In the spring of 1978, the track “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)” by Chicago prog rockers Styx from their multiplatinum album The Grand Illusion, broke into the Billboard top 30. It was written by guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw, an Alabama native who’d joined the band in early 1976.
The song has now been given a new lease on life by northeast Ohio’s Contemporary Youth Orchestra, a group comprising young musicians ages 13-18, who perform works by contemporary composers often actually working with them, and who have done numerous performance collaborations with pop and rock musicians such as Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, Jefferson Starship, Melissa Etheridge, Graham Nash, Lenny Loggins and, in 2016, Tommy Shaw.
Shaw once again joined the young players who recorded their parts in their homes for a special performance of “Fooling Yourself,” with Shaw contributing from his home in Nashvlle and music director Liza Grossman leading the performance from her home in Cleveland Heights.
The video of the performances, recorded on cell phones, was edited by Adam Smalley of AJ Video Cleveland, and can be seen here.