Suck My Lozenge: LaRM day 75 (Don Cherry-Chicago)

The week begins with some decent free-form jazz in the shape of Don (father of Neneh) Cherry's Hear and Now (1976). It's a funky, subtle kind of freak-out, there's no big show-off numbers here, it's all pretty laid-back. Cherry's trumpet complements nicely with the super-cool guitar solos and he even breaks out a flute occasionally. There's a very casual kind of vibe to the whole album and each tune works itself out in its own time and although there are sometimes bursts of noisy fusion (the last third of 'Mahakali' for instance) its mainly pretty smooth and undemanding space-jazz.

The much missed Vic Chesnutt made some great records along his melancholy way but none so great as The Salesman & Bernadette (1998). One of the reasons this album is such a success is because the majority of the musicians on the record are from Lambchop, and in many ways it sounds like a Lambchop album with Chesnutt singing. Chesnutt's songs are as gloomy as they've ever been but this time out they're played with a joyous verve that puts a completely different spin on them. The only criticism of the album could be that it's maybe too long, but on the whole the songs are great, with Lambchop's trademark odd take on Americana and old-school C&W providing a fantastic framework for Chesnutt's frail voice and broken songs.

Next up should have been the 'Hey Baby' 7" by Chia Pet, but I can't find it easily on "the internet" so we'll have to skip it and go straight on to another disastrous 5-album box-set freebie from work. Now, why I picked this one up is a total mystery but I did, so here goes with the first of five Chicago albums.... Chicago Transit Authority (1969) is a bloated double album of the most extraordinary blues-rock come fusion jazz. People who like this nonsense say that it's a groundbreaking blend of previously incompatible musical styles. Groundbreakingly rubbish. It doesn't work at all, as opener 'Introduction' demonstrates, moving from grinding blues-rock to New Orleans jazz to prog and back again completely incongruously and in the blink of an eye. For the most part the album is kind of post-Hendrix hard blues rock with horns, it's inoffensive but it's a total waste of time. Besides which are some remarkably egregious elements (like uninteresting 6 minute feedback blowout 'Free Form Guitar') which rub up horribly against the blues-rock. By the time 15-minute closer 'Liberation' ends you're left wondering whether you really like music after all.

Second album, Chicago (1970) is another double album of jazz come blues-rock and it's much cleaner, more coherent and focussed than Chicago Transit Authority. The jazzy horn section fits better into the mix, but that's only because the whole thing is becoming even more anodyne. It's smoother and there's no chance of any mammoth freakouts happening here. Which of course makes it even worse than the first album. It's like listening to the inside of an estate agent's head in 1970. This is exactly the kind of stuff that happens to all interesting music - dismal versions of it tarnish the memory. It's simply awful. Thankfully Chicago III and the FOUR ALBUM live set Chicago IV aren't included in the box set. On Chicago V (1972) the pop elements that would come to dominate the band's work were starting to really come to the fore. Of course, once again, it's even worse than its predecessor, although, to be honest there is something less dislikable about it because I think the band were realising where their strengths really lay (writing crap pop-rock songs with brass flourishes) rather than pretending and failing to be a kind of mash up of psychedelic rock, blues-jazz and hard rock. Chicago V still relies too heavily on jazz breaks which are even more horrible than the pop songs that they interrupt, and on the whole it's another pretty grim record. As, of course, is Chicago VI (1973), but at least Chicago VI has the good grace to come in at under 40 minutes for the first time. This time round they sound like the Average White Band. It's that bad. It's really that bad.