Chic: The Very Best of Chic

I got this in February 2003, just before I moved to London. On the day I arrived in my Phipp Street flat, I set up the hi-fi and Le Freak was the first song I played. When it came out in 1978 or '79 disco was not popular at school, but even people who sneered at the genre could not resist the song's charms.

I can't remember what it was that prompted me to get this. It was possibly some snatched clip of Le Freak or Good Times from an open car window that triggered the I'd-love-to-hear-those-old-songs reflex. Nowadays I'd just go to iTunes to get the handful of songs I wanted, but that wasn't an option four years ago, and I've never been a serious peer-to-peer user. So I ordered the CD from Cheap or What.

Mostly I'd be unlikely to play the CD the whole way through, but I paid closer attention while reading Daryl Easlea's excellent book Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco the summer before last. Easlea makes the case that most of us think we know Chic's music, but its familiarity stops us from listening to it closely. The book starts at the turn of the '70s when Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards are paying their dues in various r'n'b, soul and rock gigs in New York, and follows them through to the reunions and the deaths of Edwards and drummer Teddy Thompson is poignant. It does explain some of the politics of the Studio 54 scene, the Disco Sucks campaign and black music in New York, but it's most affecting in the warmth it shows to its characters.

I just noticed that the CD is missing At Last I am Free. I looked it up on iTunes and considered downloading it. Then I thought about getting Robert Wyatt's cover version instead. But I ended up getting neither. Not today anyway.

MusicBrainz entry for this album

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