Only The Beginning
"Old days
Good times I remember
Fun days
Filled with simple pleasures
Drive-in movies
Comic books and blue jeans
Howdy Doody
Baseball cards and birthdays
Take me back
To a world gone away
Memories
Seem like yesterday"
- Chicago, "Old Days"
"Only the beginning
Only just the start."
- Chicago, "Beginnings"
I just happened across the fact that today is the 40th anniversary of the founding of the band Chicago. Hard to believe they've been around that long. While their best music mostly preceded the tragic accidental death - or was it suicide? - of Terry Kath in 1978, their longevity and endurance as a band, through numerous stylistic and roster changes, can also be admired.
The two songs I quoted above were always among my favorites by this group. Like some other rock classics that I wrote about in one of my earliest posts, they get me in the gut.
posted by Elie @ 2/15/2007 02:30:00 PM -
4 Comments:
Peter Cetera.
Yuck.
There's a CD called Chicage Love Songs that has (I think) post 1980 stuff. Why bother?
Some of Cetera's earlier stuff, like "Baby What a Big Surprise" and "If You Leave Me Now", was quite good. But of course those were released pre-1978, so Terry Kath was still influential on the band's overall direction. I also admit to liking a couple of their later songs, like "The Glory of Love" which they did for "The Karate Kid 2" movie.
And as I said above, I can admire their ability to re-invent themselves as a successful love-ballad group after Kath's death, even though I personally find most of those songs rather sappy and dull. It actually wasn't much more drastic a stylistic change than between their very first album with its bluesy big-horn sound, and the next ten or so with a more standard "album rock" style.
Gershon Veroba, on his Impressions CD, has a take off on Saturday in the Park. It is entitled, naturally enough, Shabbos Day in the Park. The horn section sounds so accurate that I think they must use the actual Chicago soundtrack. Celia
I like Chicago a lot nice post.
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