fantasies.

The four part Memories of Love has a light classical feel, and It Better End Soon is a jazz fusion jam (think Traffic with better horns).

Yeah, there's some cheese here, but this album sparks a lot of memories for me,

Evolver | 4/5 | 2010-9-4

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