We are 50 years out from an explosion of music that over a 10 year span furnished the core of what became known as Classic Rock. There was a bunch of good stuff released 1968-70 too but I’m going to spend some time on these pages looking back 50 years and giving you a taste of what we were listening to.
Let’s start on January 11 1971. You could have gone down to Bob’s Musical Isle and picked up the 3rd studio LP from Chicago. After spending most of 1970 on the road in the support of the worldwide smash Chicago II, they entered the studio looking for new material. They had used up all their songs on back to back double Lps. So this LP needed new songs and they filled it up with not only a few radio friendly tracks but also expansive instrumentals which showed the skills of the individual musicians. It made it to #2 on the Billboard charts.
Many of the songs focused on “life on the road”. They weren’t the first group to explore those themes and certainly wouldn’t be the last. You can also make the argument that this was the last complete album from the band that pushed the envelope of rock-pop-jazz that they helped popularize. They had lots of hits to come but as far as experimentation goes…this might be the peak.
I remember the Wausau East pep band added both Free and Lowdown to their musical repertoire.
Here is the rest of the LP…enjoy.
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