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Just because/Terry Kath rips one for the good of us all !


d  halfnote

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Back when they were a rock band (huh?) The Chicago Transit Authority (who?) had one of the most ferocious gtr players to walk the Earth.

Terry Kath, who also wrote much the band's material, although not this tune,

'though he seems to've laid claim to it in a v. stunning way.

Dig how he turns tuning up into a stall for the drum tech & then a powerful opening blast.

Then he takes the whole thing to Magic Gtr Heaven during his solo sections [2:55~5:35 & 6:20~finale].

:freak:

Too bad he never had the stunt gtr gig w/Zappa.

[video:youtube]

 

d=halfnote
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We used to sit around arguing....

 

Who came first, BLOOD SWEAT and TEARS, or CHICAGO?

 

Well, record-wise, B,S &T did, but most never thought one or the other were "copycatting" one another. Two completely different instrumentations and sounds, and no similarities in style of music. Both could only claim starting off with excellent guitarists. Steve Katz for "Blood" and of course, Terry Kath for Chicago. And I can't help but agree with Skip-----

"Insanely senseless loss."

Whitefang

I started out with NOTHING...and I still have most of it left!
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Terry Kath is one of the most under-rated guitarists of all time, along with Todd Rundgren. Todd has had the luck of living a good long life and maintaining late-life exposure by playing a lot with Ringo Starr, so he is FINALLY starting to get some due respect, but it's still not well-known that some of Jimi's sound design ideas were influenced by Todd's work with The Nazz (not meaning to take away from what an innovator Hendrix was).

 

The older I get, the more I appreciate Kath's playing and especially his singing -- so soulful! He didn't write very much, but when he did, it packed a punch, or contrarily, took us to someplace ethereal ("Song of the Evergreens" anybody?). He was a tasteful player who never lowered the passion but didn't have an ego that stepped on other people.

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Chicago is one of my favorite bands and Terry Kath played a major part in the music they put out there. Some of my favorite original tunes that have stood the test of time from back in the day. Fantastic horn section, vocals, keys, guitar, drums, the total package...Blood Sweat and Tears had some similar sound but I think Chicago topped them a little...great stuff! :cool:
Take care, Larryz
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Yeah, BST had good players (the sax player Fred Lispius plays regularly in the Boston area with my former instructor, so I've seen him in a smaller setting), but the music itself seemed more pop and less passionate overall, even though they had a great singer.

 

Chicago had multiple singers, like The Beatles (their biggest influence). Robert Lamm wrote the brunt of the material before the Warner Brothers signing (where they decided he was out-of-fashion, so he put all his great songs on solo albums for a couple of decades), but they had "auditions" to decide who sang each song, and Terry got handed quite a few of them to sing.

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Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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I was never 100% on Robert Lamm`s singing, sorry. Kind of uneven to my ears. Peter Cetera has a great voice, but it didn`t take him long to lose all semblance of rocking out.

Last fall a friend of mine, who is from Japan but lives in Canada, got married in Kyushu. She is a singer and keyboardist-she performed at her own wedding, that was pretty cool. For the last few years she has also been working as a studio engineer. I met her mom at the wedding. She mentioned to me that, one of the clients at the studio happened to be David Clayton-Thomas, BST`s singer.

Personally I think BST was always more of a brass band than Chicago. Nothing wrong with that-I just never heard anything where the guitar blasted off like Chicago`s early sounds. Open to any track recommendations.

Same old surprises, brand new cliches-

 

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www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandid=602491

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Re: CTA vs BST, they were completely diff types of bands w/ completely diff goals---at least at 1st.

BST, even w/Kooper, were a pop band w/horns, positioned somewhere between pop-soul & the stuff Kooper arranged for other bands (consider his orchestrations for the Rollicking, Rolling Stones & Skynny Lynerd, etc).

CTA were intended as a jazz-based rock band w/a deliberately (if not completely) anti-commercial bias + political overtones.

 

Back to TK, here's how he opened their 1st record (his composition + vox)

gtr solo = 405~500 / note the persistent police siren effect ;)

[video:youtube]

 

& a live version from 1972 [gtr solo = 4:10~5:00]

[video:youtube]

 

BTW, ever hear Chicago gettin' funky ?

Try this / not a TK tune but he acquits himself well, from the wah wah work & fills through the oddball solo [420~song finale]

[video:youtube]

 

d=halfnote
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Here TK brings out his inner FZ in one of the more relentless riff/solo devices made available by modern technology.

Starts like a typical poppy gtr track but then abt 0:43 some feedback sneaks it's head up followed by a dirty overdriven line that developes some trickilations (trick-elations ?) through the 2nd & 3rd minutes before settling into said, relentless Zappa-esque hypnotronica.

Almost scary if it weren't so "My GTR Wants To Kill Yer Mama-ish.

:D:rawk::freak:

[video:youtube]

 

d=halfnote
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& the more I back-check TK, the more he seems to've presaged later developments...sad that he's forgotten.

Partly, IMO, that's b/c of the turn CTA took down Main Street.

 

This song's got some of the most frenetic rhy-gtr since John Lennon took a bite outta "All My Loving"

but dial up 2:30 here & grab the whirlwind when he shifts to solo mode !

Then stick around for the ca-razy schtick he & Seraphine frost the cake with

(send the kids out the room for the, uh, "thank you" he ripostes after Lamm :o )

[video:youtube]

d=halfnote
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