Every year, this writer looks at the Hollywood Bowl's events calendar, spots the "fireworks finale," and somehow ends up not going. It always looks like a blast, but life generally happens. This year, however, we made it happen! Chicago and Christopher Cross, the gorgeous and historic Hollywood Bowl, fireworks, and great weather -- who could ask for more?
Edge-lords might scoff at the "soft-rock"-ness of it all. It's all very safe, sweet and inoffensive. But the yin to that yang is that yacht rock has become very "in" with the hipster crowd in recent years. If we continue along this path, is it possible that Chicago could become more punk than punk?
Well, no. But we sure can have a ton of fun listening to them.
Christopher Cross, with a giant picture of a flamingo behind him as one might expect, is the epitome of yacht rock. His daughter Madison Cross was a driving force and producer on the HBO documentary Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, for crying out loud.
As such, his set is perfect. "Sailing," "Ride Like the Wind" and especially "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" are dreamily, comfortingly lovely. It's like Cross is crawling your hair and singing simultaneously. How does he do that? We don't know, but we're happy to float off on his cloud-songs.
The crazy thing about Chicago is that, if you're not a hardcore fan--if you haven't been following them for years, got all their albums, know all their ex-members, etc--then it's easy to forget just how many great songs they've got. But their arsenal is well-stocked and well-maintained.
Only three members of the classic lineup remain: Robert Lamm, Lee Loughnane, and James Pankow. But hey, three is better than a lot of bands that are still out there. The Dead Boys have got one. The Sweet (the U.S. version) has none. Peter Cetera might be much-missed, but he's retired - leave him alone. And anyway, he's been out of Chicago since 1985.
So anyway, the current lineup is great. We got hit after hit, great song after great song at the Bowl. An early run through "If You Leave Me Now" was dreamy, and then they went into the full version of "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" from the self-titled second album--lengthy but a proper treat.
Covers of Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" and The Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man" were surrounded by glorious renditions of "You're the Inspiration" and "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" (the latter was majestic).
We got the jaunty stroll-along of "Saturday in the Park," and the whole thing ended with a rockin' "25 or 6 to 4" complete with the promised fireworks. A lot of people feel that fireworks are underwhelming and overrated. This writer isn't one of those people. The sparkles, booms, and the thick smell in the air afterwards-all are magical. Chicago and the good people at the Hollywood Bowl didn't let us down.
Photographs taken by Timothy Norris at the Hollywood Bowl, provided courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.
