While it's difficult to picture anyone failing to be amused by the intentional ludicrousness of, say, dedicating an album to the revolution or making the first addition to a lineup in eight years a conga player when nobody in the group can really sing, this superb satirical group's high jinks have traditionally gone over the head of your average rock buff. Even while critics have been acclaiming them indefatigably since their emergence, the masses have either vilified or simply ignored the Chi-guys.

The prophetically entitled VIII, though, will almost certainly liberate this witty eightsome from the onerous status of "critics' band" and endear them at least to an appreciable hunk of the mass audience, for the comedic intentions of this veritable laff-riot of an album will be instantly apparent to even the most imbecilic dullard.

The chuckles begin with the cover—yet another variation on that cornball logo they've been schlepping around to knee-slapping effect since 1969 — and turn into unabashed giggles with the discovery that, in addition to a free poster, one also gets a free iron-on patch with this record. How deliciously, ludicrously 1973! Leave it to Jimmy Guercio and his zany writers to neglect to mention in the ironing - on instructions that one must first remove the garment to which he desires to affix the patch. This critic giggled hysterically all the way to the emergency hospital with second-degree burns on his chest!

While no single cut is as hilarious as "Critics' Choice," Bob Lamm's classic sendup of people who get upset by disapproving reviews on Chicago VI or VII or whichever, there are nonetheless giggles galore to be derived from the actual music here.

Check out, for instance, "Anyway You Want," a wonderful parody of a group attempting to perform Jimmy Reed's "Tell Me What You Want Me to Do" without having first learned it. Or "Hideaway," whose music is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of those dodo Doobie Brothers' "China Grove" and Free's "Fire and Water," with lyrics right out of John Denver at his most mawkish. Or "Oh, Thank You Great Spirit," wherein that irrepressible cutup Terry Kath—he of the funniest Alvin Lee impression ever — exorcises those problems that had been "hassling [his] head!"

Forget how you found it difficult to get heavily into this group's finely honed satire in the past. Chicago VIII will make you laugh until actual tears race one another down your cheeks. This is one horn band whose time has come! (RS 189)

JOHN MENDELSOHN