The Choir Reunite

OMNIVORE RECORDINGS PRESENTS A LIVE REUNION OF CLEVELAND LATE-’60S PROTO-PROGRESSIVE BAND.

- BILL KOPP

Ask a casual rock fan if he or she has heard of The Choir, and you’re likely to get a quizzical look followed by a “no.” Pose the same question to a hardcore music fiend — especially one with a familiarity with the Cleveland music scene — and the answer is more likely to be “yes.” But even in that latter case, any subsequent conversation is likely to center around “It’s Cold Outside,” a regional hit for The Choir in an early configuration. That track was included on Rhino’s expanded 4-CD version of the Lenny Kaye-curated Nuggets compilation. Originally released in 1966, “It’s Cold Outside” is today considered a classic of the garage rock subgenre, and the lineup that recorded the song is also notable: Three of its four members would go on to the Raspberries, heroes of the early ’70s power-pop movement.

But there’s another chapter to the saga of The Choir, and it’s one that — while less known — yielded substantive creative output. In 1969, that later, more musically ambitious lineup recorded a cache of material, but that music wouldn’t see official release for nearly half a century. And in large part thanks to the enthusiastic reception for Artifact: The Unreleased Album, the later-period Choir lineup reunited to play a handful of live dates. Now in 2020, Omnivore Recordings has released an audio document of one of those shows, Last Call: Live at the Music Box.

While that 1969 lineup of The Choir was responsible for a stack of quality original songs — collected on