New Earth Wind and Fire CD no Illusion:

70's supergroup spices classic sound with a little help from friends.

Beneath all the hype regarding the Rolling Stones' latest album "A Bigger Bang," is the new CD by a group that sold as many albums during the '70's as the Eagles, Aerosmith, Marvin, fellow Chicagoans Chicago, and the Stones. I'm talking about Earth Wind and Fire AKA "the Baddest Band on the Planet."

Now to be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't even buying EWF music during the period when they were topping the charts. I'm a pre-"That's the Way of the World" listener covering the era of their early works from the jazz influenced 1st release, the soundtrack to Melvin Van Peebles controversial film "Sweet Sweetback," and five successive LPs that followed between 1970-74; "Earth Wind and Fire," "The Need for Love," "Last Days and Time," "Head to the Sky," and "Open Our Eyes." All of these received heavy airplay on R&B and the FM radio's "progressive rock" (or "underground") format that featured extended, improvisational, spacey tunes from rock, jazz, funk, folk, and reggae from mostly new artist of the late-'60's to mid-'70's. Sadly music began to become marginalized as recording and radio industry suits began pushing a mindless form of dance music called Disco, which watered down the R&B stations.

Following closely behind was a more structured rock radio format called "album oriented rock (AOR)," which spelled the death of most progressive formats around the country. Ethnic bands like Funkadelic, Santana, or important jazz/fusion bands were absent from AOR play-lists, and originally progressive bands like EWF, adopted a mainstream sound, (less creativity, but more polish). LP's like "'World," "All 'n All," "Gratitude," "Raise," etc., garnered well-deserved money for the band, but to me their core sound was missing. The disco thing was taking over, and diverse Black artists like Mandrill, Gil Scott Heron, the Temptations, the Stylistics, New Birth and even James Brown sank, while Parliament, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and the Pointer Sisters adjusted their style by 1977 so they could swim with the Bee Gee's or Chic.

The new songs from "Illumination" however literally brings back a lot of the classic sounds from the early '70's, this is the best set of recordings from Maurice White and his boys in a long time. At least since '92's "Millennium," the surprising thing is, they pull this off with the help of a good range of well-known stars of today. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis sit in to produce "Pure Gold," a song that continues EWF's tradition of bringing their message of world revolution through self-improvement, personal responsibility and a connection to a higher power. "Show me the way," is simply laid-back funk featuring Maurice on lead vocals accompanied by Raphael Saadiq on vocals, guitar, bass, and percussion. White and famed tenor Philip Bailey can still hit those notes that made them famous back in the day, and the musicianship is still sharp thanks to Saadiq (who also plays drums on some songs), veteran EWF troops bassist Verdine White, singer Ralph Johnson, horns by Reggie Young, Jerry
Hey, Gary Grant, and Gary Bias, and Bobby Ozuna on Drums.

The list of contemporary artist that are spread throughout the tracks actually add to the album's continuity instead of just tossing in names-for-namesake. The sisters Floetry rap through "Elevated,"Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child and OutKast's Big Boi, appear on "How I Feel," and Brian McKnight duets with Maurice on "To You." Gone is their trademark illuminating album-cover artwork, but in this case substance surpasses style. Earth Wind and Fire tours with Chicago.