As long as Lee Loughnane, the Chicago member who supervises Chicago album reissues, let Jessup touch the master tapes, we're going to have the same discussion again and again for every reissue of Chicago albums and the same feeling of disappointment and anger.
Making a new album--even a crappy one--is hard work and costly. Chicago's days of having the most remote chance of getting on the charts are long gone, as are the chances of selling more than a few thousand physical copies of anything new they release. It does not appear that anyone in the group has an artistic fire in the belly that would lead to productivity in the face of market ambivalence. And they have so many hits that having new product to tour is pretty irrelevant (and probably a distraction, because they can fill an entire concert with hits that they pretty much "have" to do). I'd say the chances of Chicago entering "the studio" again to create a new album are pretty much zero.
I know others have addressed this, but I don't understand when you release something and state "the band will release all eight Carnegie Hall shows in their entirety for the first time" but you fix a mistake. That just makes no sense. We know you were a great, professional band. You played it better in other sets I am sure. That flub is part of the story of the run of shows. Makes me think they might fix other mistakes, and to me, that is not in the spirit of what "complete" sets should be.
To me, the current ten-man lineup with seven non-original members is NOT Chicago. They are Chicago in name only,
So, is this an early entry into : An Expensive Boxed Set That Just Wasn't Worth The Money? | Steve Hoffman Music Forums ??????
Yet they may well be the only major band formed in 1967 that has three original members. Problem for me is that the new guys are too new and haven't been part of any significant history. I was fine with ensconced non-originals Scheff, Champlin and Imboden.
So are we to believe that all these extra tracks included on this set are all previously mixed back when the 4Lp set came out or are they keeping the "Remixed by Tim Jessup" credit under wraps right now. I don't know how these things would have been done back then but would you mix all those tracks from 8 nights when the plan was to only issue 4LP's. Pick out the best of the bunch and then mix what you are going to use. I think I read where they have been working on this for close to a year. Is that a long time for just mastering and sequencing and not mixing from the multi's. Again, maybe someone else would have a better opinion on this that mine. Just thinking.
It's very unlikely that most of the unreleased stuff was given more than a rough mix at the time. Honestly, I've always thought that even the released album was not all that great sounding.
The other problem is that the new guys are covering literally the most essential instruments in a rock band. I know Chicago's signature is the horns, but replacing guitar, bass, and drums and calling it the same band just isn't gonna fly. I actually do really like Howland as a guitarist, and Imboden was a great drummer, but of course by the time they joined it was already a pure nostalgia band. Certainly that band could've legitimized itself by making some great new music (whether or not it tore up the charts or sold a bunch of copies is irrelevant...if that's the only reason you make music, you probably shouldn't be making music), but instead cobbled together XXX which barely sounds like a band at all, and Now which someone forgot to write tunes for, I guess? I certainly think a lineup of Howland, Imboden, Champlin, Scheff and the remaining original guys could've gone into a studio and cut an old-style Chicago record for the fun of it, but they were never going to do that, sadly.
I would say they did on the first batch of Christmas recordings, especially the Phil Ramone tracks. Lots of good and interesting arrangements, enough uptempo material for a change, and a real live-band sound with old-school producers (Roy Bittan also) who didn't try to make them sound more contemporary. Of course you have to like Christmas music. The second half of XXX is at least listenable. But they don't say anywhere that it has a slow side and a fast side, so a lot of people never got that far.
There's literally nothing more artistically bankrupt than Christmas music. I don't even count those as real albums. There's scraping the bottom of the barrel, and below that layer, there's christmas music. You have to wonder, a little, whether Stone Of Sisyphus coming out in 1993 like it was supposed to would've sent the band on a different trajectory. Sure, they woul'dve been a nostalgia act on the road, but releasing that album to a warm reception from fans might've convinced them to keep going as a creative entity. There was certainly some gas left in the tank at that point, and if they'd been willing to full-out abandon their David Foster-era sensibilities and return to their roots, they could've done something interesting, perhaps. there's actually a few decent tunes on XXX..."90 Degrees and Freezing," "Caroline," "Already Gone," but of course the production makes it so sterile, and the ballads sucked. Like the Foster albums, you never feel like the entire band was in the studio at the same time, which is just criminal for a band who relied so heavily on vibe and interplay during their early years.
I heard something from their Christmas album at a temp job I had one December where someone had a radio tuned to an all-day Christmas station. It was fun, from a similar cloth to their lighter early songs like "Wake Up Sunshine."
I know that last Christmas record had a pretty murky sound; how did anyone there not hear this? @walrus for my money, Stone of Sisyphus and Night and Day and the first Christmas record were very well done. I got an advance cassette from the label back in March of 94 before SOS was to get released; boy, I was bummed. And as far as sound quality of live albums, you cannot beat Live In Japan.
I just started to re-read Danny Seraphine's book to excite me about you guys spending your hard-earned cash. I will remain content with the 4-CD box.
