RELIVING Chicago 1971
It was a hot Saturday in Dallas, Texas, June 26, 2021, at a big outdoor setting for a big rock show, the Dos Equis Pavilion at Fair Park. You might even call it a Saturday in the park. All 10 members of Chicago bounded onto the stage like it was their first time. It was not. I mean as far from “not” as a band can get. Thanks to this show and more to follow (along with shows in the first quarter of 2020), Chicago have not missed a calendar year of live performances since they first formed in the Windy City in 1967. That’s a staggering 54 years filled with hotels and planes and vans and buses and music, lots of music, played from the heart with passion in one of the most original and vibrant bands that rock and roll has ever known.
Chicago still bring the big wall of sound with their high energy infectious music, a larger-than-life approach presented with the same urgency with which they started, I’m gonna say it again, 54 years ago.
The Dallas show opened with “Introduction,” the first song from the band’s first album, released at the beginning of 1969. Then came “Questions 67 and 68,” also from the first record, followed seamlessly by a barrage of timeless hits — “Dialogue,” “Call on Me,” “(I’ve Been Searching) So Long,” “If You Leave Me Now,” “Old Days,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” “Alive Again,” “Just You ‘n’ Me,” “Saturday in the Park” — a two-hour march through an extraordinary career driven by positive inspirational songs, fully evident in the happy crowd waving its cell phones in a
