Obsessives like us listen to music and revel in the small stuff. Those sounds are what separates you, me and the rest of us from other people who consider music no more than background colour, something that happens to be on as the dishes are washed or the ironing tackled. You’ll have your own no doubt, hearing them in your head right now as you read this. The eerie slide guitar that punctuates the juddering How Soon Is Now?…the Cuban-heeled stomp of London Calling… Adam & the Ants Burundi beat…Clarence’ Clemons’ honey-coated sax….
Daly responded to Bono’s summary, Seems cold-hearted. (Authors Note: Italicized songs are performed by artists other than U2.) Bono recalled the section in Luke 9 when Jesus told a man not to wait and bury his father but to follow Jesus immediately. The important stuff.U2: Rattle And Hum.
Chic themselves were modelled on Roxy Music’s basic vision of style smart dress and street-smart females, elements that were to them as important as the songs they were selling.Bingo Players Rattle (Original Mix)The original extended mix of Bingo Players massive hit Rattle in high quality The Bingo Song Lyrics. When Nile and Bernard formed Chic, the idea was to write songs for different groups. Like a pair of old ladies clacking away at the bingo, the combined sound is instantly recognisable, totally danceable and, while often copied, it’s a sound that’s never been bettered. When they hit their stride and find the groove, they’re unbeatable. In 2013, a revamped version of Rattle titled Get Up (Rattle)was released and became a number one single in the United Kingdom in addition to being a top 10 hit in Germany, Austria, France, Australia and other parts of Europe.Just about my favourite sound in music is the sound of Nile Rodgers‘ guitar interlocking with Bernard Edwards‘ bass. The song charted in the top 40 in the Netherlands, France, Sweden and Denmark.
In the right context, it made a whole lotta sense.It’s what Nile and Bernard did for Sister Sledge on Thinking Of You that tops the lot. Here, it was no longer AOR radio fodder, it was late night/early morning comedown music, long, loping and lightly toasted reggae. Hearing it out of context on Ibiza as an impressionable 18 year old perhaps helped. Like A Virgin, with its keyboard and up the neck guitar stabs could’ve been a Chic hit rather than the smash that elevated Madonna into the conscience of half the world.I’ve always had a thing for Carly Simon‘s Why. Bowie’s Let’s Dance was a 12 string skifflish blues until Nile added those familiar massive rattling chords. Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Carly Simon, Madonna, Bowie….all benefitted, and all came gift-wrapped in the same smoothly-clattering funk that coloured Chic’s biggest hits.
Your man-in-the-street’s idea of what might constitute a Guitar ‘Great’ could never comprehend why Nile is such a brilliant player. Nile takes the basic chords, ignores his bass strings then builds hook upon hook upon hook with just the top 3 strings. The staccato riffing as Kathy Sledge sings, “ Everybody, let me tell you ’bout my love…” (the perfect opening line for the song, by the way – it really sets it up the anticipation for what’s to follow) “.brought to you by an angel from above,” is god-like.
Dimitri’s mix is twice as long, allowing space for the breathy vocals to take centre stage before giving way to Rodgers’ incessant Strat, until he drops out and Edwards’ bassline is allowed to buckle and bend in the middle of the track. No need for this remixer to strip a good song of its basic components and twist it out of all recognition. The perfect example, again, of less is more.Sister Sledge – Thinking Of You (Dimitri From Paris mix) Dimitri From Paris took the original and, unsurprisingly, saw the beauty in what was already there and stayed faithful to it. You can identify every instrument on Thinking Of You. Unfussy drums maintain the beat. Brass parps in all the right places.
When Edwards’ bass comes in along with the vocals, the whole thing takes off in airy abandon.“Everybody, let me tell you ’bout my love,And away we go. It opens with that none-more-recognisable Rodgers’ guitar sound, played high up the frets on the first 3 or 4 strings, simple enough to listen to but devilishly difficult to play with the same bounce as its writer. And the best thing about those Chic Organisation records is that every one of them sounded exactly like Chic themselves.Take the Sister Sledge record above. And when Nile and Bernard weren’t guiding them to chart success they were busy helping others fill the gaps in the charts they’d just vacated.The Chic Organisation played on all manner of records, a disco-era house band akin to the Funk Brothers at Motown or the Wrecking Crew in LA. Chic ran up all manner of hit singles Le Freak, Everybody Dance, I Want Your Love….
By this point, Rodgers was working with Bowie and Madonna, his sound forever in demand. A b-side! The a-side? That would be Lost In Music.Thinking Of You finally gained chart success in 1984 when a down on their luck Sister Sledge were releasing records to ever-diminishing returns and some clever soul at the record company pointed out that that old b-side from 5 years ago hadn’t been too bad after all. The Chic Organisation thought the finished track was just OK and stuck it on a b-side.
Nile lost out on the vote, which greatly upset me….and the others when he popped up a few months later owning the stage at Glastonbury, at that very moment reborn. We had enough money for either Nile Rodgers or The Magic Numbers, but not both. “ No, it’s not the same musicians,” he’ll happily tell you, “ but no-one complains when they go to hear a Mozart piano concerto and ol’ Wolfgang fails to turn up.”A few years ago we (I say ‘ we‘ – I’m part of a group who put on local gigs) were looking for a headline act. Not for nothing has he nicknamed his white Strat ‘The Hitmaker’.Nile of course is everywhere nowadays, front and centre stage, in a forever-touring version of Chic.
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