Chicago V

Chicago - Chicago V

Chicago V
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CD Details

Artist: Chicago
Brand: Chicago
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2002-08-20
Music Label: Rhino
Soundtracks:
  1. A Hit By Varese
  2. All Is Well
  3. Now That You've Gone
  4. Dialogue (Part One)
  5. Dialogue (Part Two)
  6. While The City Sleeps
  7. Saturday In The Park
  8. Sate Of The Union
  9. Goodbye
  10. Alma Mater
  11. A Song For Richard And His Friends
  12. Mississippi Delta City Blues
  13. Dialogue (Part I & II) (Single Version)

Music reviews of Chicago V

Music Review: Marred brilliance
Rating: 4 Stars

When Chicago V was released in 1972, the US was still at war in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon was nearing the end of his successful first term as president. But fatigue was gripping the nation and the band as well, which had been in the pop-musical spotlight for the better part of four years. Some of that fatigue is apparent on this, the first one-album release since the band's formation.

Listening to this album now is a different experience that it was when I was a high school sophomore. Then, I was more excited by the band's big hits like "All is Well" and "Saturday in the Park" (whose opening piano chords even I could play!) but less excited by jazz and experimental music. Now, I can measure the change in my musical tastes by my appreciation of the cuts that did not become hits. "A Hit by Varese" is (mostly) a classic piece of energetically-syncopated brilliance. "While the City Sleeps" has a phenomenal show of triple-tonguing brass technique and neatly expresses the 70s paranoia that "men are scheming new ways to kill us and tell us dirty lies." But something new has crept into the lyrics of several songs -- the disappointment that many Americans are still compacent about issues the band cares about. The disparity of reactions is expertly rendered in "Dialogue" in which Terry Kath and Peter Cetera play two faces of the American political divide. Kath, as the activist and anti-war voice, tries to goad Cetera into expressing upset over the continuing war and poverty. Cetera plays the happy college grad student oblivious to social ills, who only "hopes to study further...and...keep a steady high," presumably with illicit drugs. That Cetera wins over Kath (and that the song is seemingly shut off mid-riff) has the intended unsettling effect.

"Chicago V" has serious flaws, even in its hits. "All is Well" is a sweetly-harmonized and doleful look back at the painful end of a love affair. But the horn solo that Jim Pankow inserts into this graceful tune is mechanical and inappropriately edgy. And it doesn't take a PhD in musical theory to hear the opening bars of "Saturday in the Park" as flatfooted and unsophisticated. That the producer spared the red pencil on the badly-performed ad lib horn solos in the middle of "A Hit by Varese" is emblematic of the album's problems.

Anyway, enough griping. Even longtime Chicago fans like me who have outgrown their youthful infatuation with the band will find gems here. The brass solo in "Now That You've Gone" is as bright and breezy as any of the band's best. "Dialogue," heard in the context of a foreign war waged by an unpopular president, (sadly) resonates today with the same wicked insights as it did 35 years ago -- undoubtedly the reason Chicago still plays it in concert. "State of the Union" and "Goodbye" are solidly-constructed and listenable in spite of not being hit material.

Suggestion: don't buy the CD for the bonus tracks alone! "Song for Richard and his Friends" is an expressionistic anti-Nixon piece that attempts to satirize the administration's pomposity and overreach with extended improvised feedback guitar. Listen to "Free Form Guitar" on the band's first album for a better example of Terry Kath's guitar genius. "Mississippi Delta Blues" is evidently a first attempt at the piece, but Kath's tentative stabs at shaping the tune's melodies sound nothing like the wonderful result that eventually landed on the band's 11th album. And only the most devoted fan wants to hear any of the band's hits (the marvelous "Dialogue," in this instance) diced and sliced to fit the procrustean bed of AM radio's infamous 3-minute slot.

Nevertheless, "Chicago V" has terrific music that can be admired by fan and non-fan alike. Like them or not, Chicago was a terrific band whose combined talents occasionally crossed the line into musical sublimity. And for that, I am grateful and a still a fan.
More Chicago V free music reviews:
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Description of Chicago V

Expanded & remastered. The band's first single-LP album, includes the crossover hit 'Saturday In The Park' and nine more original tracks, plus bonus tracks 'A Song For Richard And His Friends' (studio without vocals), 'Mississippi Delta City Blues' (1st recorded version with scratch vocal) & 'Dialogue (Part I & II)' (Single version). 2002.
Though it may not have been clear at the time, Chicago's fifth album marked something of a turning point for the most successful American rock act of the 1970s. V was not only the band's first single-disc release, but, incredibly, its 11th LP worth of music in just three years. That Herculean workload may have watered down their previous studio album (III), but it also seemed to teach them a few important lessons as well. Here they manage not only one of their biggest hits (the joyous "Saturday in the Park"), but a stubborn, focused retrenchment of their most adventurous musical instincts in the bargain. That notion is clear from the intentionally ironic opening of "A Hit by Varese," through cuts like "While the City Sleeps," "State of the Union," and the autobiographical "Alma Mater," which bristle with the band's jazzy instincts and avant-garde influences. Even the album's other Top 30 hit, "Dialogue (Part I & II)," remains one of its more unusual chart entries. This digitally remastered new edition contains three bonus tracks (a Terry Kath noise-guitar-powered, previously unreleased studio take of "A Song for Richard and His Friends," the gritty outtake "Mississippi Delta City Blues," and the original single edit of "Dialogue") as well as Don Heckman's new liner notes, which feature insightful comments from several band members. --Jerry McCulley

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