The paleontologists were even more amazed than the spectators clustered at the edge of the cordoned-off La Brea Tar Pits. After weeks of exploration, scientists had finally succeeded in dredging up the remains of a large and long-dead animal. The crowd oohed and ahed as a massive winch hoisted a perfectly preserved mastodon into view. But everyone was struck dumb when the beast, shaking off millenniums of slimy slumber, raised its huge head and trumpeted the ooze out of its trunk with a blaring wheeze.

Yes, Chicago has lumbered back into action with a new producer, a new guitarist and a new album that boasts an honest-to-God title instead of yet another Roman numeral. And if, on a scale of X, Hot Streets rates no higher than a V or VI, it's still the band's most interesting record in eons.

The death last January of guitarist Terry Kath seems to have given Chicago a new lease on life. Kath's replacement, Donnie Dacus, a veteran of tours with Boz Scaggs, Kiki Dee and Stephen Stills, is neither middle-aged nor MOR, and the rest of the group has made a valiant attempt to rock out of the complacency that eleven consecutive platinum LPs inevitably foster. Coming from Chicago, a raunchy rocker like "Little Miss Lovin'," with the Bee Gees yammering away in the background, startles like a rendition of "Saturday in the Park" by the Dead Boys.

Yet "Little Miss Lovin'" doesn't quite live up to its good, gritty intentions. Though Peter Cetera yowls with drooling lust for a nymphet in tight blue jeans, the horn section toodles demurely as if following Lester Lanin's baton at a debutante cotillion. And while Dacus' guitar licks are rough and ready, they don't lunge out of the mix as rock riffs should. Here and throughout Hot Streets, trombonist James Pankow's brass arrangements and Phil Ramone's production present problems, though they're so easily surmountable that I'm already looking forward to the next album.

Pankow, Lee Loughnane (trumpet) and Walter Parazaider (woodwinds) are able musicians. On Leon Russell's recent Americana, they sounded delightfully loose and full of juice. But they're seldom heard to advantage playing the stodgy charts that Pankow contributes to Chicago. Time and again, Hot Streets catches fire only to sputter out under a wet blanket of placid ensemble work when the horns should be fanning the flames by blowing hard and free. Pankow seems to have no idea how to write horn lines around Dacus, whose guitar solos are often tacked on like appendixes to the tail ends of songs. The solution, however, is simple: hire a sharp horn arranger like Allen Toussaint, Mel Collins, Chris Mercer or Harrison Calloway.

Phil Ramone, too, has something to learn about rock guitar–namely, turn it up! He's a marked improvement, though, over James William Guercio, the masterminding manager/producer from whom Chicago has finally parted. Ramone's experience is primarily with singer/songwriters and more intimate instrumental groupings, and he often seems to find an eight-man band unwieldy and elephantine. In time, however, he should be able to figure out how to make a song like "Alive Again," the disc's jubilant opening cut, drive more and bustle less.

True, a few numbers on Hot Streets would stymie any producer–especially the two written and sung by Robert Lamm, who apparently still thinks that jazz is what you hear in the lounge of a Ramada Inn. And no Chicago record would be complete without a couple of schlocky ballads. But Donnie Dacus' "Ain't It Time" rocks irrefutably, Peter Cetera's "Gone Long Gone" mimics the Beatles with pleasant, prefab charm and "Show Me the Way," written by drummer Danny Seraphine and one David "Hawk" Wolinski, ends on an intriguing note, with a robot chorus ominously chanting "Marching into your heart" as Lamm makes queasy noises on a synthesizer.

An LP by Chicago that rocks and intrigues?

With great dignity and a few groans, the mastodon heaved itself to its feet and, as a smile crinkled its leathery lips, began to pad ponderously toward Hollywood and Vine. (RS 280)

KEN EMERSON