Chic Heat

04/04/07 07:52 Filed in: Musing

Rummaging through my old albums, and making some tough decisions about keeping and dumping these recordings, there were some frightening examples of my evolving taste as a young man. Right next to Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock solo concerts were albums by ABC and Spandau Ballet, but there's one guilty pleasure in the lot that I think I've grown into, and that's the work of the band Chic.
Chic was an almost anonymous quintet, bassist Bernard Edwards, guitarist Nile Rodgers, drummer Tony Thompson and vocalists Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin, but they effortlessly blended strings, brass and even tap dancers into songs that fit into the milieu of the disco era but remain intriguing examples of how flexible and resourceful soul and funk music can be.
Listen to this...Dancing
That's an excerpt from an almost unknown song by the band that happens to be one of my favorites. It's the break from "My feet keep dancing" from the Risque album, their finest and most coherent work and what you just heard is Bernard Edwards' effortlessly articulate solo bass accompanying tap dancers Fayard Nicholas, Eugene Jackson and Sammy Warren.
Who bothers to put that much work into a little dance number?
Chic's work has been sampled widely, beginning with the first and most famous case of sampling, the big hit from Risque, "Good Times", the bass line from which inspired two seminal rap songs, Grandmaster Flash's "Adventures on the Wheels of Steel" and Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight".
Their production work includes "I'm Coming Out" for Diana Ross and Sister Sledge's "We are Family", but they also worked with Debbie Harry (Koo Koo sucked) and David Bowie (Let's Dance, his biggest album) and influenced songs like Queen's "Another one bites the dust" and almost everything from post-glam dance Duran Duran, including "Notorious".
Nile Rodgers still works as a well regarded producer and fronts a new band called Chic. Bernard Edwards died of pneumonia the day after a Chic reunion concert in Budokan in 1996. Tony Thompson, whose rich drum sound pegged him as the preferred replacement for Led Zeppelin's John Bonham for a reunion tour (he dropped out because of a car crash), died of kidney cancer in 2003.
Between 1978 and 1981 Chic was the perfect funk band, working the disco beat with a nod and a wink, their sly, knowing humour and nimble orchestrations still relevant today long after the leaden earnestness of much of the music of that era has become unlistenable.
Chic

Classic Chic: Bernard Edwards, Luci Martin, Tony Thompson, Alfa Anderson and Nile Rodgers.
Read and see more about Chic than you ever thought possible at Chic Tribute...

Tags: Chic

Home >
Blog >