I believe Chicago IX will be the only place to find a quad mix of the radio edit of "Make Me Smile", which is significantly different from the album version, having not only removed the guitar solo but tacking "Now More Than Ever" on to the end.
Chicago Quadio - 9 Quad Albums on Blu-ray Audio.
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I believe Chicago IX will be the only place to find a quad mix of the radio edit of "Make Me Smile", which is significantly different from the album version, having not only removed the guitar solo but tacking "Now More Than Ever" on to the end.
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Ironically, since the intro of BD~A, this Chicago set is only the SECOND BD~A set to be released.....the other being Neil Young Archives, Volume I and both sets are from the Warner/Reprise label.
Hopefully, as others have surmised....this won't be the last.
Not even the classical labels have ventured into this territory....often releasing one BD~A with multiple performances on 1 disc and a whole bunch of RBCDs.
Hopefully, as others have surmised....this won't be the last.
Not even the classical labels have ventured into this territory....often releasing one BD~A with multiple performances on 1 disc and a whole bunch of RBCDs.
Well said Ralph! I had hoped beyond hope that when Warner were said to be poised to fully enter the Blu-ray Audio arena they might pull one or two nuggets out of the vault.. they may have taken their own sweet time about doing Blu-ray Audio and only dipped half a toe in the waters here and there the last few years.. but all of a sudden its like they raided Fort Knox..
Just --- WOW.
Rickko
Active Member
The Rhino Handmade 2010 release of Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) was mastered by Robert Vosgien. An interesting discussion with Mr. Vosgien on QQ thread from April, 2010 https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...the-CTA-Quad-DTS-Disc!!&highlight=bob+vosgien
The audio quality on this CTA is superlative, in my opinion, and irrespective of DVD codec 96k 24Bit (lossy).
Just a GUESS on my part that the scheduled new Chicago Quadio releases may date back to 2009 and were mastered by Robert Vosgien but subsequently shelved. I repeat just a guess.
The audio quality on this CTA is superlative, in my opinion, and irrespective of DVD codec 96k 24Bit (lossy).
Just a GUESS on my part that the scheduled new Chicago Quadio releases may date back to 2009 and were mastered by Robert Vosgien but subsequently shelved. I repeat just a guess.
Hmm, you may be right about that.
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Rick, I wholeheartedly agree that the Rhino CTA DTS 4.0 is beyond superb and if Mr. Vosgien did master all the Chicago quads then we ARE definitely in for the rarest of treats. The man is a genius.
And IF there are 'potentially' 60 more Rhino/Warner titles available for the 4.0 (or 5.1) treatment as hinted by Robert Vosgien and will most likely be released as BD~As, BY ALL MEANS BRING THEM ON.
I tend toward the pragmatic and usually wait for fellow QQ'ers to comment on the final product but I feel a pre-order just might be appropriate this time. The Chicago (II) and V 5.1 DVD-A's are exceptional.
So there you have it -- the solution to our little problem:
1) Box sets
2) Blu-Ray HD 5.1 audio
3) Three-digit price
It won't make everyone happy, but it IS a solution that will work.
For awhile at least, we can now expect many more such releases.
I, for one, am happy.
And I've pre-ordered.
1) Box sets
2) Blu-Ray HD 5.1 audio
3) Three-digit price
It won't make everyone happy, but it IS a solution that will work.
For awhile at least, we can now expect many more such releases.
I, for one, am happy.
And I've pre-ordered.
It is.
They will also be of poor quality, being (analog) dubs of dubs.
That is, unless they do their Rhino thing and recreate the single edits from album masters.
TVB
400 Club - QQ All-Star
I preordered this almost immediately because I wanted the set ASAP and didn't want to take any chances of being on the short end of the stick... eg "sold out no longer available". I noticed several members had links to bull moose, so I ordered from the bull (I usually use import cds for my quad stuff). I was pleasantly surprised to get the set for under $140 and free shipping.. Thanks for the links to bull moose.
Pre-ordered!
This set will be mine on day one. Can't wait!!!
Regards,
Sergio Perez-More
Regards,
Sergio Perez-More
From Super Deluxe Edition:
http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/n...disc-surround-sound-stereo-blu-ray-audio-box/
http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/n...disc-surround-sound-stereo-blu-ray-audio-box/
belaruskamerican
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What great news this is. This was an instant order at first sight for me. I hope this sells really, really well. The folks who put this together and made it happen deserve the best response.
A lot of classic bands would do well to look at how this is bring done. I'm looking at you, Pink Floyd. Over $100 for the all the single album boxes. This is what most fans really want...surround mixes without all the BS.
A lot of classic bands would do well to look at how this is bring done. I'm looking at you, Pink Floyd. Over $100 for the all the single album boxes. This is what most fans really want...surround mixes without all the BS.
I'm excited to hear about this! I have all the SQ vinyl albums, except for Greatest Hit's (I felt that I really didn't need that one as I had everything on it already). As with most Classic Rock I prefer the early releases. CTA was my favourite. I paid $100 for the "Quadio" after it was discontinued/sold out. I also paid for the download from HD-tracks as it's SQ encoded. My waning interest in Chicago was briefly revived with the release of "Hot Streets", too bad that one came out after Columbia gave up on Quad. I really like the Blu-ray format, you can get so much on one disc, the "Yes" disc's are amazing. It would be nice if Bull Moose would start selling to Canada, they are quite a bit cheaper than Amazon.
Chicago and Me
Having had some time to think about this release, I thought I'd jump in with some ruminations on it - I hope it can sit nicely between the format wars complaints and the lowest price discussion.
Hopefully this won't come off as a sort of Ron Burgundy style 'I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany' fandom alpha-brag, but I have a pretty long history as a fan of Chicago - not only were they the band that turned me on to 'real music' but it was also through them that the door for me was opened to the wonderful world of quad as I'll explain later. So really what I'd like to do is just share some thoughts about this release along with some information that might be of interest to people possibly buying or on the fence about buying this set.
My history with Chicago actually goes back to my Dad - they were his favourite band too, and he'd been turned on to them at University by the guys in the year above him who'd seen Chicago play there in 1968, the year before Chicago Transit Authority was released. So I guess when he got there in 1969 everyone was raving about the band and when CTA came out it was incredibly popular. My dad saw them at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1970 and that cemented his love for the band...if you've seen this footage of them at Tanglewood from around the same time you can see why, they were an absolute live juggernaut at that point, and with good reason as they were playing hundreds of gigs a year. So I guess Chicago must have been in the air for me growing up even though I didn't realise it, and for some reason in my mid-teens, after listening to rap almost exclusively 'the penny dropped' (to use an English expression) and I fell in love with Chicago Transit Authority, and started buying up all the albums that followed. To cut a long story short I absolutely fell in love with the band, and when I got on the internet for the first time in about 1994 (which seems like a lifetime ago now) I set up what was the first (and for a long time only) website devoted to the band, long before they or their record company had one. You can actually see an archived version of it here - it probably seems kind of quaint now, but I was pretty proud of the amount of information it stored, including discography, lyrics, tourdates, pictures, press articles etc. Nowadays there are sites for all of those individual things like discogs, setlist.fm, etc. but back then there was none of that. I maintained the site from 1994 up until 2000 when I lost my job and then had my house burned down by an arsonist and ended up moving from Canada to the UK to try and get my life back on track, but that's a story for another day and another thread.
During that time I also participated in (and for a while ran) some mailing lists (old timers will remember these, the precursors to message boards) devoted to the band, and it was on one of these that someone said to me 'have you heard the quadraphonic mix of Chicago II? it has extra guitar parts in 25 Or 6 To 4!' So I set out to find more because prior to that I had no idea that quadraphonic meant unique mixes, I thought it just meant stereo coming from four speakers. Around the same time I was getting in to 5.1 sound at home having just set up a surround system and a laserdisc/DVD player system, and just happened (by accident) to notice the section of DTS CDs at the Ken Cranes Laserdisc website and bought a few (Gaucho, Fly Like An Eagle, etc.) and after hearing them my mind was blown - I needed more! It was also around that time as well that I crossed paths with quad conversion pioneer Tab Patterson, who made it possible for me to hear all those Chicago quad mixes that I'd been looking for, and even despite the ..shall we charitably say 'compromised fidelity' of Q8 conversions, I was hooked and pursuing quad and surround sound music has been something I've enjoyed ever since.
I think everyone who loves music has that one band they consider 'their band', the home team you root for and follow even when they're not winning. It seems like there are about 50 people on here who feel this way about Yes, and timbre4 who (if I'm remembering correctly) was telling everyone how great Steven Wilson was, before PT's In Absentia even came out. For me Chicago is that band. Ironically though, because of a combination of burnout from how rabidly I was following them in the late 90's and early 00's, their general direction at that time (shelving new music to put out greatest hits and Christmas albums, etc.) and my musical horizons greatly expanding, even though there's lots of music I enjoy and/or listen to more now, Chicago will always be the home team for me even if I go months or years between listening to some of their albums.
So suffice it to say I'm incredibly excited about this box set, and the opportunity to reappraise the music of a band I love so dearly by means of the quad mixes that got me interested in the format in the first place...at a level of quality I never imagined I'd be able to experience.
The Mixes And The Mixers
One of the things that sets these quad mixes apart from the majority of Columbia quad mixes is that (with one exception) they were remixed by the band's main engineer Wayne Tarnowski and approved by their producer James William Guercio. Tarnowski started as an assistant engineer on Chicago II, and when Guercio set up Caribou Ranch studio in 1973 he convinced Tarnowski to leave CBS and join him there and he mixed all of Chicago's albums up until they parted company with Guercio after Chicago XI. In contrast to this, the majority of Columbia quad mixes were done after the fact by someone from the label's in-house quad remixing team with no input from the original artist or producer.
The credits for the Chicago quad mixes look like this:
Chicago Transit Authority (1969), Chicago III (1971), Chicago VI (1973), Chicago VII (1974), Chicago VIII (1975), Chicago X (1976) - Quadraphonic Sound Supervision and Remix Engineer: Wayne Tarnowski
Chicago II (1970) - Quadraphonic Sound and Remix Supervision: Al Lawrence / Quadraphonic Remix Engineer: Don Young
Chicago V (1972) - Quadraphonic Sound and Remix Supervision: Al Lawrence / Quadraphonic Remix Engineers: Wayne Tarnowski & Don Puluse
Al Lawrence was Columbia's 'Head of Quadraphonic A&R' and oversaw the whole Columbia Quad program. A quote from Billboard Magazine Dec. 21st 1974 about the release of the first 7 albums in quad says '...veteran CBS quad engineer/producer Al Lawrence was instrumental in getting the [quad] mixing done to the tastes of Jimmy Guercio, the group's producer/manager.'
I'm not sure why they decided to give II to Don Young to mix - I thought maybe it was either something to do with the condition of the tapes (ie the reason for the weird midrangey sound on the original stereo mix) that required playback/mixing at the CBS studios in NYC, or time constraints meaning they had to get these done on time as the first 7 albums were all released at once. In any event Don Young was Columbia's second-most prolific quad remixer behind Larry Keyes and did some great quad mixes that have seen SACD release recently including Billy Joel's Streetlife Serenade, the Jeff Beck Group self titled album, Earth Wind & Fire 'Head To The Sky' and about 30 others.
Don Puluse was one of the main engineers on Chicago II, III and the Carnegie Hall album so he had a strong history with the band. He also did the excellent quad mix of Labelle's 'Nightbirds' album which saw release as an AF SACD a year or two ago.
As a result of Wayne Tarnowski doing most of the mixing, the albums for the most part maintain the vibe of the original stereo mixes - there's the occasional ping-pong/swirl effect, but it's fun and tasteful rather than gimmicky or overwhelming. Chicago II is a bit of an exception here having been done by Don Young there are some notable differences from the stereo mix including some missing lead vocals at the end of Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon and extra guitar parts in 25 Or 6 To 4. A lot of people will mention the extra lead guitar fills in that song, but for me what was really mindblowing was that there were acoustic rhythm guitars and piano during the solo section! Perhaps not one for the purists but I love the alternate viewpoint on an album I've listened to so many times.
I also feel that the quad mix of VIII is better than the stereo mix. From what I recall reading, they were going for a more 'R&B' feel with the stereo mix of that album and as a result on a lot of the tracks the mix is what I would call 'inside out': instead of having the guitars and keyboards sort of panned in the center with the horns in stereo, they're panned hard to the sides and the horns are mixed center mono. The quad mix isn't bound by this restriction at all so the instruments are all over the place and the horns are arranged in a much more (to me) natural sounding stereo spread.
There are all kinds of other highlights I could point out but I'll save the surprises for people who haven't heard these mixes before. I also kinda want to steer away from talking about the qualities of the music itself because to quote Frank Zappa 'talking about music is like dancing about architecture'. I could write 10 paragraphs about the band and if you've never heard the music before you still wouldn't know if you would definitely like it or not. There are two aspects of their music however that I did want to mention - one is their absolute mastery of time signatures without it ever being obvious. Their early material especially is full of songs in all kinds of non-common time signatures, and even sections that alternate between one bar in one time and one in another, but they always had such a strong knack for melody that you could tap your foot to it no matter what. Whereas a lot of progressive bands seemed to revel in playing something angular and jarring in a meter that you couldn't count along with, Chicago always seemed to be saying to me "this is going to be a bit wild, but come along for the ride". The other thing with them I always felt was impressive was their ability to navigate between, and incorporate new styles without it ever seeming like pastiche. Almost every one of those early albums shows a new influence creeping in, but they seem to be at home with all of it. The first album must literally has 30 minutes worth of psychedelic guitar solos, and then the second album has some strong classical influences, III and V see them really embracing pop, there's a couple of really funky songs on VI (Rediscovery and What's This World Comin' To), and VII has more than half an hour of Headhunters-style fusion, just to touch on a few of these varied styles. I think unless you're really averse to horns in music there would be at least one album in the Quadioset that would appeal to you.
Original album packaging
Normally when modern reissues trumpet 'original packaging' my excitement level could be described as 'airport windsock on a mildly windy day' but if Rhino are truly recreating all of the original packaging we should be in for a treat. The packaging and extras that came with the original Chicago albums are some of my favourite of the era, and I think some of the most consistently lavish as well. One of my favourite things about buying one of their albums that I didn't have was sitting down with it, reading the sleeve notes and lyrics, looking at the pictures of the bandmembers to see how they'd changed relative to the one before it - it felt like you were really immersed in the album, sort of like a multimedia experience before they'd even coined the term. I thought I'd run down a list of what was in each one as I've seen a few posts mentioning the iron-on transfer, etc.
Chicago Transit Authority gatefold cover with bandmember photos, tracklist, tech. credits and a note from the producer.
Chicago II gatefold cover with tracklist and credits on one side and the lyrics to 'It Better End Soon' on the other, and a foldout poster that had sepia-tinted photos of each band member that were about 6" x 8" each.
Chicago III gatefold cover with tracklistcredits on one side and the lyrics to the 'When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow' poem on the other side, and a 24" x 36" poster of the bandmembers dressed as US soldiers from various wars against a backdrop of gravestones. The paper dust jackets for the records also had all the lyrics written on them in light blue ink.
Chicago V gatefold cover (with just more wood panelling inside), 2 posters - one a long 'accordion style' one that had approximately 8 10" x 10" panels, each panel an image of a band member and the final one a group shot, and then a large 36" x 36" black and white foldout poster of the whole band. There are actually two versions of the accordion style one - it was changed because the original image of Peter Cetera looks like it was taken about 2 minutes after he smoked a Cheech & Chong-sized joint. The album sleeve is full colour (for the first time) and has the same wood-grain pattern as the cover, with the lyrics and credits overlaid in white ink on top. This is also the first album (for the stereo version) that had custom record labels that matched the design of the cover - hopefully the BluRay discs will use these as they're really nice. The quad LPs used the standard Columbia gold and red Columbia Quadraphonic labels.
Chicago VI gatefold cover with a band photo inside and tracklist/production credits beside it. The original vinyl issue was printed (both the album cover and the inner sleeve) on paper that was supposed to replicate the look and feel of banknote paper.
Chicago VII gatefold cover with a photo of the band inside. The outside cover was slightly laminated and embossed to look like leather. The inner sleeves had individual musician credits for each track (they varied a lot from song to song) and some vintage looking drawings of explorers or cowboys or something.
Chicago VIII Iron-on transfer of the cardinal logo from the front cover, 24 x 36 poster of the band in an old car being chased by a cop, and a glossy full colour dust jacket with the front cover artwork on one side and the tracklist/production credits on the other.
Chicago IX (Greatest Hits) glossy full colour dust jacket with the album artwork on one side and tracklist and credits on the other.
Chicago X gatefold album cover with photo of the band on a motorcycle/running being chased by a cop, insert with lyrics and credits, and full colour dust jacket that looks like a big piece of chocolate with the Chicago logo in it.
Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits Edits/Album Versions
I saw some discussion about the edits on this album and I think I can clear it up. There's actually only two genuine single edits on this, 'Make Me Smile' which takes the first part of Make Me Smile, cuts out the guitar solo and tacks on the ending from 'Now More Than Ever', and the other is 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is' which omits the free-form piano intro. The edit of Beginnings (which just fades out the percussion coda about 1:20 early) is unique to this compilation and at about 6:30 is definitely not the single edit which is an absolute butcher's job and doesn't even run 3 minutes. All the other songs are the full length album versions, as far as I know.
Quad Mix Release Dates
I mentioned this in another thread, but the Chicago quad mixes were done relatively late in the game, which is the reason that most of them are difficult to find in the collectors market these days, especially the Q8s. The release dates were (roughly) as such:
CTA, II, III, V, VI, VII January 1975
IX December 1975
VIII & X Sept./Oct. 1976
I think pretty much all of Columbia's non-classical quad catalog went out of print in 1978, so you can see why this stuff is hard to come by having only been available for 2 or 3 years at most. This was compounded by the fact that the years they were in print were the 'decline of quad years' ('75-'78) where they surely weren't making/selling as many copies of anything quad as they were in, say, 1973.
Cheapskate Record Companies And Why This Could Be Good
We all know record companies like to make the most money possible for the least outlay possible. Given that, I wonder if the following happened: Bob Vosgien mastered the CTA disc for Quadio DVD a few years back, is it possible he also mastered all the other Chicago quad mixes? If so, this is easy money for Rhino - put out BluRays with the Vosgien quad masters for multichannel enthusiasts, and use the masterings they had done for the digital downloads that are for sale at HDTracks etc. for the stereo section. That way, Rhino's only outlay is for artwork and the BluRay authoring, making the release a very low-risk proposition.
Why is this good for us? Bob Vosgien's mastering of the CTA Quadio disc was excellent, the tonality was right on and I didn't detect any use of compression. If the other quad masters sounded like that I would be very happy indeed. The same goes with the 192/24 digital downloads of the Chicago albums (aside from V, which is the crushed version found on the DVD-A) which sound just like the original vinyl, and have DR ratings that are as high or higher than any other release of these albums.
Value For Money, eBay Dumps, and Flying The Flag For Quad With Enthusiasm
I think I mentioned this earlier on in the thread but even if this set cost twice the price, it would still represent good value for money. If you wanted to buy all the Chicago Q8's (which have only been available sporadically on eBay) it would probably set you back over $1000 for the lot. If you also wanted to buy high-res versions of the stereo mixes, you'd have to pay $25 a piece for the 192/24 downloads of V, VIII and X, and then $30+ each for the SACDs of CTA, II and VI (III, VII and IX aren't available in high res). So you'd be looking at somewhere between $1200 and $1500 to get all the quad and stereo mixes legitimately. I don't know how anyone else feels, but to me 1/10 of that price for all of the quad and stereo mixes is an absolute bargain. Let's also not forget that of the 9 albums in the set, 4 are double albums, so you're actually getting 13 (or 12 if you don't count the greatest hits) single albums worth of material in both quad and stereo.
eBayers seem to be aware that this set is going to tank the value of their Chicago quads - I've already seen a bunch of Q8's put up for auction recently, and a few of the CTA Quadio DVDs as well. I don't wish misfortune on anyone, but I couldn't be happier about this after almost 20 years of wanting to own these quad mixes but not being able to afford paying $50 to $100 per tape.
Flying the flag for quad (and surround music in general) is important, and this release proves it. The first step to getting something released is to talk about it enough that lots of people are aware of it. We've been doing that here for years (or in some cases even decades), and also bemoaning the fact that the CTA Quadio disc was a DVD-V. Do you think it's just a coincidence that a) all these quad mixes are being released now, and b) in a lossless high-res format? I don't. Record companies might not listen to one person shouting, but when a larger group is all saying the same thing, eventually they sit up and listen. Along the same lines, do you think it's a coincidence that SW's 5.1 mix of Yes' 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' was started (and abandoned) 3 years ago and then suddenly completed a month ago? I don't think it's coincidence at all, I think the threads requesting it's release started here and elsewhere and the level of fervent enthusiasm seen in them definitely pushed them to finish it up for release, and I say that as someone who isn't in the 'record company moles are everywhere listening' conspiracy camp. If there's something sitting in the vaults that you want out there, keep talking about it and keep telling people about it because money talks and eventually companies listen.
Double Dips
As good as this set is, if you're on a budget and buying it, please at least consider the possibility that there will be deluxe editions of the individual albums forthcoming in the next year/years so don't complain if/when it does happen. I believe SW's tweet of the Chicago II multitrack session was a warning of this. I read someone questioning who would buy special editions of the individual albums after buying this Quadio box, but take it from me as someone who was heavily involved in following the band and bootleg trading, there is a ton of stuff they could put on a deluxe edition of each album. The band has plenty of material in their vaults as well, both audio and video - they were going to put out a compilation DVD of live performances from the 70's a few years ago but shelved it when DVD sales tanked. This post has already ended up way longer than I anticipated so I'll leave out the specifics, but I could easily put together nice deluxe editions of the individual Chicago albums using only things I know exist - who knows what's hidden in the vault?
Having had some time to think about this release, I thought I'd jump in with some ruminations on it - I hope it can sit nicely between the format wars complaints and the lowest price discussion.
Hopefully this won't come off as a sort of Ron Burgundy style 'I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany' fandom alpha-brag, but I have a pretty long history as a fan of Chicago - not only were they the band that turned me on to 'real music' but it was also through them that the door for me was opened to the wonderful world of quad as I'll explain later. So really what I'd like to do is just share some thoughts about this release along with some information that might be of interest to people possibly buying or on the fence about buying this set.My history with Chicago actually goes back to my Dad - they were his favourite band too, and he'd been turned on to them at University by the guys in the year above him who'd seen Chicago play there in 1968, the year before Chicago Transit Authority was released. So I guess when he got there in 1969 everyone was raving about the band and when CTA came out it was incredibly popular. My dad saw them at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1970 and that cemented his love for the band...if you've seen this footage of them at Tanglewood from around the same time you can see why, they were an absolute live juggernaut at that point, and with good reason as they were playing hundreds of gigs a year. So I guess Chicago must have been in the air for me growing up even though I didn't realise it, and for some reason in my mid-teens, after listening to rap almost exclusively 'the penny dropped' (to use an English expression) and I fell in love with Chicago Transit Authority, and started buying up all the albums that followed. To cut a long story short I absolutely fell in love with the band, and when I got on the internet for the first time in about 1994 (which seems like a lifetime ago now) I set up what was the first (and for a long time only) website devoted to the band, long before they or their record company had one. You can actually see an archived version of it here - it probably seems kind of quaint now, but I was pretty proud of the amount of information it stored, including discography, lyrics, tourdates, pictures, press articles etc. Nowadays there are sites for all of those individual things like discogs, setlist.fm, etc. but back then there was none of that. I maintained the site from 1994 up until 2000 when I lost my job and then had my house burned down by an arsonist and ended up moving from Canada to the UK to try and get my life back on track, but that's a story for another day and another thread.
During that time I also participated in (and for a while ran) some mailing lists (old timers will remember these, the precursors to message boards) devoted to the band, and it was on one of these that someone said to me 'have you heard the quadraphonic mix of Chicago II? it has extra guitar parts in 25 Or 6 To 4!' So I set out to find more because prior to that I had no idea that quadraphonic meant unique mixes, I thought it just meant stereo coming from four speakers. Around the same time I was getting in to 5.1 sound at home having just set up a surround system and a laserdisc/DVD player system, and just happened (by accident) to notice the section of DTS CDs at the Ken Cranes Laserdisc website and bought a few (Gaucho, Fly Like An Eagle, etc.) and after hearing them my mind was blown - I needed more! It was also around that time as well that I crossed paths with quad conversion pioneer Tab Patterson, who made it possible for me to hear all those Chicago quad mixes that I'd been looking for, and even despite the ..shall we charitably say 'compromised fidelity' of Q8 conversions, I was hooked and pursuing quad and surround sound music has been something I've enjoyed ever since.
I think everyone who loves music has that one band they consider 'their band', the home team you root for and follow even when they're not winning. It seems like there are about 50 people on here who feel this way about Yes, and timbre4 who (if I'm remembering correctly) was telling everyone how great Steven Wilson was, before PT's In Absentia even came out. For me Chicago is that band. Ironically though, because of a combination of burnout from how rabidly I was following them in the late 90's and early 00's, their general direction at that time (shelving new music to put out greatest hits and Christmas albums, etc.) and my musical horizons greatly expanding, even though there's lots of music I enjoy and/or listen to more now, Chicago will always be the home team for me even if I go months or years between listening to some of their albums.
So suffice it to say I'm incredibly excited about this box set, and the opportunity to reappraise the music of a band I love so dearly by means of the quad mixes that got me interested in the format in the first place...at a level of quality I never imagined I'd be able to experience.
The Mixes And The Mixers
One of the things that sets these quad mixes apart from the majority of Columbia quad mixes is that (with one exception) they were remixed by the band's main engineer Wayne Tarnowski and approved by their producer James William Guercio. Tarnowski started as an assistant engineer on Chicago II, and when Guercio set up Caribou Ranch studio in 1973 he convinced Tarnowski to leave CBS and join him there and he mixed all of Chicago's albums up until they parted company with Guercio after Chicago XI. In contrast to this, the majority of Columbia quad mixes were done after the fact by someone from the label's in-house quad remixing team with no input from the original artist or producer.
The credits for the Chicago quad mixes look like this:
Chicago Transit Authority (1969), Chicago III (1971), Chicago VI (1973), Chicago VII (1974), Chicago VIII (1975), Chicago X (1976) - Quadraphonic Sound Supervision and Remix Engineer: Wayne Tarnowski
Chicago II (1970) - Quadraphonic Sound and Remix Supervision: Al Lawrence / Quadraphonic Remix Engineer: Don Young
Chicago V (1972) - Quadraphonic Sound and Remix Supervision: Al Lawrence / Quadraphonic Remix Engineers: Wayne Tarnowski & Don Puluse
Al Lawrence was Columbia's 'Head of Quadraphonic A&R' and oversaw the whole Columbia Quad program. A quote from Billboard Magazine Dec. 21st 1974 about the release of the first 7 albums in quad says '...veteran CBS quad engineer/producer Al Lawrence was instrumental in getting the [quad] mixing done to the tastes of Jimmy Guercio, the group's producer/manager.'
I'm not sure why they decided to give II to Don Young to mix - I thought maybe it was either something to do with the condition of the tapes (ie the reason for the weird midrangey sound on the original stereo mix) that required playback/mixing at the CBS studios in NYC, or time constraints meaning they had to get these done on time as the first 7 albums were all released at once. In any event Don Young was Columbia's second-most prolific quad remixer behind Larry Keyes and did some great quad mixes that have seen SACD release recently including Billy Joel's Streetlife Serenade, the Jeff Beck Group self titled album, Earth Wind & Fire 'Head To The Sky' and about 30 others.
Don Puluse was one of the main engineers on Chicago II, III and the Carnegie Hall album so he had a strong history with the band. He also did the excellent quad mix of Labelle's 'Nightbirds' album which saw release as an AF SACD a year or two ago.
As a result of Wayne Tarnowski doing most of the mixing, the albums for the most part maintain the vibe of the original stereo mixes - there's the occasional ping-pong/swirl effect, but it's fun and tasteful rather than gimmicky or overwhelming. Chicago II is a bit of an exception here having been done by Don Young there are some notable differences from the stereo mix including some missing lead vocals at the end of Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon and extra guitar parts in 25 Or 6 To 4. A lot of people will mention the extra lead guitar fills in that song, but for me what was really mindblowing was that there were acoustic rhythm guitars and piano during the solo section! Perhaps not one for the purists but I love the alternate viewpoint on an album I've listened to so many times.
I also feel that the quad mix of VIII is better than the stereo mix. From what I recall reading, they were going for a more 'R&B' feel with the stereo mix of that album and as a result on a lot of the tracks the mix is what I would call 'inside out': instead of having the guitars and keyboards sort of panned in the center with the horns in stereo, they're panned hard to the sides and the horns are mixed center mono. The quad mix isn't bound by this restriction at all so the instruments are all over the place and the horns are arranged in a much more (to me) natural sounding stereo spread.
There are all kinds of other highlights I could point out but I'll save the surprises for people who haven't heard these mixes before. I also kinda want to steer away from talking about the qualities of the music itself because to quote Frank Zappa 'talking about music is like dancing about architecture'. I could write 10 paragraphs about the band and if you've never heard the music before you still wouldn't know if you would definitely like it or not. There are two aspects of their music however that I did want to mention - one is their absolute mastery of time signatures without it ever being obvious. Their early material especially is full of songs in all kinds of non-common time signatures, and even sections that alternate between one bar in one time and one in another, but they always had such a strong knack for melody that you could tap your foot to it no matter what. Whereas a lot of progressive bands seemed to revel in playing something angular and jarring in a meter that you couldn't count along with, Chicago always seemed to be saying to me "this is going to be a bit wild, but come along for the ride". The other thing with them I always felt was impressive was their ability to navigate between, and incorporate new styles without it ever seeming like pastiche. Almost every one of those early albums shows a new influence creeping in, but they seem to be at home with all of it. The first album must literally has 30 minutes worth of psychedelic guitar solos, and then the second album has some strong classical influences, III and V see them really embracing pop, there's a couple of really funky songs on VI (Rediscovery and What's This World Comin' To), and VII has more than half an hour of Headhunters-style fusion, just to touch on a few of these varied styles. I think unless you're really averse to horns in music there would be at least one album in the Quadioset that would appeal to you.
Original album packaging
Normally when modern reissues trumpet 'original packaging' my excitement level could be described as 'airport windsock on a mildly windy day' but if Rhino are truly recreating all of the original packaging we should be in for a treat. The packaging and extras that came with the original Chicago albums are some of my favourite of the era, and I think some of the most consistently lavish as well. One of my favourite things about buying one of their albums that I didn't have was sitting down with it, reading the sleeve notes and lyrics, looking at the pictures of the bandmembers to see how they'd changed relative to the one before it - it felt like you were really immersed in the album, sort of like a multimedia experience before they'd even coined the term. I thought I'd run down a list of what was in each one as I've seen a few posts mentioning the iron-on transfer, etc.
Chicago Transit Authority gatefold cover with bandmember photos, tracklist, tech. credits and a note from the producer.
Chicago II gatefold cover with tracklist and credits on one side and the lyrics to 'It Better End Soon' on the other, and a foldout poster that had sepia-tinted photos of each band member that were about 6" x 8" each.
Chicago III gatefold cover with tracklistcredits on one side and the lyrics to the 'When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow' poem on the other side, and a 24" x 36" poster of the bandmembers dressed as US soldiers from various wars against a backdrop of gravestones. The paper dust jackets for the records also had all the lyrics written on them in light blue ink.
Chicago V gatefold cover (with just more wood panelling inside), 2 posters - one a long 'accordion style' one that had approximately 8 10" x 10" panels, each panel an image of a band member and the final one a group shot, and then a large 36" x 36" black and white foldout poster of the whole band. There are actually two versions of the accordion style one - it was changed because the original image of Peter Cetera looks like it was taken about 2 minutes after he smoked a Cheech & Chong-sized joint. The album sleeve is full colour (for the first time) and has the same wood-grain pattern as the cover, with the lyrics and credits overlaid in white ink on top. This is also the first album (for the stereo version) that had custom record labels that matched the design of the cover - hopefully the BluRay discs will use these as they're really nice. The quad LPs used the standard Columbia gold and red Columbia Quadraphonic labels.
Chicago VI gatefold cover with a band photo inside and tracklist/production credits beside it. The original vinyl issue was printed (both the album cover and the inner sleeve) on paper that was supposed to replicate the look and feel of banknote paper.
Chicago VII gatefold cover with a photo of the band inside. The outside cover was slightly laminated and embossed to look like leather. The inner sleeves had individual musician credits for each track (they varied a lot from song to song) and some vintage looking drawings of explorers or cowboys or something.
Chicago VIII Iron-on transfer of the cardinal logo from the front cover, 24 x 36 poster of the band in an old car being chased by a cop, and a glossy full colour dust jacket with the front cover artwork on one side and the tracklist/production credits on the other.
Chicago IX (Greatest Hits) glossy full colour dust jacket with the album artwork on one side and tracklist and credits on the other.
Chicago X gatefold album cover with photo of the band on a motorcycle/running being chased by a cop, insert with lyrics and credits, and full colour dust jacket that looks like a big piece of chocolate with the Chicago logo in it.
Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits Edits/Album Versions
I saw some discussion about the edits on this album and I think I can clear it up. There's actually only two genuine single edits on this, 'Make Me Smile' which takes the first part of Make Me Smile, cuts out the guitar solo and tacks on the ending from 'Now More Than Ever', and the other is 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is' which omits the free-form piano intro. The edit of Beginnings (which just fades out the percussion coda about 1:20 early) is unique to this compilation and at about 6:30 is definitely not the single edit which is an absolute butcher's job and doesn't even run 3 minutes. All the other songs are the full length album versions, as far as I know.
Quad Mix Release Dates
I mentioned this in another thread, but the Chicago quad mixes were done relatively late in the game, which is the reason that most of them are difficult to find in the collectors market these days, especially the Q8s. The release dates were (roughly) as such:
CTA, II, III, V, VI, VII January 1975
IX December 1975
VIII & X Sept./Oct. 1976
I think pretty much all of Columbia's non-classical quad catalog went out of print in 1978, so you can see why this stuff is hard to come by having only been available for 2 or 3 years at most. This was compounded by the fact that the years they were in print were the 'decline of quad years' ('75-'78) where they surely weren't making/selling as many copies of anything quad as they were in, say, 1973.
Cheapskate Record Companies And Why This Could Be Good
We all know record companies like to make the most money possible for the least outlay possible. Given that, I wonder if the following happened: Bob Vosgien mastered the CTA disc for Quadio DVD a few years back, is it possible he also mastered all the other Chicago quad mixes? If so, this is easy money for Rhino - put out BluRays with the Vosgien quad masters for multichannel enthusiasts, and use the masterings they had done for the digital downloads that are for sale at HDTracks etc. for the stereo section. That way, Rhino's only outlay is for artwork and the BluRay authoring, making the release a very low-risk proposition.
Why is this good for us? Bob Vosgien's mastering of the CTA Quadio disc was excellent, the tonality was right on and I didn't detect any use of compression. If the other quad masters sounded like that I would be very happy indeed. The same goes with the 192/24 digital downloads of the Chicago albums (aside from V, which is the crushed version found on the DVD-A) which sound just like the original vinyl, and have DR ratings that are as high or higher than any other release of these albums.
Value For Money, eBay Dumps, and Flying The Flag For Quad With Enthusiasm
I think I mentioned this earlier on in the thread but even if this set cost twice the price, it would still represent good value for money. If you wanted to buy all the Chicago Q8's (which have only been available sporadically on eBay) it would probably set you back over $1000 for the lot. If you also wanted to buy high-res versions of the stereo mixes, you'd have to pay $25 a piece for the 192/24 downloads of V, VIII and X, and then $30+ each for the SACDs of CTA, II and VI (III, VII and IX aren't available in high res). So you'd be looking at somewhere between $1200 and $1500 to get all the quad and stereo mixes legitimately. I don't know how anyone else feels, but to me 1/10 of that price for all of the quad and stereo mixes is an absolute bargain. Let's also not forget that of the 9 albums in the set, 4 are double albums, so you're actually getting 13 (or 12 if you don't count the greatest hits) single albums worth of material in both quad and stereo.
eBayers seem to be aware that this set is going to tank the value of their Chicago quads - I've already seen a bunch of Q8's put up for auction recently, and a few of the CTA Quadio DVDs as well. I don't wish misfortune on anyone, but I couldn't be happier about this after almost 20 years of wanting to own these quad mixes but not being able to afford paying $50 to $100 per tape.
Flying the flag for quad (and surround music in general) is important, and this release proves it. The first step to getting something released is to talk about it enough that lots of people are aware of it. We've been doing that here for years (or in some cases even decades), and also bemoaning the fact that the CTA Quadio disc was a DVD-V. Do you think it's just a coincidence that a) all these quad mixes are being released now, and b) in a lossless high-res format? I don't. Record companies might not listen to one person shouting, but when a larger group is all saying the same thing, eventually they sit up and listen. Along the same lines, do you think it's a coincidence that SW's 5.1 mix of Yes' 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' was started (and abandoned) 3 years ago and then suddenly completed a month ago? I don't think it's coincidence at all, I think the threads requesting it's release started here and elsewhere and the level of fervent enthusiasm seen in them definitely pushed them to finish it up for release, and I say that as someone who isn't in the 'record company moles are everywhere listening' conspiracy camp. If there's something sitting in the vaults that you want out there, keep talking about it and keep telling people about it because money talks and eventually companies listen.
Double Dips
As good as this set is, if you're on a budget and buying it, please at least consider the possibility that there will be deluxe editions of the individual albums forthcoming in the next year/years so don't complain if/when it does happen. I believe SW's tweet of the Chicago II multitrack session was a warning of this. I read someone questioning who would buy special editions of the individual albums after buying this Quadio box, but take it from me as someone who was heavily involved in following the band and bootleg trading, there is a ton of stuff they could put on a deluxe edition of each album. The band has plenty of material in their vaults as well, both audio and video - they were going to put out a compilation DVD of live performances from the 70's a few years ago but shelved it when DVD sales tanked. This post has already ended up way longer than I anticipated so I'll leave out the specifics, but I could easily put together nice deluxe editions of the individual Chicago albums using only things I know exist - who knows what's hidden in the vault?
Rockpalast has shown a concert of CTA a few years back. Claiming it was from 1970, but from your tour page it was probably this one: 1969 12/12 Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Holland.
In serious black and white, of course...
-Kristian
In serious black and white, of course...
-Kristian
Chicago and Me
Having had some time to think about this release, I thought I'd jump in with some ruminations on it - I hope it can sit nicely between the format wars complaints and the lowest price discussion.
My history with Chicago actually goes back to my Dad - they were his favourite band too, and he'd been turned on to them at University by the guys in the year above him who'd seen Chicago play there in 1968, the year before Chicago Transit Authority was released. So I guess when he got there in 1969 everyone was raving about the band and when CTA came out it was incredibly popular. My dad saw them at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1970 and that cemented his love for the band...if you've seen this footage of them at Tanglewood from around the same time you can see why, they were an absolute live juggernaut at that point, and with good reason as they were playing hundreds of gigs a year. So I guess Chicago must have been in the air for me growing up even though I didn't realise it, and for some reason in my mid-teens, after listening to rap almost exclusively 'the penny dropped' (to use an English expression) and I fell in love with Chicago Transit Authority, and started buying up all the albums that followed. To cut a long story short I absolutely fell in love with the band, and when I got on the internet for the first time in about 1994 (which seems like a lifetime ago now) I set up what was the first (and for a long time only) website devoted to the band, long before they or their record company had one. You can actually see an archived version of it here - it probably seems kind of quaint now, but I was pretty proud of the amount of information it stored, including discography, lyrics, tourdates, pictures, press articles etc. Nowadays there are sites for all of those individual things like discogs, setlist.fm, etc. but back then there was none of that. I maintained the site from 1994 up until 2000 when I lost my job and then had my house burned down by an arsonist and ended up moving from Canada to the UK to try and get my life back on track, but that's a story for another day and another thread.
During that time I also participated in (and for a while ran) some mailing lists (old timers will remember these, the precursors to message boards) devoted to the band, and it was on one of these that someone said to me 'have you heard the quadraphonic mix of Chicago II? it has extra guitar parts in 25 Or 6 To 4!' So I set out to find more because prior to that I had no idea that quadraphonic meant unique mixes, I thought it just meant stereo coming from four speakers. Around the same time I was getting in to 5.1 sound at home having just set up a surround system and a laserdisc/DVD player system, and just happened (by accident) to notice the section of DTS CDs at the Ken Cranes Laserdisc website and bought a few (Gaucho, Fly Like An Eagle, etc.) and after hearing them my mind was blown - I needed more! It was also around that time as well that I crossed paths with quad conversion pioneer Tab Patterson, who made it possible for me to hear all those Chicago quad mixes that I'd been looking for, and even despite the ..shall we charitably say 'compromised fidelity' of Q8 conversions, I was hooked and pursuing quad and surround sound music has been something I've enjoyed ever since.
I think everyone who loves music has that one band they consider 'their band', the home team you root for and follow even when they're not winning. It seems like there are about 50 people on here who feel this way about Yes, and timbre4 who (if I'm remembering correctly) was telling everyone how great Steven Wilson was, before PT's In Absentia even came out. For me Chicago is that band. Ironically though, because of a combination of burnout from how rabidly I was following them in the late 90's and early 00's, their general direction at that time (shelving new music to put out greatest hits and Christmas albums, etc.) and my musical horizons greatly expanding, even though there's lots of music I enjoy and/or listen to more now, Chicago will always be the home team for me even if I go months or years between listening to some of their albums.
So suffice it to say I'm incredibly excited about this box set, and the opportunity to reappraise the music of a band I love so dearly by means of the quad mixes that got me interested in the format in the first place...at a level of quality I never imagined I'd be able to experience.
The Mixes And The Mixers
One of the things that sets these quad mixes apart from the majority of Columbia quad mixes is that (with one exception) they were remixed by the band's main engineer Wayne Tarnowski and approved by their producer James William Guercio. Tarnowski started as an assistant engineer on Chicago II, and when Guercio set up Caribou Ranch studio in 1973 he convinced Tarnowski to leave CBS and join him there and he mixed all of Chicago's albums up until they parted company with Guercio after Chicago XI. In contrast to this, the majority of Columbia quad mixes were done after the fact by someone from the label's in-house quad remixing team with no input from the original artist or producer.
The credits for the Chicago quad mixes look like this:
Chicago Transit Authority (1969), Chicago III (1971), Chicago VI (1973), Chicago VII (1974), Chicago VIII (1975), Chicago X (1976) - Quadraphonic Sound Supervision and Remix Engineer: Wayne Tarnowski
Chicago II (1970) - Quadraphonic Sound and Remix Supervision: Al Lawrence / Quadraphonic Remix Engineer: Don Young
Chicago V (1972) - Quadraphonic Sound and Remix Supervision: Al Lawrence / Quadraphonic Remix Engineers: Wayne Tarnowski & Don Puluse
Al Lawrence was Columbia's 'Head of Quadraphonic A&R' and oversaw the whole Columbia Quad program. A quote from Billboard Magazine Dec. 21st 1974 about the release of the first 7 albums in quad says '...veteran CBS quad engineer/producer Al Lawrence was instrumental in getting the [quad] mixing done to the tastes of Jimmy Guercio, the group's producer/manager.'
I'm not sure why they decided to give II to Don Young to mix - I thought maybe it was either something to do with the condition of the tapes (ie the reason for the weird midrangey sound on the original stereo mix) that required playback/mixing at the CBS studios in NYC, or time constraints meaning they had to get these done on time as the first 7 albums were all released at once. In any event Don Young was Columbia's second-most prolific quad remixer behind Larry Keyes and did some great quad mixes that have seen SACD release recently including Billy Joel's Streetlife Serenade, the Jeff Beck Group self titled album, Earth Wind & Fire 'Head To The Sky' and about 30 others.
Don Puluse was one of the main engineers on Chicago II, III and the Carnegie Hall album so he had a strong history with the band. He also did the excellent quad mix of Labelle's 'Nightbirds' album which saw release as an AF SACD a year or two ago.
As a result of Wayne Tarnowski doing most of the mixing, the albums for the most part maintain the vibe of the original stereo mixes - there's the occasional ping-pong/swirl effect, but it's fun and tasteful rather than gimmicky or overwhelming. Chicago II is a bit of an exception here having been done by Don Young there are some notable differences from the stereo mix including some missing lead vocals at the end of Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon and extra guitar parts in 25 Or 6 To 4. A lot of people will mention the extra lead guitar fills in that song, but for me what was really mindblowing was that there were acoustic rhythm guitars and piano during the solo section! Perhaps not one for the purists but I love the alternate viewpoint on an album I've listened to so many times.
I also feel that the quad mix of VIII is better than the stereo mix. From what I recall reading, they were going for a more 'R&B' feel with the stereo mix of that album and as a result on a lot of the tracks the mix is what I would call 'inside out': instead of having the guitars and keyboards sort of panned in the center with the horns in stereo, they're panned hard to the sides and the horns are mixed center mono. The quad mix isn't bound by this restriction at all so the instruments are all over the place and the horns are arranged in a much more (to me) natural sounding stereo spread.
There are all kinds of other highlights I could point out but I'll save the surprises for people who haven't heard these mixes before. I also kinda want to steer away from talking about the qualities of the music itself because to quote Frank Zappa 'talking about music is like dancing about architecture'. I could write 10 paragraphs about the band and if you've never heard the music before you still wouldn't know if you would definitely like it or not. There are two aspects of their music however that I did want to mention - one is their absolute mastery of time signatures without it ever being obvious. Their early material especially is full of songs in all kinds of non-common time signatures, and even sections that alternate between one bar in one time and one in another, but they always had such a strong knack for melody that you could tap your foot to it no matter what. Whereas a lot of progressive bands seemed to revel in playing something angular and jarring in a meter that you couldn't count along with, Chicago always seemed to be saying to me "this is going to be a bit wild, but come along for the ride". The other thing with them I always felt was impressive was their ability to navigate between, and incorporate new styles without it ever seeming like pastiche. Almost every one of those early albums shows a new influence creeping in, but they seem to be at home with all of it. The first album must literally has 30 minutes worth of psychedelic guitar solos, and then the second album has some strong classical influences, III and V see them really embracing pop, there's a couple of really funky songs on VI (Rediscovery and What's This World Comin' To), and VII has more than half an hour of Headhunters-style fusion, just to touch on a few of these varied styles. I think unless you're really averse to horns in music there would be at least one album in the Quadioset that would appeal to you.
Original album packaging
Normally when modern reissues trumpet 'original packaging' my excitement level could be described as 'airport windsock on a mildly windy day' but if Rhino are truly recreating all of the original packaging we should be in for a treat. The packaging and extras that came with the original Chicago albums are some of my favourite of the era, and I think some of the most consistently lavish as well. One of my favourite things about buying one of their albums that I didn't have was sitting down with it, reading the sleeve notes and lyrics, looking at the pictures of the bandmembers to see how they'd changed relative to the one before it - it felt like you were really immersed in the album, sort of like a multimedia experience before they'd even coined the term. I thought I'd run down a list of what was in each one as I've seen a few posts mentioning the iron-on transfer, etc.
Chicago Transit Authority gatefold cover with bandmember photos, tracklist, tech. credits and a note from the producer.
Chicago II gatefold cover with tracklist and credits on one side and the lyrics to 'It Better End Soon' on the other, and a foldout poster that had sepia-tinted photos of each band member that were about 6" x 8" each.
Chicago III gatefold cover with tracklistcredits on one side and the lyrics to the 'When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow' poem on the other side, and a 24" x 36" poster of the bandmembers dressed as US soldiers from various wars against a backdrop of gravestones. The paper dust jackets for the records also had all the lyrics written on them in light blue ink.
Chicago V gatefold cover (with just more wood panelling inside), 2 posters - one a long 'accordion style' one that had approximately 8 10" x 10" panels, each panel an image of a band member and the final one a group shot, and then a large 36" x 36" black and white foldout poster of the whole band. There are actually two versions of the accordion style one - it was changed because the original image of Peter Cetera looks like it was taken about 2 minutes after he smoked a Cheech & Chong-sized joint. The album sleeve is full colour (for the first time) and has the same wood-grain pattern as the cover, with the lyrics and credits overlaid in white ink on top. This is also the first album (for the stereo version) that had custom record labels that matched the design of the cover - hopefully the BluRay discs will use these as they're really nice. The quad LPs used the standard Columbia gold and red Columbia Quadraphonic labels.
Chicago VI gatefold cover with a band photo inside and tracklist/production credits beside it. The original vinyl issue was printed (both the album cover and the inner sleeve) on paper that was supposed to replicate the look and feel of banknote paper.
Chicago VII gatefold cover with a photo of the band inside. The outside cover was slightly laminated and embossed to look like leather. The inner sleeves had individual musician credits for each track (they varied a lot from song to song) and some vintage looking drawings of explorers or cowboys or something.
Chicago VIII Iron-on transfer of the cardinal logo from the front cover, 24 x 36 poster of the band in an old car being chased by a cop, and a glossy full colour dust jacket with the front cover artwork on one side and the tracklist/production credits on the other.
Chicago IX (Greatest Hits) glossy full colour dust jacket with the album artwork on one side and tracklist and credits on the other.
Chicago X gatefold album cover with photo of the band on a motorcycle/running being chased by a cop, insert with lyrics and credits, and full colour dust jacket that looks like a big piece of chocolate with the Chicago logo in it.
Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits Edits/Album Versions
I saw some discussion about the edits on this album and I think I can clear it up. There's actually only two genuine single edits on this, 'Make Me Smile' which takes the first part of Make Me Smile, cuts out the guitar solo and tacks on the ending from 'Now More Than Ever', and the other is 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is' which omits the free-form piano intro. The edit of Beginnings (which just fades out the percussion coda about 1:20 early) is unique to this compilation and at about 6:30 is definitely not the single edit which is an absolute butcher's job and doesn't even run 3 minutes. All the other songs are the full length album versions, as far as I know.
Quad Mix Release Dates
I mentioned this in another thread, but the Chicago quad mixes were done relatively late in the game, which is the reason that most of them are difficult to find in the collectors market these days, especially the Q8s. The release dates were (roughly) as such:
CTA, II, III, V, VI, VII January 1975
IX December 1975
VIII & X Sept./Oct. 1976
I think pretty much all of Columbia's non-classical quad catalog went out of print in 1978, so you can see why this stuff is hard to come by having only been available for 2 or 3 years at most. This was compounded by the fact that the years they were in print were the 'decline of quad years' ('75-'78) where they surely weren't making/selling as many copies of anything quad as they were in, say, 1973.
Cheapskate Record Companies And Why This Could Be Good
We all know record companies like to make the most money possible for the least outlay possible. Given that, I wonder if the following happened: Bob Vosgien mastered the CTA disc for Quadio DVD a few years back, is it possible he also mastered all the other Chicago quad mixes? If so, this is easy money for Rhino - put out BluRays with the Vosgien quad masters for multichannel enthusiasts, and use the masterings they had done for the digital downloads that are for sale at HDTracks etc. for the stereo section. That way, Rhino's only outlay is for artwork and the BluRay authoring, making the release a very low-risk proposition.
Why is this good for us? Bob Vosgien's mastering of the CTA Quadio disc was excellent, the tonality was right on and I didn't detect any use of compression. If the other quad masters sounded like that I would be very happy indeed. The same goes with the 192/24 digital downloads of the Chicago albums (aside from V, which is the crushed version found on the DVD-A) which sound just like the original vinyl, and have DR ratings that are as high or higher than any other release of these albums.
Value For Money, eBay Dumps, and Flying The Flag For Quad With Enthusiasm
I think I mentioned this earlier on in the thread but even if this set cost twice the price, it would still represent good value for money. If you wanted to buy all the Chicago Q8's (which have only been available sporadically on eBay) it would probably set you back over $1000 for the lot. If you also wanted to buy high-res versions of the stereo mixes, you'd have to pay $25 a piece for the 192/24 downloads of V, VIII and X, and then $30+ each for the SACDs of CTA, II and VI (III, VII and IX aren't available in high res). So you'd be looking at somewhere between $1200 and $1500 to get all the quad and stereo mixes legitimately. I don't know how anyone else feels, but to me 1/10 of that price for all of the quad and stereo mixes is an absolute bargain. Let's also not forget that of the 9 albums in the set, 4 are double albums, so you're actually getting 13 (or 12 if you don't count the greatest hits) single albums worth of material in both quad and stereo.
eBayers seem to be aware that this set is going to tank the value of their Chicago quads - I've already seen a bunch of Q8's put up for auction recently, and a few of the CTA Quadio DVDs as well. I don't wish misfortune on anyone, but I couldn't be happier about this after almost 20 years of wanting to own these quad mixes but not being able to afford paying $50 to $100 per tape.
Flying the flag for quad (and surround music in general) is important, and this release proves it. The first step to getting something released is to talk about it enough that lots of people are aware of it. We've been doing that here for years (or in some cases even decades), and also bemoaning the fact that the CTA Quadio disc was a DVD-V. Do you think it's just a coincidence that a) all these quad mixes are being released now, and b) in a lossless high-res format? I don't. Record companies might not listen to one person shouting, but when a larger group is all saying the same thing, eventually they sit up and listen. Along the same lines, do you think it's a coincidence that SW's 5.1 mix of Yes' 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' was started (and abandoned) 3 years ago and then suddenly completed a month ago? I don't think it's coincidence at all, I think the threads requesting it's release started here and elsewhere and the level of fervent enthusiasm seen in them definitely pushed them to finish it up for release, and I say that as someone who isn't in the 'record company moles are everywhere listening' conspiracy camp. If there's something sitting in the vaults that you want out there, keep talking about it and keep telling people about it because money talks and eventually companies listen.
Double Dips
As good as this set is, if you're on a budget and buying it, please at least consider the possibility that there will be deluxe editions of the individual albums forthcoming in the next year/years so don't complain if/when it does happen. I believe SW's tweet of the Chicago II multitrack session was a warning of this. I read someone questioning who would buy special editions of the individual albums after buying this Quadio box, but take it from me as someone who was heavily involved in following the band and bootleg trading, there is a ton of stuff they could put on a deluxe edition of each album. The band has plenty of material in their vaults as well, both audio and video - they were going to put out a compilation DVD of live performances from the 70's a few years ago but shelved it when DVD sales tanked. This post has already ended up way longer than I anticipated so I'll leave out the specifics, but I could easily put together nice deluxe editions of the individual Chicago albums using only things I know exist - who knows what's hidden in the vault?
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Fantastic post and very informative...I would submit that record companies are doing this...in part...because of what AF is doing...releasing quad versions on SACD...I have been watching to see who would jump in next and utilize this resource....there are very few "original" ideas in the business world these days...it's a "copycat" environment...like sports teams...if something is working others will try it...and they are using my favorite audio format...blu ray...it's just a shame that the creators of this format never really understood what they had and how to use it's vast potential...this could have been a stellar audio format from day one...with proper management and marketing...
Again...great post steelydave
steelydave - That was one of the best posts ever here at QQ. Nice job, thank you, and WOW!
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