The Contents Are: in Colorado around 1973 – Mick, Dave, Craig and Paul
Exploring our musical roots is part of the Silver Laughter heritage as well as what we have done musically after the breakup. This selection was featured in a four song demo The Contents Are: did at Columbia Studios in Chicago with the producer of the band, Chicago, sitting in the control room. I can’t remember how much input he gave toward the arrangements, if any. But he was viewing us as a prospective act to be signed with Columbia Records.
“No Chance To Choose“ was one of two songs that survived from the “Though You” album (on which I did not play) and was slightly rearranged when I joined the band. “Recurring Changes” was the other song. The people who were working with us thought those two had the most hit potential and, thus, kept reviving them for every studio session we did. Craig Hute wrote the music and lyrics, and it was arranged by the group with Dave Neumann having a lot of the input.
The reason I am posting it here is that it is important to see the evolution of the music we were doing before, during and after the Silver Laughter days. After all, half of the band went on to play in Silver Laughter; Paul Staack and me. In our case Paul and I went from an extremely hippie-like stage presence playing non-commercial music to just the opposite with Jon Ludtke and Ken Wiles. In fact, I would say our second album was extremely commercial, even if the sound was a few years too late for what was happening at the time.
If you look at “Sailing On Fantasies” and pull out tunes like “Turn It Down”, “I Can’t Believe In You”, “Bad News”, “Hand In Hand” and “Don’t Want To Lose” you can see that we were definitely moving toward our own unique sound; away from the strong Beatles influence we had up to that point.
But back to the song at hand. Enjoy this studio version of “No Chance To Choose”.
Mick Orton
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