Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray Movie Review

Big Band on a Big Stage

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 15, 2012

One could easily mistake Chicago in Chicago for one of the Soundstage concerts from public television that Image Entertainment has been so energetically releasing on Blu-ray in the last eighteen months, many for the first time. A previous concert by the venerable band, Chicago: Live in Concert, helped relaunch Soundstage in its new incarnation in 2003; that concert was released on Blu-ray by Image in November 2011 and is still selling well. But Soundstage stopped releasing new programs in early 2010. This live recording of Chicago in concert was made later that year—July 10, 2010, to be exact—during their joint tour with The Doobie Brothers, when the two bands played the Charter One Pavilion in the town that gave Chicago its name and its start forty-three years earlier.

A brief history of Chicago can be found in the review of Live in Concert. Seven years after that performance, the members have visibly aged, but their enthusiasm remains undiminished. The lineup is essentially unchanged. Guitarist Bill Champlin had left the band, but the four founding members (designated by asterisks in the list below) and the core "second" generation remained (unfortunately, founding member Walter Parazaider was unable to perform that evening):

• *Robert Lamm, keyboards and vocals
• *James Pankow, trombone and vocals
• *Lee Loughnane, trumpet, flugelhorn and vocals
• Ray Hermann, woodwinds (substituting for *Walter Parazaider)
• Jason Scheff, bass, vocals
• Tris Imboden, drums (and looking far different with a clean-shaven head)
• Keith Howland, guitar, vocals
• Drew Hester, percussion
• Lou Pardini, keyboards and vocals

Although the concert was part of a joint tour with the Doobies, the program produced by Image and IMV (a music film company) focused on Chicago, with the band making good-natured references to their "portion" of the evening. The Doobie Brothers returned for the final three songs, at which point the massive stage of the Charter One Pavilion became a virtual sea of instruments and percussion.

As Lamm relates to the audience early in the set, the band has just returned from touring Asia, and after they complete the current concert series, they're off to South America and Australia. In the interview taped the following day, Lamm, Pankow and Loughnane chuckle over the fact that songs for which they once were thrown off the stages of Chicago nightclubs are now such standards in their act that audiences vehemently object if they don't play them. These facts are self-explanatory. This band is part of the landscape of popular music, and the landscape extends around the world.

The band opens with an eight-song medley of familiar tunes including "Colour My World" and "So Much to Say, So Much to Give". The hits rotate artfully like a jukebox for nearly fifteen minutes, and it's only when you listen to the separate interview with the three founding members that you realize they've adopted this format to help compress as many of their obligatory standards as possible into the allotted time. The band handles the transitions with such showmanship that the audience doesn't seem to mind the shortened renditions.

For this tour, Chicago joined with the American Cancer Society to raise funds for breast cancer research. The main vehicle was an auction on the band's website through which the highest bidder in each performance city would win the chance to appear on stage with their favorite band and sing the lead vocal for one of its biggest hits, "If You Leave Me Now". The prevailing bidder for this concert, Stephanie Buck, is frail enough to need the assistance of a wheelchair to reach the microphone and a cane to remain there, but with admirable fortitude she plants herself before an audience of thousands and enunciates every word. Ms. Buck is no singer, but she has some of the best back-up vocalists in the world (not to mention a supportive crowd).

The remainder of the set, prior to the appearance of The Doobie Brothers, provides the sensation of watching an intricately crafted machine, as the members of the band shift instruments, positions and vocal leads. Their staging of the Spencer Davis Band standard, "I'm a Man", is a good example, as they begin with all of the players who usually have wind instruments standing in a line to play some form of percussion. After an extended drum solo by Imboden, with support from Hester, those same players return, but now with their usual brass and woodwinds. Vocals are spread evenly, and the entire affair appears effortless.

When The Doobie Brothers arrive, the stage is suddenly crowded, but the sound remains tightly focused. "25 or 6 to 4", which serves as the evening's grand finale, retains all of its drive, but now it comes at the audience as a wall of sound. I think I counted four different sets of percussion, but all of them were working in sync.

The complete song list follows:

1. Opening/Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon
2. Make Me Smile
3. So Much to Say, So Much to Give
4. Anxiety's Moment
5. West Virginia Fantasies
6. Colour My World
7. To Be Free
8. Now More Than Ever
9. Dialogue Pt. 1 & 2
10. If You Leave Me Now (with Stephanie Buck, charity auction winner)
11. Call On Me
12. Old Days
13. Hard Habit to Break
14. You're the Inspiration
15. Beginnings
16. I'm a Man
17. Just You 'n' Me
18. Saturday in the Park
19. Hard to Say I'm Sorry
20. Get Away
21. Feelin' Stronger Everyday


With The Doobie Brothers
22. Free
23. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
24. 25 or 6 to 4

Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Image's 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of Chicago in Chicago looks terrific, a tribute to music video and documentary director Leon Melas' intelligent planning and the operators' skill with HD image capture. The show's simple and unfussy lighting design, which kept the illumination strong even as the techs shifted the hues, contributed to a solid and stable picture with no aliasing or noise. Details of costumes, instruments, and yes, the elder band members' well-earned wrinkles are readily visible. Colors are somewhat changeable, depending upon the camera angle and the degree of light; for example, in some shots, musicians' dark blue jeans appear as light green. In a feature film, these sorts of issues might have been color-corrected during post-production, but for a concert film, I suppose it makes sense to leave them as live "imperfections".

Unlike Soundstage concerts, the audience at the Concert One Pavilion was not fully illuminated for Chicago in Chicago, with the exception of a few interludes during which the cameras swept the crowd. However, with a stage so large and well-lit, the difference was insignificant, and Melas's shooting style was more front-oriented, with fewer shots from behind the band out into the crowd. Rarely does the image have dark areas, but those that occur appear to be appropriately black.

Interlacing artifacts were not an issue, while the image was in motion. (Screencaps are a different issue.) Image has once again opted for a BD-25, despite the inclusion of a 94-minute concert and over 40 minutes of supplemental material, most of it in hi-def. However, thanks to the efficiencies of the AVC codec, no compression errors appeared.

Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Soundstage uses the same audio mix for broadcast, DVD and Blu-ray. The credits for Chicago on Chicago indicate that a separate mix was prepared specifically for Blu-ray, and the impact is immediately obvious on the disc's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. Any attendee of a live concert knows that, especially if you're close to the stage, the bass tones are felt as much as heard. The Blu-ray mix takes full advantage of lossless encoding and the LFE track to supply a deep, tightly focused bass accompaniment for which a good quality subwoofer is essential. You won't find any of the cheap, showy "boom" that impresses in chain store demos but, in practice, overwhelms other instruments. These are the kind of firm bass notes (and drumbeats) that provide a solid foundation for vocals and other instruments, including the all-important brass that are Chicago's signature. If you have loose objects lying about the room, some of them may rattle at high volumes, but the most important impact will be on your body. These bass notes play at registers you will experience tactilely (but not at volumes that constitute an assault, unless your system is improperly calibrated).

About those brass: They don't sound especially "live", nor did they, I suspect, at the Charter One Pavilion. Chicago may have started as a local club band, but it long ago moved to venues of a scale that required its wind instruments to become the equivalent of electric guitars. Even in live shows, fans hear them through microphones, a mixing booth and loudspeakers. The Blu-ray offers the added benefit of an engineer's post-performance adjustments, perfecting the balance among the individual instruments and the alternating vocals of the different singers. And let's face it; the engineer's job can't have been much of a challenge. Chicago has been performing these songs for so many years that you can practically see them conducting each other, and you can feel the connections among band members. This is a highly professional mix of a first-rate performance.

(Note: A PCM 2.0 track is also available for two-channel purists.)

Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview (HD, 1080i; 1.78:1; 40:54): Loughnane, Pankow and Lamm talk about the band, its origins and its long, eventful career. Their comments on the late Terry Kath are restrained but moving, and they discreetly avoid discussing Peter Cetera. Guitarist Keith Howland, who grew up attending Chicago concerts, then joined the band after the death of founding member Kath, is interviewed in a separate group with other "new" members Jason Scheff, Tris Imboden, Lou Pardini and Drew Hester.


• Trailer (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 1:32): It's unclear what market or outlet this trailer was designed for, but it certainly conveys the essential message: It's Chicago!

Chicago in Chicago Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While it may lack some of the intimacy that the Soundstage series manages to convey (against formidable obstacles), Chicago in Chicago is an exceptional recording of an "arena" style concert, both sonically and visually. It helps that the band in question has been playing these types of concerts for years and has a sound that's perfectly suited to such venues. Highly recommended.