Chicago Transit Authority

Artist: Chicago
Label: Chicago Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording reissued
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 703404300126
EAN: 0703404300126
ASIN: B0000021RB

Release Date: 1995-02-28

Chicago Transit Authority

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Tracks:

Introduction
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
Beginnings
Questions 67 And 68
Listen
Poem
Free Form Guitar
South Californica Purples
I'm A Man
Prologue, August 29, 1968
Someday (August 29, 1968)
Liberation

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Chicago II (Repackaged)
Chicago III
Chicago VI
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Amazon.com

Formed in 1967, the Chicago Transit Authority echoed the concepts of Blood, Sweat & Tears by adding a jazzy horn section to their rock sound. Before shortening their name due to pressure in their hometown, the CTA released this impressive debut album. Featuring the vocals of keyboard player Robert Lamm, guitarist Terry Kath, and bassist Peter Cetera, Chicago's sound was smoothly orchestrated one minute and overtly raucous the next. The late Terry Kath indulged himself in "Free Form Guitar" and wailed aggressively in the cover of the Spencer Davis Group's hit, "I'm a Man." Robert Lamm wrote most of the original material, including the successful "Beginnings" and "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is." This record shows Chicago fully formed and sounding great. --Mitch Myers

Customer Reviews:

Hendrix with a horn section!.......2007-05-06

Not that that is a "bad" thing--because to my ears, it's not. But the point I'm making is to show you how much the focus of this band's music had shifted from the first album to future albums. And if I didn't know any better, I would have thought that this album was a vehicle for guitarist Terry Kath's solo career. If you listen to this album throughout, you can make the conclusion that this was Terry Kath's album, as he was pretty much given free room to roam on virtually every track unrestrained--including his own pyrotechnic "freak-out" number, "Free Form Guitar". This is a far cry from even the next two albums, when the horns, which were supposed to be Chicago's trademark in the beginning, seem to at least share as much or more of the soloing. Much later, it would become ALL horns!
But it looks like in the beginning, Chicago was largely a "guitar-based" band, centering around Terry Kath, who also shared a lot of the singing in the early days. It didn't seem to be Peter Cetera's band, as it seemed to come to be known many years later. The singing was shared a lot between Terry Kath, and organist Robert Lamm--who in my opinion, has one of the classiest singing voices in rock, especially on one of Chicago's most beautiful ballads--"Beginnings". As Chicago and Santana both played many of the same rock festivals during this period, it was easy to see a lot of similarities between Lamm and Gregg Rolie from Santana, as both men, similar in appearance, seemed to be the singing organists who stoked the engines of their repsective large bands--but Lamm was much less the organist than Rolie was for Santana. Perhaps, however, he was a better songwriter.
But again, I see this as largely a guitar player's album. Every aspiring guitar player should give this one a listen. Pay close attention to Terry Kath's techniques, feel, tone, distortion, and choice of amplification, because it is "smokin'" hot, and some of the best of 1969. In fact, I would register this among the best guitar albums of 1969--I know that sounds strange for a group known mostly for horns, but Terry Kath's contributions to rock guitar can simply not go ignored!

Don't believe the hype.......2006-08-06

My favourite Chicago moments largely occur from 1976 and before: during the time when they gave more vent to their impulses to infuse slightly jazz-tinged horn charts into their rock and ballads. Unlike probably the bulk of their fans, I don't remember the initial release of the albums (born in 1970) so it was with high hopes of unearthing a "lost classic" that I came to this album. My hopes were mostly dashed.

For the unitiated, Chicago Transit Authority (the band shortened their name after a legal threat from the Windy City subway system) married horn charts and a jazz sensibility to rock guitar at this point. (They would later evolve into adult contemporary pap merchants in the 80s with Cetera at the helm.)

HIGHLIGHTS:
The still popular "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" continues to be one of the band's nicest combinations of melody, a bit of somewhat jazzy improv, and a memorable hook: in the AM radio "single edit" anyhow. Here you also get a meandering piano prelude that doesn't really progress into the melody properly. The epic "Beginnings" is probably the best synthesis of the band's chops and a good tune. It runs long but doesn't overstay its welcome unlike others on here. When Pankow's trombone blast cuts in, the moment is ebullient rapture rather than the lazy wandering that mars other cuts on the disc. Somewhat bluesy "South California Purples" is a decent mid-tempo chugger. A charging cover of Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man" nearly stands up to the original's power.

LOWS:
"Free Form Guitar" is wankery of the first order. All "check out my technique" and no "dig the melody". What differentiates Kath and other guitar luminaries like Hendrix or Clapton is the ability to know when to STOP. Kath doesn't seem to find that line here. The self-important politics of "Prologue, August 29th, 1968" (a soundbite of protests before that year's Chicago Democratic Convention that led to riots) may have made this album "relevant" at the time but now it renders the disc more dated than Kath's prominent wah-wah. "Poem 58" and "Liberation" begin promisingly enough but my attention's wandering about 2 minutes in.

BOTTOM LINE:
Chicago at their best continues to be as a singles band. Only 'jam-band' fans should find the whole CD essential, otherwise you can get the best bits here on the 2CD anthology or the single CD sets like "HEART OF CHICAGO". Average 70s effort overall.

Fantastic music from a golden era !!.......2006-05-30

Want to hear something different and ground breaking? Well this album delivers both in spades !! As a mere 16y old in the late 1960's I was used to the very special music that was being made both in England and the US. However I was not prepared for this. This wasn't "progressive rock", "jazz" "pop" or "blues". In fact it couldn't be categorised and that's where the beauty of this music lays. Right from the outset your ears will wonder where the tunes will take you next. How can for instance "free form guitar" and "does anybody know what time it is ?" be on the same album. Would this be the case today ? I won't say anything further...just to invite you to listen to probably the most inventive a technically brilliant piece of music you might ever come across. And I mean cw Pet Sounds or any of the Beatles output !!!!

Progressive Rock with a Jazz Twist.......2006-04-07

Those who are familiar with Chicago of the 1980s and beyond will likely not know the original incarnation of Chicago at all. This music in 1969 was fresh, original, and, looking back, very progressive. At the time the music was called by some jazz-rock fusion, which the booklet included with the album explains was a marketing move. Today we know such music in all its incarnations as progressive rock.

An amazing six of the twelve tracks from this CD were released as singles during the three years the album was on the Billboard top 100. Of the six, five had to be edited because of their excessive length. In those days, when FM was considered somewhat "underground" because of the paucity of FM stations and receivers, FM was the only place to hear these cuts in their unedited entirety.

Ardent fans of Chicago will recognize most if not all these hits by their titles: "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?," "Beginnings," "Questions 67 and 68," "Listen," "Poem 58," and "I'm a Man." I admit that while I recognize most of these songs when I hear them, the titles often do not match well to the lyrics. Even casual fans of Chicago would likely recognize most of these songs from the airplay they received in the late 60s and early 70s, and the airplay they continue to receive on classic rock stations.

Some of the songs in their unedited album versions are unfamiliar. The extensive piano introduction to "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" gives the song an even stronger jazz influence than the song proper. "Beginnings" starts out like the version released for radio, but it is nearly eight minutes long on the CD, adding an extended instrumental exit that adds jazz and Hispanic elements.

While the term jazz-rock does seem to classify much of this music, this first effort was experimenting with a variety of genres. "Free Form Guitar" uses heavy feedback in a style strongly reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix. Music such as "Free Form Guitar" make "Chicago Transit Authority" as experimental in some ways as the contemporary "In the Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson, considered one of the key milestones in progressive rock.

The last selection on this CD, "Liberation," has riffs that feel like some of the heavier music of the 60s, and manages to be sufficiently free-form that you might wonder whether this recording was the first time that Chicago played this music in exactly this way. While there is a jazz influence in this song, it is a very psychedelic rock song.

The music in this album is all over the map in a way, from pop influenced songs like "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is" to the bizarre guitar instrumental of "Free Form Guitar." Every cut shows the breadth of talent and ability of a group that should be considered progressive in its first incarnation. Even the pop influenced songs generally have only pop portions, with incredible layered instrumentals surrounding the pop portions. This album contains absolutely phenomenal, ground-breaking rock music, a must-have for any fan of progressive rock and cutting edge music of all eras.

Breathtaking beginning for a brilliant, brassy band.......2005-08-30

The band Chicago, fresh out of the gate, champing at the bit, and straining at the reins was a wonder to behold. In many ways, this album is their best, born before fame and the cares of pop stardom took their toll on nerves and egos. CTA shows the band as musically competent, but with a ferocity, inventiveness, looseness, daring, hunger and depth of feeling that sadly steadily eroded over the next half-dozen albums.

I first heard this album in the early seventies as I started high school. Back then, I was fascinated by the big hits - "Questions 67 and 68," "Beginnings," "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" But now I find myself enjoying the rest of the album as well or even more. The long guitar solos and clockwork jamming of "Listen" and "Poem," and even (but only occasionally) the very free-form guitar of "Free Form Guitar." Given that shortness of Terry Kath's career, this album is an eerily prescient memorial to his phenomenal skill.

I love everything about the album - it's big pop sound, its complexity ("Introduction" is one of the tightest and most complicated rock compositions I have ever heard), its energy, and its politics. "Liberation," seamlessly incorporating the chant "The Whole World is Watching" from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, still has the power to roil this old radical's blood. Listen to the album over and over, focusing on Danny Seraphine's kaleidoscopic drumming, or Peter Cetera's melodic bass lines, or Terry's ornamental guitar lines. There is so much going on here that a cursory listen just will not do.

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