Cincinatti Airport Security

Overall Album Score: 8.8 out of 10

Before Chicago sucked, they didn't suck. Right now, I'm not too sure at what point in their career they started to suck. But I do know that Chicago was a sucky band, at the latest, by the 1980s. In 1969, Chicago didn't suck. OK, that's sorted out. (Oh, and they were officially called "Chicago Transit Authority," but I'm going to refer to them as "Chicago" here on out.)

I took a music appreciation course a long time ago, and for some reason the professor singled out Chicago as one of the great rock bands of all time. He admitted that he didn't know much about rock music (obviously). But apparently a friend of his dragged him to a Chicago concert before they were famous in '60s, and they left quite an impression on him. He was also a trumpet player. That probably explains it.

Anyway, let's not talk about some professor whose name I can't even remember. Let's talk about this wonderful album. It's HUGE. You see that there's only 12 tracks in this album, but know that this thing is 1.3 hours long. It was unusual for a rock band to be allowed to cut a double album as their debut, but here is this monstrosity. The story seems to be that they were originally going to make a normal, full-length album, but they recorded too much material for it. So, they decided to go ahead and record more material to make it a double. Honestly, this album probably would have been better if they would have just stuck with the full-length. When you see tracks like the utterly useless guitar solo "Free Form Guitar" and the rather excessive 15-minute rock jam "Liberation" tacked on at the end, you're going to think that brevity might have been the better option for them.

At the same time, the epic quality of these tracks, in general, is one of the album's main benefits, so how can you rightly want to cut it all down to 40-50 minutes? Nah, keep the lengthy tracks. Just know that this is also one of the album's primary pitfalls. This will inevitably become a chore to sit through except among the most patient of people.

Now let's talk about this album's greatness. These songs are wonderful! Their trademark horn sound works beautifully throughout this. That brought some unique sound to these already wonderful songs. My favorite work on here is clearly "Questions 67 & 68," which is also their most poppy track. That's the best of both worlds, in my opinion --- great melody and instrumentation.

This is a remarkably solid album, despite its excessive length. The instrumentation, all around, is remarkable. I'd wager to say this is among the best of all rock 'n' roll... It was quite a product, and it manages to stick out in its year of release, 1969, which seems to be the year when rock hit its peak. That's weird to think of about Chicago if you only know them for their '80s work, but it's all true. (Likewise, you'd probably be surprised that the Bee Gees also created an interesting, near masterpiece in 1969 called Odessa.) Well, such was the magic of 1969, I guess. All of that said, it's not difficult to imagine these guys were capable of making a perfect album, but they decided to stuff this up with filler instead. Well, apart from "Free Form Guitar," at least it's glorious filler.

Overall Album Score: 8.8 out of 10 (This band was awesome once! If you take out "Free Form Guitar" and the closing few tracks, this might have been in 9-territory. This is still highly recommendable for the GREAT SONGS.)

Average Song Score: 8.5 (The songs are all well-written and well-performed. A few major oversights keeps it from achieving a higher score.)

Album Tilt: 8.5 (It's overwhelming in both a good way and a bad way. I'll be good and keep it the same.)

Artist Rating: 9.5 (This is pretty amazing when you think about it... I don't think there are too many albums around like this-- especially in the '60s. You kind of want to be enthusiastic about it.)

Track Reviews

Introduction 9.5/10

This is a mighty long introduction. Six minutes! But what an introduction. It doesn't get boring for one nano-second. These funky horns playing throughout give it the life that it needed. Such was Chicago's early signature sound, after all. The best thing is that the song doesn't just recycle the same boring old hook throughout. The beginning is tremendously upbeat, funky and glorious in all ways that a band like CHICAGO can be. The vocal melody isn't the most creative, but it's catchy. They do an interesting transition in the middle for a slower, more lite-jazzy section. Despite that the mere term "lite-jazz" makes me vomit in my mouth, this is actually great jazz. The mood is so smooth that it's probably even effective for your bowels if you're having blockage. But the real winner there is that trumpet solo. Wooooooo. That section doesn't last too long, and I'm surprisingly sad because of that. What ensues is a crazy jazz-fusion section. It rarely gets better than that folks.......... The sound within this section is varied, and it's completely wild. Wow. Great work.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time it is 9.5/10

A bit of avant-garde piano starts these festivities, and it's off on the right note if you ask me! (Who doesn't love listening to avant-garde piano?) That turns into a slightly off-kilter jazz fusion tune, as one might expect. And then it turns into an extremely mainstream jazz tune. It's catchier than anything Frank Sinatra would sing, and it's enormously entertaining. I love how varied this song is --- it might seem clumsy if anybody else was doing it, but it's delightful to hear this done so well.

Beginnings 9/10

This begins with a nicely strummed acoustic guitar! A bass guitar comes up and then some horn sections. Some nicely harmonized vocals take over and a rather catchy melody. They don't change that idea, fundamentally, throughout the eight-minute running length, but that's not a negative. The middle turns into more of a jazz-fusion song, as expected. Except this sounds very epic. Let yourself get caught up in this thing! The seven minute song has real inertia! The horns don't seem to run out of ideas, anyway. They're playing different things throughout this... This is all quite entertaining. Even the end when they just succumb to some heavily tribal rhythms --- it's early Peter Gabriel without the synthesizers! Yay!!!

Questions 67 & 68 10/10

Maybe when these band members were in college, they used to write and sing songs during final exams to help them cheat. Or maybe this song is just called "Questions 67 & 68" for some other random reason. Anyway, this is a remarkably hooky song, and one that I'm sure you've heard before. Their chord progression is really worthy of distinction --- you hear this song's epic gloriness right from the beginning. It almost rivals King Crimson's chord progression for "In the Court of the Crimson King" released the same year, if I may be so bold. Anyway, this quite a catchy song, and everything is complimented perfectly with their beautiful, almost royal sounding trumpets. Are they turning British, I wonder? No? Well, I love the diversity though.

Listen 8.5/10

A relatively brief hard-rock song. Surprisingly I can't think of much to say about it. I've had it on repeat for a few listens. I like that bass-groove that it's based on. Naturally, they make their horns fit with such a song beautifully. This is really solid work. It's a shame this group would destroy their entire reputations eventually.

Poem 58 9/10

What an excellent jazz fusion song. This is more of an eight-minute showcase for the electric guitar than their signature horn section sound, which is utterly absent until the five-minute mark! And even then, it's just barely there until the very end. But, hey, the horn's not just a gimmick. They can make great music without it, too! This is an interesting song, and it sounds like they were enjoying structuring this song --- it's not just an enjoyable fusion song, but it's a work of art. These guys really knew how to be exciting.

Free Form Guitar 5/10

And now, the death-blow. Maybe Chicago weren't as brilliant as all of that? This is a huge mis-step. This consists of seven minutes worth of heavily distorted electric guitar solo. This is difficult to listen to, and I usually just press the skip button. I don't see much artistic merit to this and there's zero aesthetic merit. Boo! It nearly ruined this whole thing.

South California Purples 9.5/10

Here is an utterly solid little blues song. ("Little," what am I talking about, every freaking song on the album is hella long.) This one's six minutes long, to be exact. The electric guitar solo sounds much better when it's playing with a blues sequence than it does alone with that ear-deafening previous track. They include a bit of "I Am the Walrus" in here for good measure. It's nice to know they were Beatles fans... (I guess the Beatles were also among the first to use horns in pop music like this. They weren't denying it. Along with Blood, Sweat & Tears, apparently, which I haven't heard at this point.)

I'm a Man 8.5/10

Another fantastic bluesy song. The rhythm section is particularly well done here. There's probably more rhythms present here than you can count (but they make it easy on you, because they slowly layer the sounds on top of one another at the beginning). They apparently loved this rhythm, because they stopped the whole thing in the middle and succumbed to drum soloing. As I always say --- drum solos are not recommended for anyone. In fact, songs normally are better without drum solos than they are with drum solos. However, the one present here isn't nearly as bad as I've heard them. At the very least, this one's strictly rhythmic and not stupid like they can be. Otherwise, this song's melody doesn't impress me greatly, but it's perfectly nice. The center of attention, as always, is their instrumentation.

Prologue August 29, 1968 7/10

This is a brief snippet supposedly recorded during the 1968 Democratic national convention. They are chanting "The Whole World is Watching." Nixon was awesome.

Someday (August 29, 1968) 8/10

That chant is incorporated with this track. It isn't the most inspired song on the album. The melodic quality of this is average. The idea to bring in snippets of that protest chant was an interesting idea, but just a gimmick in the end. The instrumentation is very nice, but it's getting a bit obvious that the band didn't consider this one of their better songs.

Liberation 8.5/10

This whopping 15-minute song closes the album on a rocking note! The legend of this track is that it was played live in the studio with no overdubs whatsoever. For that reason, you'd expect it to be a little rough around the edges. It probably is. This track gives another moment for the guitarist (Terry Kath, I finally looked him up) to rock your socks off. This whole thing is a bit excessive, and I don't think they honestly needed a double album here if they're just going to fill it up with stuff like this. But as long as they have it, geeky kids can gawk all they want at those guitar licks knowing that they'll be nowhere near as awesome as that. This sort of culminates eventually into chaos that erupts, and then it gets calm in the final four minutes. This slowly builds up again. Apart from a bit of drum soloing, that was a nice ending for this.

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