Today I decided to play the album Chicago V while working. That album includes a two-part song called “Dialogue.” I remember this song well, including all the lyrics. That’s because I sing one of the lead voices of this song (along with Charles Glenn) with a band I formed with Charles Glenn back in the late 1970’s. We were an 7-piece jazz-rock band that performed many types of music, including the music of Chicago, including “Dialogue.”
“Ego” in 1975.: Tom O’Brien (bass), Tom Atkinson (woodwinds), Erich Vieth (guitar), Mike L’Ecuyer (keyboards), Sharon Schutte (vocalist), Charles Glenn (percussion and vocalist), Mark Harmon (trumpet), Ron Weaver (trumpet) and Mike Harty (trombone).
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As I heard this tune today, it very much brought me back to the happy times of playing with such an extraordinary group of good friends. It also struck me how little things have changed. It also haunts me that the vocal part of the song that I sang in our performances (sung by Terri Kath on the album) is an extraordinary challenge. I very much meant those opening words as an 18-year old young man and they resonate with me today. The question, though, is what have I done other than talk about these issues? It’s a continuing challenge, of course. It’s so much easier to complain about things on Facebook than to take meaningful action. Here are the lyrics, the Kath lyrics being the part of each couplet.
Are you optimistic ’bout the way things are going?
No, I never ever think of it at all
Don’t you ever worry when you see what’s going down?
No, I try to mind my business, that is, no business at all
When it’s time to function as a feeling human being will your bachelor of arts help you get by?
I hope to study further, a few more years or so, I also hope to keep a steady high
Will you try to change things use the power that you have, the power of a million new ideas?
What is this power you speak of and this need for things to change? I always thought that everything was fine
Don’t you feel repression just closing in around?
No, the campus here is very, very free
Don’t it make you angry the way war is dragging on?
Well, I hope the president knows what he’s into, I don’t know
Don’t you ever see the starvation in the city where you live? All the needless hunger all the needless pain?
I haven’t been there lately, the country is so fine but my neighbors don’t seem hungry ’cause they haven’t got the time
[interlude]
Thank you for the talk, you know you really eased my mind. I was troubled by the shapes of things to come
Well, if you had my outlook your feelings would be numb
You’d always think that everything was fine.
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We can make it better
We can make it better
We can make it better
Yeah Yeah Yeah
We can change the world now
We can change the world now
We can change the world now
We can save the children
We can save the children
We can save the children
Yeah Yeah Yeah
