Customer Reviews

Chicago V

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Given the transitional nature of Chicago V, I can't imagine that all diehard fans of the more poppy Chicago material and all diehard fans of the first three recordings would like it, although there must be some overlap. As a huge fan of the first three recordings (and as a bassist), I feel that Chicago V (1972) along with their 1969 debut (Chicago Transit Authority), II, III, and the live recording IV, defines a period where the band was at a creative peak. Although there are the (so-called) "pop" hits "Saturday in the Park", "Dialogue Pts I and II", and I suppose to some extent "All is Well", Chicago V is far from being a pop vehicle. Instead, the music seamlessly bridges the gap between their smash hits and the wild, full-throttle acid jazz-rock of 69-71. Specifically, the "big band" type arrangements on V (nearly all of which were written by Robert Lamm) sacrifice none of the instrumental virtuosity or experimentation of earlier works, although the pieces are somewhat shorter and presented in a tighter, more cohesive format. For example, there are no lengthy song-cycle suites or extended guitar solos. It does not however, take a careful listener to appreciate the sheer complexity of the arrangements on V, which emphasize dense ensemble work, odd time signatures (the waltzy 3/4 and 6/8 are used quite a lot, amongst others), and unusual chord voicings, in addition to the wide stylistic range of the music, which runs the gamut from the gospel-ish vocal parts on Alma Mater, to the awesome jazz-rock of "State of the Union" and "Goodbye". All of the musicians are absolutely top shelf and Peter Cetera is unquestionably the most under-rated bass player in all of rock. In fact, he is one of the few rock bassists that can play a convincing walking bass line. All in all, this recording (including the bonus tracks) makes a nice bookend at the conclusion of a five-album sequence of incredible music written during 1969-1972 that is also indicative of future trends. As a fan of both jazz-rock and progressive rock, Chicago V works for me on a number of levels and is highly recommended along with CTA, II, III, and IV.

CHICAGO V marked the beginning of a new incarnation of the Chicago sound. After 1971's double CHICAGO III (which depleted their reserves of songs) and the quadruple set CHICAGO AT CARNEGIE HALL, the band decided it was time for a change. Recorded in a mere few days in September 1971, CHICAGO V was released the following July featuring just one disc and ten relatively-shortened tracks. Of course "Saturday In The Park" and "Dialogue (Parts 1 & 2)" are well-known to Chicago aficionados, but what about the rest? Chicago basically merged their freewheeling avant-garde and melodic tendencies together to create classics like "A Hit By Varese", "All Is Well", "Now That You're Gone" and "Goodbye". Robert Lamm hit his peak on this album, authoring a staggering 8 of the 10 tracks. The album's enormous acceptance was evidenced by its incredible NINE weeks at # 1, making it the biggest album of 1972. Now, CHICAGO V is fleshed out with an early take of Terry Kath's fine "Mississippi Delta Blues", a backing track for "A Song For Richard And His Friends" (which appeared on the live CHICAGO AT CARNEGIE HALL) and the single version of "Dialogue". And take it from me, it all sounds GREAT. A well-done reissue.

This was the last "good" CHicago album, before they pandered completely to top-40 tastes and drowned in sentimentality.

The lower brass is great here, especially in "Hit by Varese." This song challenges the band's followers to think about musical forms outside the "new norm" - just like Satie on BST's second album.

But, anyway, my favorite is "While the City Sleeps." I was working the midnight shift in a factory in Chicago at the time of this song's popularity, and it was exactly the same rhythm as a large hydraulic machine which ran all night long. Tis music, for such an unlikely reason, is part of the soundtrack of my own life growing up in Chicago.

But it was the last time the band tried to create and maintain a dialogue..."We can make it happen." We really let the boys down, I guess...but then I guess that they let us down, too.

Chicago V, released in 1972, remained the band's most successful album until Chicago 17, when that recording, with it's barrage of power pop hits went on to become their biggets seller after it's release in 1984. The success of Chicago V can be attributed, in large part, to the strength of the hit single "Saturday in the Park". This is truly a signature Chicago pop composition in every sense with Robert Lamm belting out the lead vocal with his warm timbre, the Chicago horns playing in classic style and great harmony vocal and rhythym section arrangements. This song stands as one of the all-time great pop music recordings and still sounds fresh today coming over the radio due to it's incomparable melody, timeless style and lean n' clean production value.
Unfortunately, because of the magnitude of the popularity of "Saturday in the Park", Chicago V is sometimes referred to as the point where Chicago tuned "pop", "soft" or "sold out".

Fortuntely, none of this is true. This album finds the legendary band presenting some of their most focused writing and most avante-garde approach to the compositions and arrangements as found on any Chicago release.
The album's opening cut, "A Hit By Varese" is an energetic uptempo offering in 6/8 time. The horn section members trade solos and really stretch into some great dissonant territory. The rhythym section of Terry Kath on guitar, Peter Cetera on bass, Robert Lamm on keyboards and Danny Seraphine on drums are clearly at their best as a unit on this tune and throughout the entire CD. Every track on the album finds each of these great musicians exploring the boundaries of their instruments, effortlessly jamming through every arrangement.
As with every Chicago recording, Danny Seraphine just explodes with his drum parts. Arguably the best musician in the band, Chicago V stands as a definitive showcase of Danny's cutting edge chops and unique rock-jazz style.
Other great tunes such as "While the City Sleeps" and "State of the Union" remain as some of Chicago's most exploratory work. "Dialogue Parts I & II", the album's other single release, is simply terrific with Terry Kath's bluesy baritone and Peter Cetera's crisp tenor trading the lead vocal in Robert Lamm's classic, and perhaps best, political statement song.
The the band is very experimental on this album while maintaining the qualities that made up the Chicago "sound" for years: great lead and harmony vocals, interesting, powerful and tuneful horn arrangements by James Pankow, and strong melodic songwriting.
Chicago V is one of the best Chicago recordings, with the band finding great focus in their work and ability to blend their avante-garde inclinations and popular music styles.
An exciting listening experience and just a great CD.

In the summer of 1972, I had just finished 6th grade. Everywhere you went that summer, every party, every event, you could hear this album playing. My brother, who had just gotten his driver's license, had the 8-track of it, and played it non-stop. It was part of the soundtrack of the summer of '72, that short "feel-good" interlude between the anger of the 60s and Watergate. Counter-culture was going mainstream, gaining acceptance, and Chicago was at their craft writing the music.

It was when stoners and "bandzies" all loved Chicago at the same time, not to mention critics and the record-buying public.

Everything good about Chicago comes together on this album. Only they could protest while making us smile.

When "A Hit By Varese" opens with a Terry Kath Free Form into, you are about to hear The Original Seven at their creative and professional peak. Another reviewer said it best - this is hard, driving rock-jazz with a vengeance.

This timeless album deserves to be in every music-lover's collection. I love the Rhino reissue with extensive notes and bonus tracks.

I give it a 5-star because there are no 6-stars. There is not a better album by anybody, anywhere.

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.

The people that call this a transitional album are mostly right. First, it's the first single (not double) album. It doesn't have long song-suites or tracks that clock in at 15 or 20 minutes. The single most deceptive thing about this album is that the only hit single is "Saturday in the Park," a poppy, happy song. The remainder of the album is much less "pop." It's probably their most jazz-influenced album, really. Hard jazz. Cookin' jazz. This should send instrumentalists into the stratosphere. The standout thing...and a big surprise...is that Peter Cetera displays on this album that he's one of the best Paul McCartney-style bass players in rock history. Really. Don't laugh. He totally is. The main thing about this album is that unlike Chicago II and Chicago III, this album has a "feel" to it---a flavor or a theme. Hard jazz rock. It doesn't drift into country or folk or reggae...it sticks to its style. It's a great album.

If all you knew of Chicago (the band) was based solely on their post-1982 output (which consisted primarily of monstrous, hook-friendly hits for the lovelorn that could put the population of many small countries into a Diabetes-induced coma) - than you are missing out on some of the most adventurous and experimental rock ever created by not digging deeper into their earlier catalog.

There is little argument that at their creative peak (1967-1976) the horn-based ensemble redefined and blurred the boundaries of acid rock, jazz fusion and classical composition into an exquisitely intricate string of Top 40 and AOR hits. In the annals of rock history they are, for better or worse, the "Beatles in Reverse."

Whereas the Lads from Liverpool evolved from a very simple singles band into a complex stew of psychedelia and political anthem-making, Chicago's canvass unfortunately became very small - initially wrapping progressive social protest around long form composition to a final (and current) incarnation as a lyrically bereft hits band, sans horns and any palpable creative pulse.

While regrettable, their regress in no way diminishes the stature of their initial output (Chicago Transit Authority - Chicago VII) of which Chicago V stands as the most accessible exemplar of their signature sound. As their first single-disc offering, after a string of double-disc+ releases, their sound is tight, the horns bright and the harmonies complex all punctuated by a cohesive mood flow and lyrics, that while dated by the politics of the time; did aspire to something beyond an unremarkable Hallmark Moment. It is also worth mentioning that the record contains their biggest and greatest hit (IMHO) - Saturday In The Park - a song that ranks as one of the Top 20 singles of all time.

If you want to capture a great band in peak form, book a ticket to Chicago V. Highly recommended!

I have been a long time Chicago fan. (Since the mid 70's)
A lot has already been said about this album already and, if you but this CD, more in the liner notes. Here is my input. Listen to the bass line in this album and you can tell you are listening to true musicians. When you listen to "Goodbye" you realize that Peter Cetera's talent goes beyond the high voiced pop singer. Peter is also the bass player and the bass lines here are very intricate. In my opinion this is the one Chicago album that appeals to the more serious musician. Even though it includes "Saturday in the Park" one of their biggest top 40 hits.

There are several reasons the DVD-Audio version of "Chicago V" is out of print and commanding high prices from re-sellers: It contains some of the best music Chicago ever made, and the surround mix presents that music to great effect.

As others have noted, "V" was the first single-disc album of Chicago's career. The first three albums were doubles, and "Chicago at Carnegie Hall," the fourth, was a monstrous four-disc set (we're using vinyl terminology here, but back in the early 1970s, that was really the only terminology there was, unless you were gullible enough to buy 8-tracks. Band members themselves have said the demands of producing double albums eventually sapped their songwriting. And yet, at least in the case of one band member, that doesn't appear to be true on "Chicago V." Of the ten tracks here, if you count the two parts of "Dialogue" separately, eight of them were written by keyboardist Robert Lamm, and the songs sound anything but tired.

The disc begins with "A Hit by Varese," with Lamm lamenting the apparent inability for pop music to open its ears to experimentalism even as it expresses the hope that a composer as relatively obscure and difficult as Edgard Varese could have a hit single. The song's challenging beat and Terry Kath's grinding guitars backed up Lamm's utopic lyrical sentiments with a hard-edged musical stance.

Lamm's "All Is Well" sounded much more conventional and poppy, but a careful listen to the lyrics reveals a persona trying to talk himself into believing that everything's going to be all right. It was followed by "Now That You've Gone," the album's sole composition by James Pankow. With its juicy horn arrangement, it was probably the most "Chicago-sounding" track on side one. Lamm closed out the side with the two part "Dialogue," sung by Kath and bassist Peter Cetera. Musically pleasing, it was also lyrically stimulating, with the dialogue basically being an argument between staying engaged with politics and culture vs. sticking one's head into the sand. Obviously, that message remains relevant to this day.

Side two began with Lamm's ominous "While the City Sleeps," which asserts that shadowy men are finding new ways to "tell us dirty lies." Again, a song that seems to have resonance now, despite having been recorded nearly four decades ago. It was followed by "Saturday in the Park," the album's huge hit single; penned by Lamm, the song certainly is a pleasant piece of ear candy, yet it wasn't mere fluff, being, rather, an affectionate take on being alive and plugged into New York City's Central Park -- its music and communal sensibility at the time the song was written.

Lamm's "State of the Union" railed against the hypocrisies wrought by tight-assed society and authoritarianism, while "Goodbye" was a fairly standard but still haunting love song.

The album ended with Kath's brilliant "Alma Mater," an absolutely lovely but somewhat stark track -- Chicago's horn section does play on it, but only briefly and toward the end. Meanwhile, Kath sings of the joys of success, of "living in that dream" of stardom, which many achieve but few handle truly well. "We must set brand-new goals," Kath sings. "We must not lose control." Sadly, Kath did just that over the next few years; numerous sources have cited his drug and alcohol abuse, and in January 1978 he pointed a gun at his own head and pulled the trigger. It was not suicide -- Kath believed the gun was not loaded -- but it was a bizarre and needless death nonetheless.

The 5.1 mix here isn't fancy. Generally, with multichannel mixes, the idea is to separate the instruments and vocals as much as possible to achieve better sonic clarity. That does happen here, but the production and engineering on this mix also wisely preserves the cohesiveness of the Chicago sound. The band's horns, as well as the voices of Kath, Lamm and Cetera with help from trumpeter Lee Loughnane, were always meant to sound as units. That sensibility has been preserved here, even as the aural space has been opened up.

"Chicago V" is one of the band's very best efforts, and the DVD-Audio version is nothing less than spectacular. If you're a multichannel fan, don't hesitate -- pay that extra cash and have a listen.