162. Chicago | The Chicago Transit Authority (1969)

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Wikipedia Entry

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Tracks

1. Introduction
2. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
3. Beginnings
4. Questions 67 and 68
5. Listen
6. Poem 58
7. Free Form Guitar
8. South California Purples
9. I'm a Man
10. Prologue (August 29, 1968)
11. Someday (August 29, 1968)
12. Liberation

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The Chicago Transit Authority is a lively album. The songs are catchy and full of horns. Despite the horns, there are some heavy songs and some wild, extended guitar solos.

Having horns in a band is always tricky. Jazz horn players are talented and serious musicians and it reflects in the music. The problem is that jazz isn't always accessible to the mainstream listener. So it's a danger to include horns in more accessible music like rock and roll. To people who know real horn playing, it may sound inauthentic or amateurish. This album doesn't suffer from that problem, but it's a bad influence on future bands and musicians who want to do the horn thing.

I usually associate Peter Cetera's cheesy pop music career with Chicago. With this album it's unfair. This is a solid hard rocking album. There's nothing cheesy or mainstream about the music. In fact, it was a ballsy move to release a debut album as a double. It's only problem is being a double. The album is too long because the songs are too long. They should have stuck with the jazz and hard rock labels and abandoned the progressive label.

All the songs are quite good, but Liberation becomes tiresome being that it's the last song on a double album and it's the longest song, running to almost fifteen minutes in length. The stand outs are Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?, Beginnings, Listen, Poem 58, South California Purples and I'm a Man.

★★★★★★★★☆☆