The Bare-Faced Chic Of It!

Ask anyone to name the great double-act song writers and they’ll give you any number of Lennons & McCartneys, Liebers & Stollers, Goffins & Kings, Morrisseys & Marrs, (insert your choice here ______). I’d wager that few amongst you would automatically add the names of Edwards & Rodgers to that esteemed list, yet in my world they’d be one of the first double acts I’d think of.

Edwards & who?,  you might ask. Well, you wouldn’t. You are, after all, men (& women) of wealth and taste. Jagger & Richards, there’s another! But plenty people are familiar with the music of Edwards & Rodgers, yet few would know them by name. They’ve been sampled a gazillion times (Grandmaster Flash‘s Adventures on the Wheels of Steel – but you knew that already), helping give birth to hip-hop. They’ve been ripped off by the obvious (Queen‘s Another One Bites The Dust) and the not-so-obvious (The Smiths – listen to the second verse of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. Hear that rinky-dink guitar riff in the background? That’s Johnny Marr’s homage to Nile Rodgers so it is. JM is such a fan of the Chic guitarist, he named his son after him). But I bet even the most ardent of music fans you know from work would be hard-pushed to tell you who they were. Go on! Ask someone tomorrow!

Seasoned New York sessioneers-for-hire Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers formed Chic in 1976.  Once they’d added vocalist Norma Jean Wright to their studio line-up, Atlantic Records signed them on the strength of their demo tape. That same tape made up the bulk of their first album, Chic, in 1977 and had dance floors from Studio 54 and beyond getting all hot under the collar to their unique blend of bass-heavy/guitar-lite/whispered female vocals. I love ’em. I am after all unashamedly disco, but to me, Chic are more than mere disco. Top players making top records. If they were, like, a proper rock band (ugh!), they’d be revered everywhere from Irvine, California to Irvine,  Ayrshire.

Listen to this. I Want Your Love, from ’78s C’est Chic LP. Following the bass-heavy/guitar-lite/whispered female vocals template, it oozes quality. Remember that this was the era when disco was dead, when technique-based musicianship was sneered at with a curled lip and ball of phlegm. Chic didn’t care. They stuck church bells, church bells! on top, added the grooviest of trumpet ‘n string refrains and played it out for 6 and a half minutes. The bare-faced Chic of it, by not conforming to the norm surely that’s more punk than punk?! Elsewhere, chord progressions may have been getting simpler and ‘proper’ musicians were dumbing down. Like a modernised version of an old Stax or Motown Revue, Chic were a guitar-based rock group playing dance music, for the pure sophisticated thrill of it. I Want Your Love never sounds tired, or dated. C’est Chic indeed.

Like that? Try this. I found it a while back on this magical world wide web we are a-surfin’ together. It’s a fan remix, the Dream Time Mix, not official in any sense of the word, but it is simply sensational – over 13 minutes long and quite superb.

Like that? Now try this. Edwards & Rodgers were accomplished producers. One artist to benefit from their talents was French singer Sheila B. In 1979, under the name Sheila and B. Devotion she had a massive hit with Spacer. The Chic hallmarks are all there – the instantly hummable bass riff, the instantly recognisable clipped guitar, the breathy female vocals. Spacer sounds a bit like Nico in places, more Germanic than French. But I doubt Nico would’ve ever allowed herself to be discofied in quite such a glorious manner.

Useless Spacer fact: Edwyn Collins always has a copy of Spacer on hand whenever he’s booked to DJ somewhere.

Now go and listen to all those brilliant Orange Juice records and ponder – that hummable bassline? Hmmm. That clipped guitar? Uhhh huhhh. Y’see…Edwyn knows the score! Chic-meets-the-Velvets I think was his phrase, wasn’t it?