Chicago – Stone Of Sisyphus (aka Chicago
XXXII/Rhino CD)
Sound:
B Music: B-
You could
write at least one big book on how badly the Music Labels botched their
business since the late 1980s and one way to see how badly is to hear the
albums they refused to release for no good reason. Chicago is one of the most enduring bands of
all time, surviving everything from the death of one member to their most
famous lead singer leaving for a solo career that burned out in the long
run. With Full Moon Records (via Warner)
they made a great comeback in 1982 with Chicago
16. After Peter Cetera left for
good, they stayed with Warner and then wound up on their Reprise subsidiary
still having hit albums and singles. In
late 1992, they landed Peter Wolf (not
of the J. Geils Band and noteworthy solo success, who I’ve confused the
producer of this album with before, who is from Austria) to produce their next
album. He wanted to bring back their
“big horn” sound and by the following year finished what would have been their
22nd album. So what happened?
Warner
Bros. Records wanted them to stay a predicable middle-of-the-road legacy act
and refused to release the album! Yes,
you read that correctly. The label axed
the release and the whole finished album was shelved. For those in the know, the album became
legend and like so many other little-known or discussed projects, that might
have been the end of it, but now, the album is finally being released as an
official part of the Chicago cannon and Stone
Of Sisyphus (aka Chicago XXXII,
ten albums later!) is being issued by Rhino Records, now ironically a
subsidiary of Warner Bros. Records and a label who has since reissued their
older catalog, including high-definition DVD-Audio versions (now very valuable
and out of print) of their second and fifth albums.
This is
just a CD version, but without any doubt or argument, this is the best Chicago
album since their comebacks with 16
and 17, showing a band that is more
than “alive again” and a project sop far ahead of any of Cetera’s solo work
that it is not even funny. Instead, Wolf
lets the band be the band at their best with their richest set in so many
years, you realize Warner made a commercially and critically fatal mistake. I was not happy with what Wolf did with Starship
(We Built This City) or Heart (These Dreams) or especially El DeBarge (Who’s Johnny) in taking artists and
making them as “glossy commercial” (even On
My Own with Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald is neither artists’ best
work) as possible, so I am surprised about how rich this album really is by
comparison.
The songs
include:
1)
Stone Of Sisyphus
2)
Bigger Than Elvis
3)
All The Years
4)
Mah-Jong
5)
Sleeping In The Middle Of The Bed
6)
Let’s Take A Lifetime
7)
The Pull
8)
Here with Me (A Candle For The
Dark)
9)
Plaid
10) Cry For The Lost
11) The Show Must Go On
BONUS
TRACKS:
12) Love Is Forever (Demo)
13) Mah-Jong (Demo)
14) Let’s Take A Lifetime (Demo)
15) Stone Of Sisyphus (No Rhythm
Loop)
What this
would have shown is that the band could still go a few rounds with any of the
upstarts of the time, many who are rightly no longer with us and that new
members like Jason Scheff, Dawayne Bailey and Tris Imboden had found their way
into integrating into the band leaving the Cetera days behind. This is especially good for Scheff, who never
did get a fair shake succeeding Cetera.
But this album also shows the band on then verge of a new era of great
music, a run which was killed by killing this album. Now that it has finally arrived, it would be
great to see them back in their full glory.
Hear it and you’ll experience why.
The PCM
16/44.1 2.0 Stereo sounds very good, has some good character to the mix as you
would expect from an album handled by Wolf and sounds so good that this 25+
year old format is barely able to handle the sonics. It is a shame Rhino did not include a bonus
DVD with MLP DVD-Audio 5.1 and backup DTS and Dolby 5.1 tracks because this is
an album that definitely deserves it.
There is
also a nicely illustrated booklet that includes notes on the making of the
album, tech notes and words about each track.
With that said, it belongs on the shelf with the band’s early classics
and is definitely recommended.
- Nicholas Sheffo
