I was in the 7th grade at a Catholic school when a bunch of guys in the Chicago area who loved music found each other and formed a band called The Big Thing. Those guys, all about 10 years older than me, dressed to the nines in skinny suits ala the early Beatles, knocked around playing gigs in the Midwest. They were unusual of the bands at that time in that they were doing rock music that included a trumpet, a trombone, and a saxophone. At a gig in Niles, Michigan right around Labor Day 1967 a CBS Records producer saw them and liked what he heard. He told them to keep working on their original material, hang on, that he’d be in touch.
In December of that year, The Big Thing opened for The Exceptions, the biggest club band in the Midwest. The Big Thing was just using the bass pedals on the organ for their bass line at the time. Real rock bands needed an actual bass player. The bass player for The Exceptions liked The Big Thing and what they were doing so much he defected. That defection worked very well for The Big Thing as it also filled in the tenor gap they had in the vocals. The bass player was Peter Cetera.
In March 1968 the record producer came back for his second look at the band. Impressed by their improvement he renamed them Chicago Transit Authority and told them to prepare for a move to Los Angeles. Later, after being threatened with legal action from the real Chicago Transit Authority, the band shortened their name to Chicago.
The rest, as they say, is history. Chicago recorded 38 albums, sold more than 100,000,000 records and is one of the longest running and bestselling music groups of all time.
Fast forward to the other side of the world, Moscow, Russia. The year is 2014. Musician, choir conductor, and recording studio sound engineer Leonid Vorobyev is getting close to the age (60) where most Russians are expected to retire. As a gift to himself, he wanted to record some of his favorite songs by Chicago, one of his favorite bands. No musical charts were available, so Vorobyev set out to transcribe all of the music by ear, instrument by instrument.
Leonid then gathered his musician friends from all over Russian together, perfected the songs, then recorded and filmed the studio versions they played of them. Those videos were uploaded to YouTube. Two weeks later the videos were noticed by and uploaded to the band Chicago’s official website by Danny Seraphine, Chicago’s very impressed founding drummer.
Almost overnight, the band became a YouTube sensation with more than 30 million views. With that kind of interest, they just kept going. Leonid insists he never intended to form a working band. Yet, 10 years later, Leonid and Friends are now performing all over the world. We had the privilege of seeing them in person last Saturday at the Seminole Event Center in Immokalee, Florida.
I’ve mentioned Leonid and Friends in a couple previous blogs, once commenting that they do Chicago better than Chicago does Chicago. On a video chat about a week ago with Randy’s sister, Lynn, who is also my best friend, her husband, Dave, a former bass playing musician, popped into the camera’s range to complain to me that he was “offended” by my contention that anyone could do Chicago better than Chicago.
We had a lively, good-natured argument about my statement. At the end we agreed to disagree seeing as how he’d seen Chicago live but never seen Leonid and Friends live, and I was going to see Leonid and Friends live, but have never seen Chicago in person. I wasn’t sure his evaluation was credible though, since I knew that back in the day when Dave would have seen Chicago live, there was probably drugs involved. Just sayin’.
We went to the concert Saturday night with two other couples. Of all the bands we’ve seen since we retired here in Florida, I was more excited about Leonid and Friends than any other. I was a little surprised about the venue. In the Casino Hotel complex in Immokalee, the Seminole Center was nothing more than a big room with a stage and chairs set up in rows. We were near the back in the cheap seats. The floor was all one level, unlike a theater that slopes so you can see over the heads of those in front of you. The stage was hard to see, especially when the guy who sat in the chair right in front of me was as big as a pro football offensive lineman. With a huge head. No matter, I reasoned. I came to hear, not see the music.
The manager and emcee of the band, Leonid’s son, Roman, came out first. Speaking excellent English, he was entertaining and energetic, but the crowd wanted the music! From the first blasts of the brass section on the song Make Me Smile, the place started rocking. Their playlist included some of Chicago’s greatest hits, of course, an Earth, Wind & Fire tune or two, something from Chaka Khan, Vehicle from The Ides of March, and even Superstar by the Carpenters. When Ksenia (their female singer) encouraged us to dance when they played Boogie Wonderland, we danced without getting out of our chairs. One great thing about the venue was the chairs were not real rigid. In fact, they were comfortable enough that they twisted and turned right along with us as we danced and boogied in them.
The evening ended far too soon for me. I can’t imagine where the nearly two hours went. It was a truly happy, memorable night.
In the car on the way home, I told Jim and Tina, the couple with us, about my argument with Dave. To my surprise, Jim said that he’d now seen both Chicago and Leonid and Friends live. I was excited that there was now a neutral party to judge which band did Chicago better. So, Jim, I asked….
“Well,” Jim said, “I saw Chicago at the University of Missouri in ’72 or ’73. I gotta say I think they just phoned it in then. Leonid and Friends were much more energetic!”
So, there you go, Dave. We have an unbiased opinion from a neutral source that Leonid and Friends do Chicago better than Chicago did Chicago.
I can’t wait to go to my next Leonid and Friends concert. In fact, we’re thinking about heading up to Durham, NC to see them there in May. Kristine, can we book your guest room? In the meantime, I’ll get my fix from YouTube where you, too, can enjoy them any time you like.
P.S. 25 or 6 to 4, Chicago’s biggest hit song, was written one night by the Robert Lamm, the band’s founding member and keyboard player. Despite (supposedly) 6 to 4 being a nickname for LSD (meaning if you dropped an acid tab at 6 pm it would wear off by 4 am), Lamm said the song is simply about trying to write a song in the middle of the night (about 3:35 am) with no good ideas. So, he wrote about struggling to write a song in the middle of the night. That worked out pretty well for them.
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