So you’re planning a party.
4000-odd guests will be attending. The marquee – check. Glitterball – check. Afro-wigs and inflatable guitars – check and check. Hang on, something’s missing. Who’s bringing the funk? After all, it's no funk, no fun – right?
As luck would have it Nile Rodgers is in town – and he’s packing an embarrassment of the stuff. Enough to fill a million discotheques. Not alone though, he’s attended by an 8-piece band that for the sake of convenience are called Chic – despite there being no original members. Now we’ve got a party!
Launching straight into ‘Everybody Dance’, the crowd take it as an instruction and do just that. For the next two hours Rodgers leads the band through an astonishing set of hits spanning 40 years. Astonishing for the reason that he has either written, arranged, produced or played on all of them. It is a fact – which I just made up – that somewhere in the world, at any given time, a track that Rodgers contributed to is being played.
To list a few: ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’; ‘Greatest Dancer’; ‘My Feet Keep Dancing’'. It’s not difficult to see a theme, but it's one which the audience lap-up like Pavlovian disco-dogs. The pace never lets up for a moment until the band finish up with, appropriately enough, ‘Good Times’.