Product Description
The landmark debut album by the Chicago Transit Authority contains some of the rock jazz ensemble’s biggest hits, including \Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is”Amazon.com
Having morphed–some would argue devolved–into a predictable ballad machine by the ’80s, it’s good to be reminded of Chicago’s original artistic ethos and vibrant promise. And what better place to start than their spectacular 1969 debut? This digitally remastered edition compiles t… More >>
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Chicago (or, as they were known on THIS album,”C.T.A”): Tuneless songs…amateur vocals…..a horn section that sounded like it was lifted from a Holiday Inn somewhere south of Atlanta, GA… OK, like Milli Vanilli didn’t say, “Girl, You KNOW It’s TRUE.” But the one thing that blatantly shows (heck, “displays,” or better, “throws in your face”) just what a bunch of pre-fab commercial nincompoop sludgemongers these creeps were, was their very own self-introduction on the left side of that fold-out album cover: “With this album, we dedicate our lives and our energies to the (giggle) revolution.” THIS, from the “band” that gave you “Color My World” and “Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?” But re that “revolution,” guess I’d better start rolling some bandages or something, huh? OH……you mean there WASN’T a “revolution?”
Rating: 1 / 5
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:15 pm
I never got the CD and Amazon and CDNOW Preferred Buyer’s Club ignored my emails. Go to a real store and buy your music.
Rating: 1 / 5
February 24th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Well, it’s a good start for the band, but it’s too much noise and senseless tracks here. It could be a great single album instead of a double one.
Rating: 3 / 5
February 24th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Chicago Transit Authority’s 1969 or ’70 debut album is extremely awesome. Those who own the LP could double their pleasure with this 2 LP set. Great tracks include DOES ANYBODY REALLY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? featuring a piano introduction which was deleted for the single version,BEGINNINGS and QUESTIONS 67 & 68. The follow-up was a 2 LP set also and CTA would shorten the band name to “Chicago”. Of course,this is a Chicago-based band with Peter Cetera leading the group,at least most of the time. Eventually,he would leave the band for a solo career which continues today. The band would lose Terry Kath in 1978 to suicide via a firearm. James Pankow would later work with the Bee Gees(in ’78).
Rating: 5 / 5
February 24th, 2010 at 1:40 am
I don’t know if Chicago has a transit authority or if the band that became Chicago borrowed that name from the organization, but I know what this group meant when it first arrived in 1969 — a new voice for Chicago, which many of its fans had subsitituted a swastika for the “hi” in the city’s name a year earlier during the events of August 1968.
No reviewer here has commented on track 10, Prologue, August 29, 1968, which is an actual slice of real speech given that night before a march at the Democratic National Convention in the city. The 10,000 Vietnam war protesters in town that week regularly tangled with a 30,000-strong of the city’s police force, National Guard and Army troops stationed there to quell any disturbance. This track is a piece of that history, now apparently forgotten by Chicago fans. That history led to repression and bloodshed in the streets of the city that was apparent to anyone watching the convention on television. Thus the slogan, “The whole world watches!”
As others around here have noted, the music on this album is magnificent, a then-new combination of big band, jazz-infused rock. All it lacked was a tenor lead singer, which the band picked up by its seocnd album. It’s hard to believe in the digital era that this once took two two full price 12-inch LPs to convey, with the second LP containing the group’s messaging about what happened at the Democratic National Convention the summer before. Coming two years before the much more well-known killings at Kent State Univeristy in 1970, this was the linchpin event that helped historians decide 1968 — the same year presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther Kind were assassinated — was the beginning of the second American revolution.
What does this have to do with Chicago and CTA? A lot. This was the backdrop for the group’s original album you’re considering buying now. In the days following release of this music, and before the group shortened its name and went completely commercial with its more popular and better-selling second album, Chicago Transit Authority and a lesser local group named Illinois Speed Press went around the country playing these songs and embellishing on the events of August 1968 that established Chicago as the American 1968 equivalent of Nazi Germany’s Munich.
None of this apparently survives any longer and all we are left with is the music and memories of a great group now so mangled and changed that its nineteenth album is hated by most of its fans. Here is a moment when we can remember what this group was about in the beginning, when it had a social message to go along with its music. That compliant about “Free Form Guitar” shows no ones remembers this album was as much about the mayhem that took place in then America’s second-largest city as it was about a new form of big band rock music infused with a jass touch.
It’s sad to think today this is completely lost. To relive and understand some of the history that helped create this album, read the book “No One Was Killed” (http://www.amazon.com/One-Was-Killed-Documentation-Chicago-August/dp/0966755715/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218629850&sr=1-1) or watch the film “Medium Cool”, (http://www.amazon.com/Medium-Cool-Christine-Bergstrom/dp/B00005QTAT/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1218629967&sr=1-1), both of which deal with the events of that turbulent time in Chicago.
Rating: 5 / 5