Marketplace of Ideas Blog

Regular readers to this space should know by now that my tastes in things aren't particularly mainstream, or for that matter modern.

One of them is my love of what I call “brass rock” — rock music with trumpets, trombones and saxophones joining the usual guitar/bass guitar/keyboard/drums grouping. (Technically, saxophones are woodwinds, not brass, but saxes were prominent in early rock music.) There’s a MySpace page, “Horn Rock Heaven,” for us, representing largely two main groups, Chicago and Blood Sweat & Tears, plus a number of lesser known groups that recorded music generally between 1966 and 1976, acts and songs now the province of oldies radio.

It’s the sort of interest one would expect of someone who played trumpet from middle school through college. I can’t play guitar, I’ve never played the drums, I’ve forgotten how to play piano, and no one wants to hear me sing. My uncle once played Chicago’s 16-minute-long “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon” (including “Make Me Smile” and “Colour My World”) at ear-splitting levels in his house for me, and I was hooked from then on.

Some people call it “jazz rock,” but to me jazz is instrumental, and most, though not all, brass rock songs have singers. Rock is a fusion of jazz, blues and country music anyway, so brass rock could be said to be a return to the roots of rock and roll.

More rock groups have added brass parts than fans might think — the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker and Santana are four examples, as is The Who’s Pete Townshend. For that matter, Fleetwood Mac didn’t just bring in brass players, they brought in an entire college marching band for "Tusk." And there are acts you’ve never heard of, such as Genya Ravan and Ten Wheel Drive, that fit into the genre.

The 14 of us interested in this music were particularly interested by the release of a “new” Chicago album, “Stone of Sisyphus.” The “new” is in scare quotes because the album was recorded in 1993, but released in June after Warner Bros. executives sat on it for 15 years.

About “Sisyphus,” I can say that it’s certainly better than what Chicago has released recently, but it’s very similar to their late ’80s recordings, when the horns were kind of add-on accompaniment instead of driving the songs as the horns did in Chicago’s early albums.

I have a cassette tape somewhere that I named “Kick in the Brass” with what I consider to be the best of Chicago — “Make Me Smile,” “Does Anyone Know What Time It Is” (the correct answer is “25 or 6 to 4,” a song about … writing a song), “Saturday in the Park,” “Beginnings,” “Free,” “Dialogue,” “Questions 67 and 68,” “I’m a Man,” “Just You and Me” and “Alive Again” — with what I consider to be the best of Blood Sweat & Tears — “Spinning Wheel,” “You Make Me So Very Happy,” “And When I Die” and “Lucretia McEvil” — plus Townshend’s “Face the Face,” Santana’s “Everybody’s Everything,” and, to conclude, three one-hit wonders — “Vehicle” from The Ides of March (which will be playing at Potawatomi Bingo & Casino in Milwaukee Nov. 21), “Get It On” by a group named Chase (whose brass section consisted only of a pair of trumpets), and what should be the ultimate brass rock concert encore finale, “One Fine Morning” from the Canadian “swing rock” group Lighthouse. Several Earth Wind & Fire songs could have been added, including “Shining Star,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “September.”

I accomplished the only musical goal I ever had by marching in the University of Wisconsin Marching Band in college. Still, it would be cool, once, to play with Chicago. (Chicago played in Madison in 1987, and much of the Marching Band was in attendance.) For that matter, the publisher of the Ripon Commonwealth Press once was in a brass rock band (he plays trombone) that played in a couple years of Ripon Village Green Concert Series, including Chicago’s “Beginnings.” That would be cool to do too (while following in my father’s footsteps), except that I have no time to, you know, practice, and I would probably pass out after playing for three minutes, let alone three hours.