Chicago Transit Authority Music Cd

Chicago - Chicago Transit Authority

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Chicago Transit Authority      Artist : Chicago      List Price : $7.98 USD        Your Price : $6.99 USD      ProductGroup: Music      Release Date : 2002-07-16      Studio : Rhino / Wea      Label : Rhino / Wea      Avg. Customer Rating : (83 reviews)

Reviews Customer Reviews for Chicago Transit Authority      Rock Music at its Peak?      Rating:      Listen to this and you will understand how powerfully creative rock music was in its true heyday. Anything was possible, and this record is one of the best examples of the combination of artistry, musicianship and, of course, commercial potential. Unfortunately the latter ultimately was pursued to its fullest by this group, but that says as much about the changing landscape as it does about the direction they took. Here -- and in subsequent albums up to "Live at Carnegie Hall" -- they went for it lock, stock and the smoking axe of one Terry Kath. Three lead singers, a bunch of virtuoso players, a great band. And the drummer was a monster, always a prerequisite.     Customer Reviews for Chicago Transit Authority Cd      Chicago shown to the nation      Rating:      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.