What do you want? I'm giving everything I have,

I'm even trying to see if there's more.

Locked deep inside, I've tried.

Can't you see this is me.

What do you need? Is it someone just to hurt

So that you can appear to be smart?

To keep a steady job, play god?

What do you really know?

You parasite, you're dynamite

An oversight, misunderstanding what you hear

You're quick to cheer, and volunteer

Absurdities, musical blasphemies.

Oh Lord, save us all.

—"Critics' Choice" Robert Lamm

Big Elk Music ASCAP ©1973

My sympathies to Mr. Lamm. As for the rest of the album, it should by now be clear that Chicago has become the prisoner of its own image. In trying so hard to act the role of the "hippest-dudes on the planet," they have only succeeded in caricaturing themselves through overbearing pledges of allegiance to the freak-flag of Hippiedom. It's sad that the group has yet to realize the correlation between their actions and the critical response they generate, but sadder still is the fact that many of the folks who chuckle at them haven't taken the time to differentiate between the group's right-on buffoonery and the music that accompanies it.

If they did, they'd find that they probably had Chicago pegged wrong all along. The Windy City boys may have tried to come on hipper-than-thou, but after their exceptional debut album their product has in fact been strictly MORsville. Not that this should be taken as an excuse for shoddy musicianship, it's just that when people come to grips with where Chicago is really at musically, it's a lot easier to understand them.

Chicago VI contains two more-or-less outstanding commercial ditties, either of which would improve the average radio playlist a hundredfold. Terry Kath's "Jenny" is a real treat. Its simplicity is refreshing—guitar, bass, drums and the pedal steel of J.G. O'Rafferty thrown in for good measure—and the results are a complete success. An ethereal ballad about the love between man and dog, it's so straightforward that it transcends the corniness of the subject.

Peter Cetera's "In Terms of Two" is similarly successful, its major attraction being the youthful harp-blowing of an unidentified harmonicat. It gives direction to the song's otherwise mechanical rhythmic backing and serves as a focus for listener accessibility. Cetera's lyrical arrangement is commendable: He returns to the phrase "in terms of two" not out of repetition but as a restatement of the song's major theme. Once again it's the simple honesty of this song that pulls it through, a quality too much in absence from the rest of Chicago VI.

The other six songs are nearly indiscernible variations of what has by now come to be known as the "Chicago Formula." Pretentious "we gotta get it together" lyrics, muddled musical arrangements and a mix that lacks specific direction are rolled into a glib and slick package, that seems devoid of emotional involvement on the part of the band.

It's doubtful as to whether Chicago will ever return to playing the kind of music that graced their first album. Now that was progressive! So all you folks out there had might as well hunker down and get to know Chicago for what they really are—a bunch of well-meaning guys who mean no harm to anyone. If they want to kid themselves about being anything other than rock & roll Doc Severinsens, it's fine with me. Take their music for what it's worth; after all, it's the middle of the road that makes the edges possible. (RS 141)

GORDON FLETCHER