Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.
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By the time I became a DJ 1982, the group Chicago had left its roots as a hip, fun, rocky, jazzy, experimental band and become a hit machine, for good or bad.
But at WLXX in Sault Ste. Marie, we had a battered copy of their 1974 double album Chicago VII, which I stole when I went off to college.
At the Hollywood Bowl this weekend, where Chicago is featured at the July 4th Fireworks Spectacular, they'll probably play the big hit from Chicago VII, "(I've Been) Searchin' So Long." But you should hope they groove on "Mongonucleosis," which they play often at concerts, and which I have to assume is a tribute to the great Latin percussionist and composer Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez.