Customer Reviews

Life Is Good in My Neighborhood

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Outside of "In This Country", "My Neighborhood" version A & B and "When Will The World Be Like Lovers". The rest of the album is a waste of time. His first and third (latest) albums are far superior. Give up the social commentary Robert!

This cd features Robert's ability to write songs about daily life situations. From the title track, to All The Years, Murder On Me, When Will The World Be Like Lovers, the music and lyrics blend very well together.

Robert Lamm's most recent solo work is not bad. It doesn't match up to his best writing during the early 70's with Chicago, but not much else does. The best tracks here are "All The Years", which was written for an unreleased Chicago album, "My Neighborhood, Version A", written for his birthplace of Brooklyn, and "In This Country", another song rooted in today's social commentary of the times. "Life" would be a good addition to your CD collection.

Robert Lamm has enjoyed a long and succesful career as a keyboard player and vocalist with Chicago. Over the last 30 years with the group, he's released two solo albums. The latest, Life is Good in My Neighborhood, demonstrates why Lamm should stick with the tried and true.

Although Lamm penned some of Chicago's signature tunes in the 1970's such as Saturday in the Park, his creative juices in that area dried up years ago. Lamm's writing never could compare to the lyrical soaring ballads of Peter Cetera that fueled Chicago's second rise to the top in the late 70's and 80's, and his latest efforts are his poorest yet.

Lamm's distinctive voice and history as an original member of the third best-sellling rock band of all time (behind only the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) is his legacy, not his song writing. His tunes are always full of political and social commentary, and here the music and lyrics are tortured even more than in the past to fit Lamm's themes.

Life has the sound of a early 80's garage band. All synth and no horns or strings, thinly arranged and sung, Life lacks the engaging horn arrangements of James Pankow, the strings of David Foster, or the melodic talents of Diane Warren, all keys to Chicago's success in recent years.

The title track is a catchy ditty, but is shallow and ultimately unsatisfying. The other songs on the album are aimless meandering often lacking even the most basic line, drive or melodic direction. "Tabla," an ode to some vague martyr to one of Lamm's causes, may be the worst song ever recorded by a star of Lamm's standing, and that is no easy mark to hit.

Robert Lamm, though fairly anonymous as an individual, remains one of the most successful popular musicians of all time. His role in the formation and continuation of Chicago is one to be applauded and appreciated. Unfortunately, his solo efforts make it all too plain that Mr. Lamm is no solo act.

The sound is a little over-synthesized which makes it sound dated, but beneath all the electronica are some good Robert Lamm songs. "My Neighborhood", "When Will The World Be Like Lovers", "Murder On Me", "In This Country" all stand out for me. If you're a Robert Lamm fan (and I am) this rates about four out of five stars. If your a casual listener, I'd guess it to be about three stars. Overall, I'd say the album is a good listen.

This has to be one of the worst solo efforts of all time. Considering the talent Mr. Lamm had at one time in his life this effort is startling. If you threw this cd in the trash the trash would toss it back out. Don't buy it.

It's funny how Robert Lamm is so often lambasted for not being the songwriter he was thirty years ago when he was writing some of Chicago's biggest hits - Beginnings, 25 or 6 to 4, Dialogue and Saturday in the Park. Someone in this string had the audacity to claim Lamm's writing never compared to the "lyrical soaring ballads of former Chicago bassist Peter Cetera." Cetera is nothing but a Top 40 formulaic ballad writer. His songwriting stopped being interesting, and stopped being innovative, when he left Chicago. We need a voice such as Lamm's in today's society, which seems to have forgotten the environment in its insane pursuit of the American Dream.

Instead of being bashed here, Lamm should be lauded for continuing to push the envelope in contemporary music. He stated he doesn't want to continue to do the same thing over and over again. He wants to try something new, and in today's tired music industry that requires everything to fit into nice neat boxes, I applaud Lamm's efforts to hold on to his "voice." What artist, songwriter, novelist, painter or sculptor doesn't wish to see growth over their longevity? As a writer myself, it's a rush to look at something I wrote fifteen years ago and remember where I was at that moment in my life, emotionally, intellectually. What a drag it would be if I was writing the same fiction today in the same voice or style I had then.

Life in My Neighborhood is a fine addition to Lamm's legacy, if a little under-produced in comparison to Too Many Voices and Subtlety and Passion. If you wish to hear Chicago, buy a Chicago CD, but there are some fine tunes on this disc. The title track is perhaps the most commercial with its catchy hook. My preferences are for When the Rain Becomes (a haunting ballad), All the Years, Murder on Me, Ain't No Ordinary Thing (reminiscent of the late Robert Palmer), and When Will the World Be Like Lovers?

A fine CD, recommended for the more discriminating musical palate.

This album was quite a disappointment. Lamm had begun to take a more active role in songwriting in Chicago in the late 1980's after Cetera's departure forced a redistribution of the songwriting burden within the group. Growth was shown on Chicago 18, 19 and 21. However, Lamm only contributed one or two songs on each of these albums. Releasing a full album evidently presented a great challenge. Apart from the more energetic songs on this album such as "When Will The World Be Like Lovers", "In This Country" ,"Ordinary Thing" as well as the forboding "Murder On Me", Lamm sounds as if he has lost interest in songwriting. The album shows that Lamm's production skills have somehow become more limited as time has passed. Lamm is overly reliant on rudimentary sysnthesizers that give the album an atmosphere that it was produced prior to Gary Neuman's "Cars". The sound on some tracks is muddled. The production on his far superior first solo album "Skinny Boy" was much more clearer in 1974. Try that one instead. I do hope that he tries another solo project based on his over all tremendous track record.