Horned Prog: Set 8: Lunch in Chicago

by nielskunze on March 13, 2019

My list of songs had grown to more than 300. Each set would use no more than 30. The last set, “Quirky Jerky”, had given me an idea for better organization. I grouped the potential “Horned Prog” songs into 4 sub-sub-genres: Rock, Jazz, Funk and Prog. Each of the remaining sets will predominantly belong to one subset of these four.

Additionally, I had noticed that since the earliest sets I had amassed quite the list of Chicago songs too. Remember when I said this all began with the search for songs I could mix with Chicago? It was time to do just that.

(If you’re wondering which of the Chicago albums are the ones worth purchasing, that would be Chicago I, II, III, V & VII. For Chicago II, I would highly recommend the Steven Wilson remix from 2017.)

Prior to 1978, Chicago was one thing. And after January 23, 1978, Chicago was quite another thing. The two versions do not compare.

Guitar player Terry Kath was obviously the band’s “coolness factor.” It was Kath who gave them that rough edge, the jagged groove, that was integral to their classic seventies sound. When on that fateful January day in 1978 Terry accidentally took his own life through an act of morbid stupidity, that classic– progressive– sound was extinguished.

The band would go on to enjoy numerous top-forty hits thereafter, but they were of a style that left prog heads like me cold and disappointed. It was in January of 1978 that the music officially died. And Terry was the symbol, the sacrifice, defining that awful moment in music history.