Holy crap these guys are amazing!
Note for note, that’s a perfect rendition of the studio version. The vocals are even better, maybe.
Chicago’s guitarist, Terry Kath, was decidedly not one of my guitar heroes growing up. I blame the crappy AM radios that I heard this song on, which obscured his playing and made him sound like, as another guitarist said, “a sloppy hack.” Today he’s generally given his due as one of his era’s best players.
I consider the proliferation of videos like this one to be one of the great benefits of the existence of an internet, and I wonder how old these guys were before they first heard this song.
Good horn section, too.
That’s how you turn a good song into a great performance: play with conviction and enthusiasm.
Great freaking job, Leonid & Friends! And thanks for posting it here, Mister Rik; that really made my afternoon.
Apparently there are no written charts available for this stuff, so Leonid, the bass player, transcribed absolutely everything by ear.
I’d link to the site where it’s explained, but Firefox is suddenly giving me a security warning about it. Weird, it wasn’t doing that yesterday.
In any case, these guys have plenty of videos up. Mostly Chicago stuff (Their album is titled “Chicagovich”), but they also do some Blood, Sweat & Tears, and some Earth, Wind & Fire.
Here’s Spinning Wheel:
Agreed. Those guys are amazing. Check them out on September by Earth, Wind and Fire.
Kath was the heart and soul of Chicago. They became a completely different band without him. I almost wish Kath had wound up in a different band from the very beginning. He had true virtuosic talent and also just raw, jagged, frenetic energy, the kind that all the best players have, like they’re just a conduit channeling electrified emotion straight through their instruments. Jaco Pastorius; Peter Green; John Bonham; they didn’t so much play the music as the music played them.
I don’t hate on Chicago, they had a cool concept with the big-band horns and arrangements, although I think Blood Sweat & Tears did them one better. But I wish we could have heard Kath playing in a more stripped down context, like a Cream-type power trio. Unfortunately his life was cut short so we’ll never know what he could have gone on to do.
Kath wrote and sang lead on one very good and under-known song, a real “deep track”, called Byblos - there are two versions of it, one sort of a slow bossa, the other a manic and almost desperate-sounding stream-of-consciousness story-song that gradually builds to wild and heartfelt intensity. The latter is the superior track IMO and is called Byblos (Rehearsal). This song is really worth a listen, it’s full of interesting nuances and fantastic rhythm guitar and drum parts.