Chicago "Chicago II" [1970]

With all the Midwestern sentiment it would require to name your albums like Super Bowls and play fake jazz-blues-pop like they do on an off-night at a Rush Street dump, Chicago split their home town to strike it rich in California, and somehow it worked. ("Somehow" Blood, Sweat & Tears and Englebert Humperdinck also had record deals in the late 60's, so go figure.) Giving Steely Dan the preposterous and totally unwarranted notion that wanking off with jazz riffs and far too many horns was a good idea, an entire faction of 70s music -- which might well have one day rescued us all from "Hotel California" -- instead merely set us up for the kill. Those who tried to genuinely recover grasped for Jeff Beck and Weather Report, but it was already too late: Chicago's mob of sessionist pinheads not only scored hit singles on a regular basis (call them the "Charting Chart-readers"), they inexcusably released double albums of off-timed, endless suites of brass pomp. Thus the disease of overproduction (and the resulting mere approximation of actual rock music) had infected the industry to an alarming degree, thanks to these chumps. Imagine Stephen Stills trying to conduct an all-white Crusaders cover band arranged by a composer deranged by overmodulation, and you'll get a good (i.e. horribly bad) idea of what "Chicago II" sounds like.