The Relative appended note on this 1977 LP I bought for $.98 contained only a few good-natured ribs at disco and the whistle blowing sirens gracing the cover. Of course, Relatives cheeky lack of gravity and insight is often what makes their cocky proclamations so charming.

One really doesnt want an essay on the sleeve anyway, as buying records is supposed to be fun. Just let me qualify the jokes with the fact (not an opinion, mind you) that Chic were one of the most important bands of the seventies.

It is a sad world we live in if the disco backlash and the backlash to the
backlash and the backlash to that and this perpetual oscillation hasnt
settled. Disco was an organic musical evolution that produced some of the
most creative sounds of the decade thats named after it and went on to
become a key aspect of hip-hop and electronic musics DNA. The Disco
Sucks movement that came much later and still infects some pop culture only
emerged after the success of Saturday Night Fever caused an explosion,
wherein every aspect of the culture was caricatured and mass marketed ad
nauseum and the Soul divisions of major record labels dropped their rosters
of serious R&B artists to pump out a slew of inferior, cheaper disco clones. Much very bad disco was made in the later 70s, but one must be careful not
to bundle together an insipid, manufactured novelty act such The Village
People with a genuine innovator such as Georgeo Moroder.

Perhaps the most accomplished musical unit in disco was the guitar/bass
production duo of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. In addition to being
the nucleus of Chic, they handled many of discos greatest singles by
artists such as Diana Ross and Sister Sledge, ultimately becoming a sample
source only slightly less ubiquitous than James Brown (Sugarhill Gang and
Queen both ripped them off live before samplers became widely available).
Using a syncopated style developed from years of being a small live band
attempting to convey the complexity of veritable funk orchestras such as The
Ohio Players, Rodgers rhythm guitar and Edwards inimitable fluid bass made
as influential a groove as Booker T. and the MGs of Stax Records fame or
Browns own JBs.

Of course, the lyrical content on Chics albums has often been seen as
vacuous and repetitive. It is neither. Chic always had a light touch with
sly humor, satirizing the hedonistic excess of disco themes as much as
celebrating them. I pity anyone who takes Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah,
Yowsah, Yowsah) and Everybody Dance as no more than empty-head anthems,
which is literal minded to the point of thinking the only theme of Sly
Stones Hot Fun in the Summertime is how great the summer is (yes,
Virginia, that ones a little sarcastic, too). As for the repetition
complaint, this is groove music, not folk songs, so live with it. Every
song neednt convey an entire biography or three-act drama. I heard a rumor
that some music doesnt even have words.

Chics influence persisted in samples and Rodgers and Edwards separate
work in the eighties. Rodgers, particularly, handled landmarks no smaller
than Madonnas breakthrough albums and David Bowies Lets Dance album.
The first serious, book length study of their work, Daryl Easleas
Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco was listed among the top
books of 2005 by British pop rags such as Uncut and NME, as well as boasting
blurbs by Bowie and Bryan Ferry. I really advise the common wisdom of If
Bowie likes them in appraising Chic. More importantly, I like them. And
I got the LP for a dollar.

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