Bloggerhythms

Chicago XXXVI: Now is the former Windy City band's latest attempt at new, original music and while it's better than the debacle that was   XXX  - their last album of newly recorded material unless you count the long delayed Stone of Sisyphus  - it's not what I hoped it would be. Of the four founding members still in the group's lineup only two, Robert Lamm and trumpeter Lee Loughnane were full time participants on XXXVI . Long time, second generation, member Bill Champlin, is gone too so it would be foolish of me to believe the large ensemble would record an album that sounds like their classic years. Chicago is no longer that band. My wish for Robert Lamm to lead the group again was fulfilled on this record, and sadly, that is one of the big problems with the project. Lamm, who wrote or co-wrote seven of the eleven new tunes, is back as the group's principal writer which means he's the person most responsible for this mess of an alb...

In short, Graham Nash's Wild Tales is one of the best musical autobiographies I ever read. To his credit the singer-songwriter used a lot less ink than Keith Richards needed to tell his tale while offering us many riveting details about his personal life and solo career, as well as the careers and lives of The Hollies, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Mama Cass Elliott, Joni Mitchell, and a whole lot more. Nash grew up very poor in Manchester, England but unlike a lot of kids in his situation his home life was relatively stable with two parents who loved him even though his father was eventually imprisoned for theft (unfortunately it appears he was innocent). An interesting pre-Hollies anecdote is about a 1959 battle of the bands that featured a lot of up and coming British rockers including Nash and his best friend from childhood, Allan Clarke, with whom he would eventually form The Hollies. This is where the two teenagers first encountered three Liverpool kids who...