A lot happened in the year between John McLaughlin’s first album as band leader and his second. Extrapolation was recorded in the UK right before moving to the States to join Tony Williams’ Lifetime. By the time Devotion was recorded, he had also recorded three groundbreaking records with Miles Davis, served as a sideman for Larry Coryell, and had a single all-night jam session with Jimi Hendrix.
That’s a lot to fit in a calendar year, and this disc carries the full weight of it.
Anyone who appreciates Chicago for their unique blend of progressive jazz and soft rock would be sorely disappointed by this disc.
You can never be sure what’s going to happen when you put on a Chicago record for the first time. What’s coming first? Soft rock? Swing? Progressive rock? In the case of V, the answer is “the closest Chicago ever came to free jazz.”
To the uninitiated (me), Chicago VII can seem like one of the group’s most impenetrable work. While Chicago has always seemed like two separate bands, one given to funky jazz fusion, the other firmly planted in radio-friendly soft rock, those two groups have always cooperated with eachother, trading off tracks. Here, the two camps are at odds.
Strange as it sounds, Chicago evades comprehension. Just when you think they’re a group that splits their time evenly between prog-tinged fusion and radio-friendly soft rock, they release Chicago XI, an album mostly entrenched in the middle of those two camps (and sadly, their last with guitarist Terry Kath before his death).
Like I mentioned in my last Chicago record, I’m a newbie to Chicago’s immense discography. It is my basic understanding that Chicago started out as an ambitious prog/fusion rock group and moved more towards the middle of the road as time went on, making millions on record sales at the expense of critical credibility. However, the more time I spend with the group, the more I realize that that dichotomy is not so neatly divided.
I’ve never really given Chicago too much of a chance. Maybe because I’ve always considered Electric Light Orchestra to be superior in terms of lushly orchestrated pop groups. Or maybe because I’ve always thought jazz-rock fusion was a lot better when it came from the jazz side. But, I’ve been trying to be a better poptimist, and seventies soft rock has been getting the better of me. And, I recently found four Chicago albums for a buck, so you can’t beat that.
