Growing up, Chicago was one of my favorite bands and I came into their discography at an interesting point, since Chicago 17 was the first album that fell onto my radar. I hadn’t quite learned that longtime fans were rabidly cursing Chicago and David Foster for every minute of both 16 and 17….and what do those numbers mean anyway?

A short time later I figured out the numbering system and my young mind was blown as I began to discover and make my way through their ’70s discography on Columbia. Fast forward a few years and the slightly grown up version of me began to hunt around for quality bootlegs.  Audio wise, this was a tough search, pre-internet. As far as video?  Forget about it – I hadn’t even begun to think about the possibility that there might be bootleg video out there.  To keep a longer story short, I went through quite a bit of crappy bootleg audio before the floodgates finally started to open up and bear decent fruit worth listening to.  Recently, there’s been some killer stuff posted online, including this video, recorded at Budokan in June of 1972.

Believe it or not, there are people complaining about the quality of this video (proving once again that some people will complain about anything), but to paraphrase what one commenter said, we would have KILLED for video like this back in the day.  Admittedly, the quality of video and audio plummets quite a bit for the last few tracks, but there’s plenty to enjoy here.

Ironically, this concert was set for release (along with additional archival material) by Rhino a few years ago before it was abruptly canceled without explanation.  Hopefully, it will find its way back to the release schedule one of these days, because it would be great to see this show in better quality.  Until then, this is certainly a treasure trove for any fan of ’70s era Chicago and Terry Kath. 90 minutes+ of full concert footage?  You’d better believe that you’ll enjoy the heck out of it.

(And you can download it for yourself, if you’ve got a Dimeadozen account – click here.)