Chicago - The Nashville Sessions

By Rights

This is a re-recording of Chicago’s hits – for example, 25 or 6 to 4; Beginnings; Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is; Questions 67 and 68, and more – and in all cases these are remarkably similar to the originals, so from a listening point of view it is good stuff, but you’d always go then for the originals. An increasingly common practice from other bands, and in my experience rarely completed as well as these recordings, but what I hadn’t realised until reading about The Nashville Sessions: the purpose is so that a band can retain and/or reacquire the rights to their own music. That makes eminent sense to me.

I watched a recording of this year’s Grammy Awards over the last two nights – unbelievably pompous*, both musically and presentationally [especially the segment with Steven Tyler and Smokey Robinson, by and large because of the former] - and was pleasantly surprised to see Chicago performing, and playing well, although this was compromised by the guest vocal of Robin Thicke, whose singing chops are good enough, but not good enough for the history of this band, especially with RT grabbing the post-Grammy headlines about Chicago’s appearance, which is perfectly understandable if unacceptable. 

Anyway, The Nashville Sessions is a fine enough collection of hits, though I’m guessing there is a propriety brand out there [the caveat being the rights presumably don’t go to the band] or, like me, you’ve made your own which will include more from the band’s first album and will overall reflect their brassrock rather than AOR side. 

* re. the Beyonce/Jay-Z opening performance: can you have pompous porn? Brilliant.