Why I don't "get" Chic

dud. you're wrong, bro.

Anything more insightful?

they have their moments but they do get more love than they deserve around these parts.

(their 12"s were fucking insane but their albums were the 12"s plus a lot of filler, disco ballads=worst music evah)

got a point about the blankness/unbelievability of the singers. i kinda never thought the singers themselves were having that much of a good time in Good Times. ive never thought about it enough for it to detract from the song though, i probably couldnt imagine it any other way

then again their singles for other artists(thinking diana ross and Norma Jean Wright) were dynamite, but their work for Sisters Sledge was garbage. They were hit and miss. I think Patrick Adams deserves more love than these guys.

I completely forgot about Sister Sledge as I was writing that. I probably do like at least the obvious singles (which are all I've heard) more than Diana/Chic or Chic proper.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? "Lost in Music" wants to kick you in your face, display name.

(their 12"s were fucking insane but their albums were the 12"s plus a lot of filler, disco ballads=worst music evah)

RONG.

There isn't a bad track on C'est Chic and "At last I am free" is stellar.

Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards are horrible songwriters is probably the most wtf thing I've read in my life.

SISTER SLEDGE STUFF IS SO CLASSIC WTF!!!!111111111

"Sao Paulo" is an awesome track, and proof that you can't diss their ballads outright. there are some others that are good, just can't think of them off the top of my head.

The other thing that was weird about Chic was that they straddled the line between being good underground disco and being pop and they handled it better than anyone else at their level of commercial success.

The one thing I don't like about them is that they personify the materialist individual post-civil rights black vibe that fucked up a lot of music in the late 70's early 80's. I think the greatest black records always have an ability to put a sense of community in the grooves of a record, and that vibe isn't in their records. When I listen to Hi Tech Jazz by UR I feel like the message of the song is to tell people to keep their chin up and down let things beat them down. I don't get that feeling from Chic, I get more of a feeling of "hey we have mad coke and good shoes and if you have money and clothes you can party with us too..."

They are great songs, the 12"s anyway, but they never really touch me deeply.

<i>there are some others that are good, just can't think of them off the top of my head.</i>

= my point exactly. They also had help on Sao Paulo, that wasn't a bernard/edwards only track IIRC.

I am going to dig their records out of the crates and listen to them this afternoon.

i kinda never thought the singers themselves were having that much of a good time in Good Times.

Kinda thought that was the point; the lyric sound much more like the recitation of a dutiful credo than a libidinous celebration - try and imagine Donald Fagen singing it maybe?

Chic have better melodies and singing than Ne-Yo (who I like.) So yeah, I'm stumped by this claim.
What did they make, five albums? Which, as far as I can tell, were as consistently tuneful as pretty much anyone else from their era (which was as tuneful as any era I can think of). (And personally, I prefer the Chic LPs to what might be termed less anonymously sung albums they produced by Diana and Sister Sledge. But then, anonymous singing is part of what made so much disco good. It's the Loleatta Holler-away divas that I didn't get. And it's certainly not like Chic's singers were stiff or lifeless -- to me, they sound completely joyful.)

despite the fact the above two posts are in sort of oppposition, i can kinda get with both

for good times, i think the singing is right for the song. i see what you mean about fagen, but i just kind of think of the singing as kind of cokey and distanced. and thats just fine with me, because as chuck says, disco is good when its cokey and distanced, which is a lot of the time

Alright, I'll go for "At Last I Am Free"

The other thing that was weird about Chic was that they straddled the line between being good underground disco and being pop and they handled it better than anyone else at their level of commercial success.

Yeah, this is probably true. There's a lot of subtext around Chic, but that's all it is, subtext.

The one thing I don't like about them is that they personify the materialist individual post-civil rights black vibe that fucked up a lot of music in the late 70's early 80's. I think the greatest black records always have an ability to put a sense of community in the grooves of a record, and that vibe isn't in their records.

I dunno about this. I'm a comfortably middle-class black American striver type, so in theory this should appeal to my sensibilities.

download one "I Loved You More" to blow theory out of water

good times isn't full of a 'sense of community'???

this thread has lots of RONG

xp(At the very least, the vocals were functional, in the tradition of lots of Eurodisco. I can't think of an instance where I thought they got in the way. And I pretty much have an aversion to dead-in-the-water ice-queen singing -- one reason I don't get Cassie, who strikes me as completely restrained in comparison.)(With maybe Grace Jones, I'd get the "lifeless" claim. Or Amanda Lear, say. But even they had moments. Hell, even industrial dance twits on Wax Trax had moments. But compared to Chic, they were comatose.) (So now I'm curious what kind of disco vocals The Reverend does like. Which isn't to suggest that Chic were among the genre's best vocalists -- they just never bugged me, is all.)

thread is so Up. Side. Down. that i'm thinking 'xhuxk otm'

Chic have better melodies and singing than Ne-Yo (who I like.) So yeah, I'm stumped by this claim.
What did they make, five albums? Which, as far as I can tell, were as consistently tuneful as pretty much anyone else from their era (which was as tuneful as any era I can think of). (And personally, I prefer the Chic LPs to what might be termed less anonymously sung albums they produced by Diana and Sister Sledge. But then, anonymous singing is part of what made so much disco good. It's the Loleatta Holler-away divas that I didn't get. And it's certainly not like Chic's singers were stiff or lifeless -- to me, they sound completely joyful.)

The singing is better than Ne-Yo, but less distinctive...? Let me work on that. I guess I want personality out of my singers moreso than chops. But the Ne-Yo aside really wasn't trying to compare him to Chic at all, I was just tying in something else me & R1ckey had been talking about.

As far as divas go, it kind of depends on what kind of diva we're talking about. I really don't like the kind of camped-up OTT divas that show up on a lot of disco/house/disco records, but give me a good Southern soul-shouter any day the week and I'm in bliss.

Dance, Dance, Dance by Marta Acuna destroys the entire chic cannon in less that four minutes.

That Nicky Siano Gallery comp has a lot of stuff like that, I prefer that stuff as well.

Xhuxk, I guess I very much prefer male vocals on my disco records, though there's something else, I need to get at, that I just can't place. I need to get this sorted out in my brain. I guess I don't really like the kind of clear, textureless voices that dominate Chic records.

Matos, I would if I could, but its not really a possibility right now.

The "functional", that's what bugs me. I want my music to have vocals that mean something or keep the vocals completely out of the way.

I said their vocals were less distinctive than Diana Ross's. Not convinced they were less distinctive than Ne-Yo's (much less that they communicate less of a "personality" than him. What's his personality again, except a kid who sings pretty high notes like Michael Jackson but not nearly as good as Michael Jackson? I'm not making fun of him; again, I like Ne-Yo fine. Just not sure in what way he's distinctive.)

It wasn't me who called Eurodisco vocals detached or cokey, either. (They can be, and often when they are, I tend not like them. Chic's have never particularly hit me that way. And they definitely sang disco better than Johnny Taylor [whose Southern soul stuff I love] did whilst moving it in moving it out disco lady , so I don't really buy that comparison, either. (I love Southern soul, but did much of it cross over to being great disco? I guess Betty Wright did okay -- like, in "No Pain No Gain," I guess. Some ZZ Hill I've got flirts a little with disco, I suppose. But in general, I'm not sure who the Reverend is referring to here. I'm probably forgetting obvious examples. Christgau compared the Tramps to Wilson Picket once, I guess.)

rev are you much of a dancer

Did Lee Dorsey's Night People have much disco in it? I used to have copy; stupidly got rid of it. Came out in '78 or '79, and Christgau loved it.

Guilty as charged.

I don't know most of this stuff you refer to, Xhuxk (no disco expert am I), the Tramps are a-okay with me.

I guess I should mention that I tend to like post-1980 disco much more than pre-1980 disco, I'm not sure what that affects, but it certainly affects something.

The handclap breakdown on "My Feet Keep Dancing" fucking slays.

"Chip Off the Old Block" is way better than I remember it being.

haha Rev IS very much a dancer as it happens

I would love to read this whole thread and try to tackle this intellectually, but I fear Chic at their very best just isn't something you can persuade someone to appreciate with logical arguments. If you've heard the self-titled album or "Risque" or prime Sister Sledge (i.e. "Love Somebody Today" album) and you aren't convinced, well...just forget it.

Preferring male vocals on disco records, though...dude, that's just weird. I can understand not liking the "camped up divas" but Chic were never like that. They had class. They were restrained, elegant, subtle, tasteful. Even if their records did start to get crap after a certain point.

in that case, if yr genuinely interested in 'getting' chic i think its prob a matter of getting the context??? I have no idea really, chic is one of those groups that just seems so immediately great and compulsively danceable to me, there's not much intellectualizing going on in my initial reactions to it - the grooves are impeccably tight. If you listen to/dance to a lot of late 70s disco it might give you an idea of in what context chic's stuff sounds special, how tight and near-perfect their rhythm section was in contrast with lots of other stuff from the period.

The other thing is that, i assume yr downgrading the qual. of the 'songwriting' in the sense that they were definitely more about creating dance grooves than writing songs with more noticeable structure ... it was about keeping people going on the dancefloor, the disco motorik etc. ... and i think xhuxk is right for that reason, that the anonymity of the vox are an appealing factor rather than drawback; the idea is less that yr identifying a singer's 'personality' and more that yr identifying with the singer in the moment, as u dance to it

They were restrained, elegant, subtle, tasteful.

-- Bimble, Sunday, July 1, 2007 7:24 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

way to make them sound boring

they could write a big cheesy hook like the best of them

when i say 'noticeable structure' i don't mean that their songs didnt have structure, but that the structure doesnt stand out, is subservient to the groove/mood/atmosphere

What? Rev likes part of "My Feet Keep Dancing"? Ahoy, all is not lost!

xpost

Deej, it's a subjective matter. What is boring for you might actually attract others. Personally I like music that isn't in my face and over the top.

and more that yr identifying with the singer in the moment, as u dance to it

and on this point this is why i dont get display name's thing about 'not putting community in the grooves' - a lot of the big chic hooks sound totally sing-a-long, lots of overdubbed vocals yelling 'good times!'

"Everybody Dance"! How much more communal can u get

"are you much of a dancer" = last refuge of scoundrels

Actually, Real People and Take It Off are both pretty great albums, so I don't know at what point Chic are supposed to have "gotten crap."*

But yeah -- only liking male disco vocals...wow, I've never heard that one before. Ever. If there was any genre where women singers dominated, disco (along with girl group, freestyle, etc) was, well, one of them. Rev, do you like Donna Summer??

* -- maybe with Tongue in Chic and Believer, which I'd forgotten ever existed (assumming I ever heard them in the first place):

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=chic

(Xgau is wrong about the first two albums, by the way -- especially the second, which is their best.)

even the snares on 'le freak' are a bunch of overdubbed handclaps, its a party in yr stereo

"are you much of a dancer" = last refuge of scoundrels

-- askance johnson, Sunday, July 1, 2007 7:30 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

it wasn't a criticism, it was an honest question that led to further elucidation of the appeal

The 'faceless vocals' thing seems so obvious to me, like, this is about 'finding a spot out on the floor,' not doing teenpop-thread-style psychological analysis of the singer

sorry if that came across as bitter

I think the greatest black records always have an ability to put a sense of community in the grooves of a record, and that vibe isn't in their records.

That's a strong claim - I can straight away think of great black records for which it isn't true - 'You don't Know me?' - and white records for which it is true ..... I think part of what was great about Chic was that they refused to sit still and let 'blackness' be thrust upon them.

I didn't say Chic had camped-up divas, I've been arguing much the opposite. A middle ground would be more to my taste.

Deej, I guess maybe part of my problem here is that I don't really like to dance to disco. I'm a very drum-driven dancer, so dancing to a straight 4/4 isn't nearly as fun for my as dancing to fuck/hiphop/latin/electro or whatever with more syncopated drumbeats. Though maybe this is wrong, because I don't mind dancing to house at all.

The songwriting thing, I'm kind of all or nothing about. I want my disco either very song-oriented or completely beat-driven, and Chic only really go halfway in either direction.

(ahhhhh like 80 xposts)

fuck = funk, haha

I realize me != Display Name, but I did say in the initial post they have a way with a hook.

Hey, I love Don Ray too (though it's not really clear to me how his music is less "cleaned-up" or "orderly" than Chic's), but using Spandau Ballet as an alternative to allegedly lifeless singing is, uh, somewhat laughable.

Wow, that was great, Kevin.

Thanx. but I bowed to your typically great previous example.

it is the 1984 version of Lost in Music-- the Edwards & Rodger's remix-- that is the more superior version. lusher and more jammin.

Is that the one that appeared on Journey into Paradise (The Larry Levan Story)? If so, I don't get it. It's okay but it's not all that remixed. Those repeated "lost in music"'s sound like a weak attempt to spice up the original.

the celebration in so much of their work sounds like a wholly exuberant blast of energy

I hear ya, Deej. I definitely get an energy blast from Chic. But Display wasn't so I was merely suggesting another route.

the Pflugerville Council For Creative Excellence is proud to present The Chic Disorganization Mix

Is this the Pflugerville outside of Austin? If so, that means I can school ya in Chic directly (I live about 3 miles north of UT).

Thanx for the mix too. But the only song on there that comes close to Chic's genius is that Loose Joints joint, despite love for "Spank," Ray, "Running Away," etc.

i would also give it up for 'sea hunt' but thats going for something totally different

sorry mr b, but you is wrong about the remix. it is much better:

the bass: upped.

the vocals: upped, with lots of reverb and some bit of delay

the awful string synth stabs in the original: NOWHERE TO BE FOUND

the mids (part, the guitar): upped

the effect of those repeated "we're lost in music...music music music" bits: priceless. it makes it a totally different and much more heady dance track.

if we're talking about cold like dry ice, then we're talking the original. if we're talking cool like a dive into a magical lake, then we're talking the remix.

i mean, it's fine, you might like your disco dry and not wet, but i like my disco both ways.

and also, my comments above don't even do justice to how different the two versions are.

I'd rather say so-called "lifeless" singers are better at preserving the tunefulness, because they tend to sing the tunes they were they were composed rather than singing their own improvised versions of them.

Damn, I wonder where you got some of dem sweet-ass tunes, Display Name.

Anyways ...

Somebody had to bring disco to Omaha, and Chic did a pretty damn good job of it (WAY better than most). And I have the feeling that many folks on here (KJB included) are viewing Chic's popularity and "commercialness" as big positive factors (or at least as non-negative factors). Besides, the majority of disco artists seemed to have been aiming for commercial appeal from the get-go (and, back in the day, there just didn't seem to be the same commercial/undeground divide that we have now).

Yet, it's a shame that middle America didn't get as much "Running Away" or Patrick Cowley or Loose Joints etc etc .... BUT, are these tracks just more interesting because they haven't been played to death like "Le Freak" or "Good Times" has? I dunno.

No. I don't get why popularity = less interesting.

i'm not saying popularity = less interesting
i'm saying ....
heard it 1,000 times before = (usually) less intersting

TS: Chocolate cake once every few months vs. being forced to have chocolate cake with every meal everyday for as long as you can remember.

black forest gateaux is a feeling

brownies are a state of mind

don't even try the caramel Junior Mints--they look like turds and lack spirit.

http://www.devynns.com/pictures/Gingerbread-House-Cottage.jpg

gingerbread house music all night long

TS: Chocolate cake once every few months vs. being forced to have chocolate cake with every meal everyday for as long as you can remember.

-- Display Name, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 01:12 (1 hour ago) Link

le freak and good times are two songs out of an entire catalogue

you guys are right Chic is the best thing ever. I am sorry I ever doubted any of you. I really love their ballads, if there was anything I was wrong about, it was the ballads.

victorious in yet another thread! u are a good sport

The funny thing is that I don't hate any of it, I just think it is a bit dull. When I listened to their albums yesterday I didn't have an Alex In NYC reaction to it, it just seemed a bit boring compared to other records I have.

http://www.website.com/yourimage.jpeg

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/5/5c/Chic92bsmall.jpg

I take back everything, I must have been stone crazy! That photo makes me realize that they were the most important group of ALL TIME.

I mean they are even better than Londonbeat.

Sha POW POW!!!

Do you feel like you ever want
To try my love and see how well it fits
Baby can't you see, when you look at me
I can't kick this feelin' when it hits
http://www.fbctlh.org/images/pastoral_staff/clint_purvis.jpg

i take it back, u are a bad sport

Hi, my name is Cliff Purvis. Have you ever heard that called He's The Greatest Dancer by Sister Sledge? I like to play that song really loud in my dressing room before I give lectures at real estate seminars. It makes me feel like I can take on the world.
http://www.fbctlh.org/images/pastoral_staff/clint_purvis.jpg

BAN DISPLAY NAME

This thread is awesome.

yeah im sure no one uncool ever listened to Spandau Ballet

Rendered speechless by the first two songs on the self-titled Chic album from 1977, I just wanted to add as a parting shot to this thread that in the back of my mind I always think of telling people to check out "Sao Paulo" first and then if that doesn't kill them then try "Strike Up the Band" if that doesn't get them either, then for god's sake take their pulse.

BUT, are these tracks just more interesting because they haven't been played to death like "Le Freak" or "Good Times" has? I dunno.

"Running Away" may be more interesting, but only because it's simultaneously one of the best disco, best funk, best jazz and best anything else songs ever of all time.

"running away" has been played like crazy, too. i like it more than any chic song that's for sure.

hmmm, maybe not.

For me, there is a reason why "Good Times" is the most played Chic song. It is so obviously their best.

The world could have done very well indeed without "Rapper's Delight" and "Another One Bites The Dust" though.

Yeah I don't understand the appeal of that Rapper's Delight thing at all. Um...did we NEED someone to rap over a Chic beat? I don't think so. Next!

"Guess what America? We love you!"

"Rappers Delight" > "Good Times"

My bad. Why I don't "get" sarcasm, obv.

I like that line in Rapper's Delight about the chicken that tastes like wood.

"When You Love Someone" = I need to meet a lover who GETS this song.

Original poster was deaf or just judgement-impaired?

"a) I'm a big songwriting snob (hence my Ne-Yo lurve/obsession);"

No, no, he's not. I chose this thread because it's got fabulous exchanges.

Both.

I always feel kind of sheepish when this thread gets bumped, even though I have come around in the meantime.

Oh never mind, this is the first time it was. I guess it's been linked to a couple times.

learning lurve

I always liked Chic--in fact one of the first, possibly the first, albums I ever bought was C'est Chic--but for some reason I only "got" "Good Times" very recently. Having gotten it, I didn't understand what there was to get about it. How does it take decades to suddenly go: that bassline!

imo it'[s ok not to get Chic, it's not so much a criticism of the band as an affirmation tbat you personallty are a deaf cunt

I revived this thread in the hopes that Rev has heard "When You Love Someone" in the interim.