I’m just letting you know. In case you want to spend your valuable time elsewhere.

Okay. So. We’re good?

Fine. It’s your time.

Traditionally, I open my blog posts by commenting upon how long it’s been since I’ve written a blog post, wistfully recalling the days of yore when I actually wrote blog posts on a regular basis, or casting aspersions upon myself for my inability to stick with anything in my life that I actually have the energy to start.

Well, I’m not going to do that this time.

[Aside for the ironically challenged amongst you. I just did what I said I wasn’t going to do. And I did it before I said I wasn’t going to do it. Isn’t that clever?]

So, anyway, as I was saying, this blog post was inspired by a pile of unwanted DVDs in my living room. And I’m repeating that so you’ll still have a chance to bail, in case you didn’t really get it the first time. Because sometimes we don’t really get things the first time we read them. I can read an entire page of something and have to go back over it because I wasn’t really paying attention.

So, this particular pile of DVDs is comprised of movies that I’m not likely to watch again. I’ve watched all of them, of course. Why would I buy a DVD and not watch it? That would be silly. Unless I was giving to someone as a gift, of course. Then I’d leave it in its shrink-wrap and put wrapping paper around it. But even then, it would have to be a movie I’d actually seen. Because giving someone a gift of a movie about which I knew nothing would be even sillier than buying a DVD and never watching it.

In most countries, that is.

But I digress. If, in fact there was anything from which to digress in the first place.

There are two reasons that a DVD movie might end up in such a pile as I’m describing (in painstaking detail) here:

1. I’d thought it was going to be a good movie (the preview looked good, or someone gave it a high recommendation), but my high hopes were dashed upon the rocks of reality.
2. I thought it was good when I first watched it, but upon subsequent viewings, it simply didn’t hold up.

But that begs a whole other question: Why did I just use the plural “subsequent viewings”?

You might have to think about that one for a while.

That second point (the one with the plural) really hits home for me. It’s like that whole Mary Tyler Moore Show thing. You know what I’m talking about, right?

What? You don’t? Really?

Sigh. Okay. I’ll explain it to you. But you know the drill. Painstaking. Detail.

Back in the ‘70s, when I was much less verbose than I am today, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was probably my favorite thing on TV. It was a good show. Hell, it was a great show. It was hilarious. And it was on for seven years.

Seven. Years.

We’re talking here about one of the most popular TV shows ever. Groundbreaking television. A strong female central character and well-defined supporting characters. It’s on TIME Magazine’s list of “17 Shows That Changed Television”.

You get the idea.

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century. Sometime in the last couple of years, I stumbled upon an episode of MTM, probably on TVtropolis or some similar channel. I was delighted.

Until I started to watch it.

To my horror, I couldn’t stay with it. I had to change the channel within about five minutes. The humor was so lame that I could barely stomach it. It was a sad, soul-crushing moment that has stayed with me to this day.

It actually made me angry. I was insensed. How could something so good turn so bad? How could something recorded on film and preserved through the decades have changed so significantly? Did someone forget to put it in the fridge? Was there a “best before” date stamped on it somewhere? Was there a crack in the lid?

No. Alas, no. None of those things.

A film, a television episode, a book… something like that simply cannot change once it’s been produced and is physically sitting in your hand, on a shelf, in a VCR or DVD player. They are static, until you play them, or read them. Then they come to life. But once you’re done, they go back to being the motionless objects they were when you started. Oh, they might get a bit dusty over time, a bit scratched here and there, but the content is immutable.

It is we who change.

I was a teenager when The Mary Tyler Moore Show was first on the air. I was ten when it started and sixteen when it ended. What was funny to me then is significantly different from what is funny to me now.

People change. Humor changes. The world changes. That’s just the way it goes. It’s sad but true. Few things can stand the test of time. There are exceptions, of course, like the music of the Beatles and the original Star Trek series (even the non-souped up, non-remastered episodes are still eminently watchable, except for “The Galileo Seven” and “Spock’s Brain”), but by and large, the passage of time and the addition of life experiences alter us to such an extent that we simply can’t see our old favorites the same way we did when we first encountered them.

All of this is probably painfully obvious to anyone reading this, but the sight of that sad little pile of DVDs on the shelf in the living room filled me with the urge to just pour out this lament.

Maybe I should turn it into a country song.

Or not.

Yeah, let’s go with not.

(And, since the theme song has managed to stand the test of time, here’s the opening sequence from the show. This is the one used from season 5 onward.)

The plan was simple: drive to Montréal, stopping at various André-Gagnon-related points along the way and taking video footage of attractive and interesting scenes. I had the camera, the tripod, a big-ass SD card loaded, and I was ready to rock and roll. I also had my new iPod touch and was psyched to do some on-the-road video blogging.

Well, you know what they say: The best laid plans… and all that.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a fantastic trip. It just didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.

First off, we had to rent a car, which was prohibitively expensive. Scott, my brother, took care of that arrangement, and we got a great vehicle, but adding the extra kilometers onto the base rental meant that we could only afford it for three days. So, we had to pack in as much as we could.

Secondly, having not been through Québec in some years, I had only a vague recollection of how far the cities and towns were from each other. You can definitely drive to Montréal in a day, but you’re not going to make many stops en route.

I wanted to make some stops along the way.

Ergo, we did not make it to Montréal.

Add to this the fact that I, as navigator, misread my map of New Brunswick and got us on the wrong road for a couple of hours, and you end up with a very late arrival at the Québec border.

Question for later: How in hell do you misread a map of New Brunswick?

Anyway, none of this matters. Scott and I both needed to get away for a bit, and it was a great opportunity to spend some quality brother-bonding time. Changing plans and destinations were ultimately immaterial.

We left Halifax on my birthday, Wednesday August 3rd, and made it to Rivière-du-Loup (Wolf River, if you’re into translating place names), which is just over ninety-clicks from the New Brunswick/Québec border, at the point where the Trans-Canada highway takes a sharp left and starts running along the Saint Lawrence River.

The original LP cover of “Le Saint-Laurent”

Ah, the Saint Lawrence. I was so looking forward to taking in its majesty. It has played such a pivotal role in my experience of André Gagnon’s music that I could scarcely dissociate the two. His 1977 album, Le Saint-Laurent, is easily my favorite of his works, and the title track, a twelve-minute ode to the mighty river, is a three-movement piece that conjures up images of flowing water and stunning scenery and has stayed with me since my first hearing.

The morning of August 4th, we awoke, breakfasted and set off. I was presented with many amazing glimpses of the Saint Lawrence, and for some of those, we were able to pull over so that I could take some video shots. In the distance, across the river, were the mountains of Charlevoix, in a view right off the cover of Le Saint-Laurent. It was a region I hoped to visit soon. It would not happen this trip, but that was okay. We only had three days.

One important stop we did make was at Saint-Pacôme, the town where André Gagnon was born. It’s a small, quiet place, and as with many rural communities, the church is the most prominent landmark. We stopped near the town’s main intersection, and I took a few video shots, but, alas, we really didn’t have time to explore much, so we drove around a bit and then headed back to the highway.

I didn’t even notice the historical signs for the tourists.

(And that, dear friends, is called foreshadowing.)

We made it to Québec City by lunchtime, and I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am that we made that stop. It was not on my itinerary, but we knew by this point that we were not going to make to Montréal, so we decided to stop, have lunch, and take a look around.

I hadn’t been to Québec City since high school, when I went on a Grade Ten trip in February for Carnaval. All I remember from that trip is the dizzying height of the fortress cliff, the insanely cold temperatures, and people on the street drinking alcohol from long plastic tubes. Needless to say, I needed a refresher.

Old Québec is simply stunning. I fell in love immediately, and vowed to return at my earliest convenience. I walked around with my head craned upwards, marvelling at the architecture, the views, and the atmosphere. It was like wandering around an old European city.

We had lunch at a place called La Pizz, a nifty little pizza place tucked into the corner of Place Royale, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, the birthplace of French civilization in North America. Samuel de Champlain began constructing this courtyard area in 1608, and walking into it is like stepping back in time.

And then there was the Château Frontenac, easily the most photographed hotel in the world. It sits atop the fortified cliff and is visible from just about anywhere in the old city. We walked along some of the charming shop-filled streets in the lower city before taking the funicular up to the courtyard around the château. The view from up there is incredible, and the hotel itself is massive, tall, imposing, and utterly photogenic.

It was a shame we could only stay a couple of hours, but we wanted to see how far south we could get before having to turn around and head for home.

While Québec City was not an André-Gagnon-related stop, it reached into my soul and deepened my connection with La Belle Province, a connection I’ve been aware of most of my life.

A connection with my father.

More about this trip in the next instalment. Stay tuned.

Much has happened since that early August rumble down the highways of English and French Canada. The summer was good, filled with adventures and moments galore. It was a vast improvement over the previous summer, which saw me changing jobs twice in as many months and watching my mother go from hospital to transitional care to nursing home. The Summer of Stress, as I have dubbed July and August of 2010, doesn’t have quite the hold on me it once did, but it lives on in memory and serves as a reminder of how fickle life can be.

What a difference a year makes. Summer 2011, which I think I might dub the Summer of Synchronicity, was jam packed with warm-weather goodness. July 30th saw us (my wife Vanessa and I) traveling to Moncton with our friends Rebecca and Ian to see U2 perform. The day was wet, but it cleared just before the opening act (Carney) started to play. Arcade Fire followed them, and then, just after sunset, out came Bono and the boys. It was an experience not to be missed, and it blew us away. We were nearly sucked into the earth by the mud as we made our way off the grounds after the show, but it was well worth it.

Present Laughter poster designed by Terry Coolen

July and August were jam-packed with creative juices. Rebecca and I (yes, the same Rebecca mentioned above) co-directed a production of Present Laughter by Noël Coward for the Theatre Arts Guild. We actually held the auditions on June 26th and 27th, with the rehearsal process running from July 12th through September 20th and the show opening on September 22nd. We had a cast of ten and a production team of nine, and it was a pleasure spending time with every last one of them. Everyone got along incredibly well, there were a lot of laughs, and we ended up with damn good show. I was proud to be a part of it.

Having two directors was a good thing, as both Rebecca and I took time off during the rehearsal process. I managed to get away twice, once with my brother Scott in early August (about which more later) and once with my wife Vanessa and her mom in late August, for three nights at Milford House, just south of Annapolis Royal. It was an incredibly relaxing three days, puncutated by a Saturday morning trip to Upper Clements park, where three firsts occurred for me: My first roller-coaster ride, my first time in a flume, and my first time on a zip-line.

The rest of August and most of September was do-or-die time for the play. We moved from the rehearsal hall to the main stage, got the set finished, the lights and sound in place, and the costumes finalized. Then we opened, then we ran for three weeks, and then it was over. Cast party, hugs, goodbyes, and memories. Props and costumes put away, and make way for the next production.

So, knowing how the post-production blues do tend to kick in, it was good that I had something else to look foward to, a special something that happened just this past weekend. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first. I want to talk in more detail about that early August road trip to Québec.

And I will. Next blog entry. This was just the preamble. Turned out kinda longer than I expected.

Big surprise.

Keep pushing forward.

–Eric

Wow, another blog entry only five days after the last one. And another video blog, to boot. I must really be jazzed about this upcoming road trip.

Okay, so the sound on this video sucks the big one. I’ll have to learn how to reduce wind noise on the iPod’s microphone if I want to do anymore outdoor video blogging. But it sure was fun talking into the camera out at Peggy’s Cove. It really was a fabulous day.

So far the footage from the day looks good. I haven’t transferred everything to the computer yet, but I like what I’ve reviewed so far. And in putting this video blog together, I learned about a few more features of iMovie that I hadn’t looked at yet.

Video editing is just major fun.

Counting down to the Québec trip.

Stay tuned.

The video pretty much says it all, but I do want to clarify one point: I’ll be using the iPod touch for video blogging while I’m on the road, not for taking actual documentary footage. I have my Canon PowerShot SX20IS for that. Plus, I’ll be taking a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder with me for capturing additional audio.

We’ll be stopping in Kamouraska (André Gagnon’s birthplace), Verdun (in Montréal, where my dad was born), Lachine (also in Montréal, where my dad grew up), Ville Émard (also in Montréal, from the title of André Gagnon’s song “A Ride to Ville Émard”), Forges du Saint-Maurice National Historic Site (from the title of André Gagnon’s song and album “Les Forges de Saint-Maurice, written for a television series of the same name), and Charlevoix (from the title of a movement of André Gagnon’s three-movement piece “Le Saint-Laurent” called “Devant Charlevoix”). I’ll also be taking footage of whatever strikes my fancy along the way. I’m particularly looking forward to visiting Trois-Rivières, a town I’ve heard of many times but know next to nothing about.

Did I mention I’m jazzed?

More updates as planning proceeds.

[Aside: Would we call a string of linguistic bits a linguine?]

[Aside Followup Fact: The word “linguine” literally means “little tongues” in Italian.]

I have on occasion been accused of the crime of pedantry in the sphere of language. I will confess to bouts of nitpickiness bordering on pedantry, but as to full-on pedantry, I don’t think I have the qualifications for that. One thing’s for sure. I need to loosen up a bit. While I’m not prone to fits of letter-writing when I read or see something that is grammatically, punctuatively, or orthographically incorrect, I do often cringe, and I do often complain about it.

The English language is going to evolve and grow whether I like it or not. It doesn’t need, or even know anything about, my permission. I might just as well try and stop the tides from going in and out or ask the moon not to change its phase quite so often. That would be sheer lunacy. Pun intended.

I do, in a rather informal yet wildly egotistical manner, consider myself a defender of the tongue. A staunch defender of the tongue, to be ridiculously specific about it. I don’t like lazy language, particularly in written form, and my hackles near scrape the ceiling when I encounter obvious carelessness in wording and phrasing.

But there’s medication for that.

My uptightness was brought home to me in no uncertain terms two days ago, when my friend Asheyna (who often comments here) sent me a link to a YouTube video in which no lesser a literary luminary than Stephen Fry takes the pedants of the world to task for their pedantry. I’m embedding the video at the bottom of this post. Go and watch it now if you want. I’ll wait.

Uptightness aside, I do care about the written word and language in general, and I would no more discourage someone from learning the craft of writing than I would discourage them from blinking at appropriate intervals. Communication is the essence of our humanness, and the better and more clearly we can communicate, the better off and happier we’ll all be.

So, for the aspiring writers out there, I’d like to submit a little list I recently put up on Protagonize, a site I’ve mentioned many times in my blog posts, and one to which I have recently returned. Coincidentally, it’s also the site where I first met Asheyna, who may well be now blushing as she reads a second mention in a single post.

Another Protagonize user started an exercise called “Ten Things You’d Tell Yourself Re: Writing”. I added a page called “Ten Fucking Things I Keep Fucking Trying to Learn About Fucking Writing”. Except I used “@#$#%&” instead of the expletive, as the exercise was not flagged “mature”. For some reason I feel compelled to use the actual jarring word here on the blog, perhaps simply because I can. And get away with it. Maybe.

Anyway, here’s my list as posted on that exercise:

1. Keep writing.
2. Don’t stop writing.
3. See # 1 and 2 above.
4. Do not stop to edit. Editing is a separate undertaking. Stop worrying. In other words, see # 1, 2, and 3 above.
5. Learn the rules. I’m talking spelling, punctuation, and grammar here. If you don’t know the rules, you can’t break them intelligently when the story calls for it. There’s a big difference between breaking the rules for a reason and breaking the rules because you’ve been too fucking lazy to learn them.
6. Don’t let anyone tell you what to write or not write about. It’s your writing.
7. Let the humor come naturally. Don’t force it. If you force it, it will be lame. There is no way around this.
8. Let the muse speak through you. You are a vessel for the creative forces of the universe. Don’t edit the fucking muse. In other words, see # 1, 2, 3, and 4 above.
9. Contrary to what others have said here [in the exercise], there is nothing wrong with fan fiction. It can be done well. It isn’t often done well, but it can be done well. And playing in someone else’s sandbox can be a lot of fun. Go ahead. Prove ‘em wrong. Write a really good fanfic. Just deal with the fact that you can never publish it for money.
10. Don’t be verbose. Don’t use more words when less will do. I mean it. Seriously. For reals.
11. (Bonus point) Have fun, for cryin’ out loud!

And so we rumble towards the end of the single most expletive-ridden blog post I’ve heretofore written. If you’re cringing at my cavalier use of “bad language”, understand that I do it with intent and for effect rather than gratuitously, and please, whatever you do, do not go to YouTube and search for Samuel L. Jackson’s reading of the recently published Go the Fuck to Sleep.

Just sayin’.

Here’s the video I mentioned above. It’s mildly mind-blowing.

What I will touch on, however, is a little bit of insight into this whole blogging process, and what I’ve recently discovered about it.

Well. Ahem. As many of my readers know, I started this whole blog thing just under two years ago, with the intent of writing a post every day. Every. Single. Day. Which I did. For about seven weeks. After that, it became spotty. Sometimes an entire month would go by without a post. I didn’t like this, and it made me anxious and ill-tempered.

The solution would have been to start blogging regularly again, but oh, no, I couldn’t do anything quite that simple, could I? I had to ruminate and cogitate and every other –ate word you can think of—and some I wish you wouldn’t—in order to figure out what my problem was.

Feh. Enough of that. I’m done with beating up on myself. It is what it is. And if I blog, I blog. And if I don’t, well, geez, guess what? I don’t.

But that’s not the best part. You want to know what the best part is? Don’t pretend you want to know if you really don’t, okay? You’re not just humouring me, right? Okay.

The best part is… I’ve figured out the problem.

Yep. Gone and done figger’d it out. I’m pretty pleased, actually.

You see, I’ve been viewing this whole blogging enterprise as something way more important than it really is. I guess it’s understandable, really. Especially at the beginning. Brand new blog, new domain name, getting ready to launch, wanting it to look good, making sure everything’s just so. Yeah, why not be anal about it? It was my new baby, after all. I wanted to bring it up right.

But somewhere along the line, my blog post formula turned into a self-imposed expectation. All my posts had an embedded image and a YouTube video at the end. They all clocked in at, on average, eight-hundred to a thousand words. I had a process: Write the post in a distraction-free text editor (like WriteMonkey or WriteRoom), copy and paste the post into WordPress, find an appropriate image (usually with Google Image Search), then find a video on YouTube to complement the whole thing (or at least not be completely off-topic). Save draft, preview, tweak, save draft, preview, lather, rinse, repeat.

It became onerous. (Aside: I had to look up “onerous” just to make sure I was spelling it right. It just looks odd).

What I have come to realize is that this thing doesn’t have to be perfect. Hell, I’m not perfect. My blog sure as hell doesn’t have to be. Why not use it to just tear off a quick opinion about something? Or fill folks on some project I’m working on? It doesn’t have to be a bleedin’ magazine article every time.

Often times Twitter and Facebook are ideal for just spouting off. But sometimes you need a bit more room. Why not use the blog?

Makes sense to me.

So, on this occasion, inauspicious as it is, I’m forgoing the image and the video. I’m just spewing and venting. And typing directly into WordPress.

So There.

As you can see from the video above, I’ve done a complete, one-hundred-percent turnaround with regard to Apple. I know there’s at least one internet friend out there who is going to seriously take me to task for this, and there may be others as well, but all I can say is… what’s done is done.

I can’t fight it anymore. Mac has what I need, and I’ve gone and gotten it.

It’s going to make my creative life one helluva lot easier, and I’m going to be able to do some serious editing when I finally capture the footage I need for my documentary. Yeah, the one I’ve been saying I’m going to make for at least a couple of years now. The one about my father, music, and André Gagnon.

The documentary is moving closer and closer to becoming reality. All the signs are pointing to it coming together within the next few months. I have my new camera, which takes HD video, and now I have a kick-ass video editing tool.

It all bodes well. Now I just have to organize a road trip to the wilds of Québec and start a-shootin’.

It will happen.

Mark my words.

Let’s keep it real out there.

You know, sometimes I think I take myself way too seriously. I mean, I do have a pretty decent sense of humor, and I can definitely poke fun at myself, but I also spend an awful lot of time inside my own head, dwelling on my own problems and trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

I’ve also shared a lot of this with the blog-reading public. I’ve written about my personal journey and challenges, and I’ve been most gratified by the fact that readers have commented on these posts and actually encouraged me. That’s part of the reason I write these things. I want to connect with others, and I hope to somehow make a difference in someone else’s experience.

But at what point does public journaling cross the line and become public posturing and whining? At what point does “This is me” turn into “Poor me”?

I hope I haven’t crossed that line, but something way in the back of my head tells me that I’ve come perilously close.

I need to face the fact that I’m a very self-indulgent person. I’m an approval-seeker of the first order, and all those comments I mentioned have been very nice ego strokes. I mean, yes, I know everyone wants approval; everbody needs validation once in a while. But seriously, when you refresh your Facebook page umpteen times to see if anyone has commented on your status update, you know you’re in serious trouble.

So, it’s time for me to—as they say—get on with it. Instead of doing tiny little things and looking to see if anyone noticed, it’s high time I took some of those big things I’ve been thinking about, mulling over, talking about, tweeting about, and blogging about and actually start doing them.

I mean, how many times have I mentioned this documentary I “need” to make about my dad and music? How long does it take to get through another draft of my novel? When am I going to continue the Voices of Reason project and get another interview up on my blog? When am I going to stop sulking about my precious pantomine script and get back to my involvement with community theatre? There are so many things I want to do, and I am doing none of them.

[Okay, I actually am working on the novel. It just seems to be taking a long time.]

I guess you could say I’m fed up with myself. I’m tired of blaming everything on my “inner saboteur”, as I like to call him, and citing all the wounds and traumas I’ve experienced in the past as reasons for my lack of action.

It’s time to take my personal journey and repackage it. Instead of using it as ashes to spread on my face, I need to turn it into fuel for my creative vehicles. And, yes, there are a quite a few of those vehicles parked in my mental garage, but believe me, there’s more than enough fuel for all of them. I just need the right mix. And then… whoosh!

I don’t mean to minimize everything I’ve been through. I’ve fought hard for my mental health, and it will always be an important issue for me. I just think it’s time to move up to the next gear and honor my journey by making better use of it.

And, hell, I’m a creative person. I can think of a few ways to do that.

Let’s keep it real out there. (Time to take my own advice, eh?)

With yet another gaping chasm in my blogging pattern now evident, this time due to a bout of procrastination brought on by simple forgetfulness paired with a massive viral infection, I’ve decided to abandon the post I’d been considering—which was to be a heartfelt rant about the establishment inspired by a fascinating if abbreviated experience at PodCamp Halifax—and turn my typing fingers to a touch of time-traveling. Musical time traveling.

It’s something I enjoy doing. When I’m not constructing lengthy, single-sentence paragraphs.

I’m currently revisiting the early albums of Chicago, my favorite band. Their career has been an interesting one, to say the least. Many people can’t stand them. They’ve certainly had their sour moments, but I’m sticking with them. They’re amazing musicians all, and they’ve produced some incredible music over the years.

I discovered the band when I was eighteen. The timing was pretty bad on that, actually, because they’d been around for nearly ten years already, and they’d just lost their guitarist—to a fatal, accidental gunshot wound. Hell of a time to become a fan.

I’d been aware of Chicago, of course. Their songs were on the radio pretty regularly, and I was familiar with many of them, but I didn’t know much about the band, it’s members, or it’s history. They were just part of the sonic landscape of the time, and I didn’t really pay much attention to them other than to note that I liked this or that particular song.

All that changed the week of October 16th, 1978. Chicago was featured on the cover of People Magazine, and not only did the world get a good look at the faces behind the music (their album covers are famous for not showing the band members, just their elegant logo); we also got to read about the tumultuous events of nine months earlier, when Terry Kath accidentally shot himself, and about the band in general, how they came into being, and how they were trying to keep it together in the face of tragedy and grief.

I was intrigued. I knew some of their music, and I liked it. To put names and faces to the voices and instuments was nothing short of a revelation, and the incredible drama of the story caught me up. I decided, immediately upon finishing the article, that I was going to delve deeper into this band and really find out what they were all about.

Their new album at the time, entitled Hot Streets, had just come out. It was a departure for the band in a myriad of ways. First off, despite the fact that they were still dealing with Terry’s death, they needed a new guitarist, and after many auditions, they hired Donnie Dacus, who had just recently worked on several projects with Stephen Stills. Secondly, they had fired their longtime producer, James William Guercio—who had guided them from the very beginning but had become overly controlling—and had brought in Phil Ramone, who was well known as producer of many of Billy Joel’s albums. Third, they had decided to actually name the new album instead of numbering it. Fourthly, but by no means finally, a photograph of the band is featured on the album sleeve, with the venerable logo taking a secondary position.

Even knowing all this, I decided not to purchase the new album right away. I instinctively made the decision to experience the group as it had been before I listened to their reworked lineup. I intended to purchase all eleven of their previous albums before completing the set with the twelfth. I was oddly energized and excited by this prospect, and I found I suddenly had a mission: Catch up on Chicago.

I don’t know what it was that inspired me, but I was instantly fascinated by the group, and soon I was venturing out to purchase not one, but two of their albums. Yes, two LPs. In the same trip to the record store. This was highly uncharacteristic behavior. Let’s face it, despite my having heard some of their songs on the radio, this was essentially a new band for me. To buy two LPs, sound unheard, was nearly unthinkable. But I did just that. I purchased Chicago X (the chocolate bar cover) and Chicago XI (the map cover) and gobbled them up.

I’ve always loved interesting combinations of musical instruments. In the previous incarnation of this blog, I wrote a post about the Alan Parsons Project, a group that combined rock instrumentation with a full orchestra. I also enjoy artists like Mary Jane Lamond, who combine traditional Celtic instrumentation with modern guitar, bass, and drums. So it is with Chicago, a rock band with a horn section. Their influences range from jazz to classical and back again. The founding members of Chicago, the horn players especially, are all classically trained musicians who studied their instruments in a university setting. Their musicianship is top-notch, and their creative talent abundant and prolific.

I caught up with Chicago in a very short time. I did suffer a bit of confusion with regard to Chicago IV, however. I basically couldn’t find out anything about it. I kept seeing references to a box set of four LPs entitled Chicago at Carnegie Hall, but I could not find out anything about Chicago IV. What I finally realized—and it took me a ridiculously long time to finally get it through my head—was that the Carnegie Hall set was the fourth album. It wasn’t a separate entity set apart from the others. It was part of the sequence. That bit of stupidity dealt with, I completed my set and went on to purchase Hot Streets.

I’ve been a loyal fan of the group ever since. They’ve put out some great stuff and some not-so-great stuff, but schmalzy lyrics and power ballads notwithstanding, I’ve always loved the musicianship, and I’ve always loved the horns. And looking back to the early albums over these last few days has been a real treat.

Hard to believe the original members are in their late sixties now.

Let’s keep it real out there.

(And here’s a live performance of one of Chicago’s signature tunes. I like this clip, because Robert Lamm introduces the rest of the band. This particular lineup was stable from 1995 to 2009.)