Everybody Dance puts the rise and fall of Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, the emblematic disco duo behind era-defining records "Le Freak", "Good Times," and "Lost In Music," at the heart of a changing landscape, taking in sociopolitical and cultural events such as the Civil Rights struggle, the Black Panthers, and the U.S. oil crisis. There are drugs, bankruptcy, uptight artists, fights, and Muppets but, most importantly, an in-depth appraisal of a group whose legacy remains hugely underrated.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THIS IS THE DEFINTIVE CHIC BIBLE, PEOPLE!,
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This review is from: Chic: Everybody Dance: The Politics of Disco (Paperback)
As a lifelong fan of Nile Rodgers' & Bernard Edwards' prolific songwriting & production skills & musicianship, this book was long overdue for me but well worth the wait. This quality wordy tome has interviews from all the main people who knew & worked with Nile & Bernard. Using more recent interviews interspersed with archive ones, the reader is able to totally get a feel of the era from Chic's early days & beyond. You feel excited sharing the "Good Times" & feel despairingly sad when you "Flashback" to some of the episodes which led to broken friendships & the demise of Chic.
You feel incredulous at the prejudice perpetuated by record company policy or radio programmers to their music, or even to the idea of them producing white artists like David Bowie. You feel immense pride when after being cruelly put down by so-called experts & critics for being a "disco act", they then become the most sought after producers throughout the 1980s. From producing Diana Ross to Madonna & ABC, via David Bowie, INXS, Robert Palmer & Rod Stewart to name just some. There's also a chapter on the now infamous "lost album" recorded with Johnny Mathis entitled "I Love My Lady". All the former band members conribute too-Karen Milne former violinist of the Chic Strings has contributions from her tour & recording dates diary which makes for fascinating reading. With a lot of pictures & memorabilia featured from my own collection also, the contributions from so many credible sources serve to mark this book with the desrved tag of, "The Chic Bible". It truly is wonderful & I can't recommend it highly enough.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
At Last-- A Biography Of Chic,
By disco75 "disco75" (State College, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chic: Everybody Dance: The Politics of Disco (Paperback)
In the wake of the recent serious disco music histories such as *Last Night A DJ Saved My Life* and *Love Saves The Day* are coming some more specific coverage of individual artists. This book covering Chic and the upcoming review of Sylvester's career are providing the information that many of us have been wading through old periodicals to find. The author of this Chic book has certainly done his homework. He tracked down virtually all of the Chic members who were living at the time, as well as relatives, business associates, and affiliated artists. He has put together an impressive amount of new material from interviews and research and he has assembled a wide sampling of the magazine articles from the 70s and afterwards. Kudos to Easley for his archiving and interviewing efforts.
*Everybody Dance* gives a fairly complete accounting of the origins of the band and each member, the career of Chic and its off-shoot groups, its struggles after 1985, and how it negotiated the revival of interest in dance and disco musics. Easley has also included a number of photos from the four decades. The book reads compulsively in its first half, detailing the young Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, to the extent possible. Rodgers' fairly haunting background comes as a surprise and explains much about his personality. The early chapters of the book grab the reader because the author captures the spirit of yearning and the trials of the nascent group to accomplish its goals. As a reader, I became absorbed in the story, some of which was already familiar to me from previous interviews with the band members. Unfortunately, Easley's agenda for incorporating the "Politics" of the subtitle is not well-integrated into the book, particularly after the first half dozen chapters or so. In fact, after Chapter 5 Easley gives up the introductory paragraph in which he recounts the current events of the day. It is not until Chapter 13 that he resumes this device, and with each succeeding chapter it is decreasingly successful in its attempt to set a context for the music. Rote citation of statistics about oil prices and presidential maneuvers is not enough to embed the social aspects of citizens and their entertainments. This is not a major flaw for the book necessarily, except that the subtitle IS "The Politics Of Disco." Easley tries to punch up the dynamics of the group, apparently to create suspense in the portions of the tale covering the heyday of Chic. He stretches to do this, overstating the tensions and underplaying the accomplishments of the 80s in the effort to tell a tragic tale that is not, actually, all that tragic. There was great music created and much success during the 1980s for the group and its members. Overstatement is a weakness that better editing would have minimized. The author is fond of using superlatives in his reviews of the group's playing and the recordings-- to the extent that he ends up contradicting himself about which track is the "strongest use of strings" or the "best bass playing." His fondness of using the term "arguably" arises several times in each chapter of the second half of the book. Proofreading would have caught this stylistic tic, as well the rampant grammatical errors such as missing apostrophes in possessives, misplaced commas, and unattributed quotes. The publisher let Easley down in the editing department. Despite the shortcomings, the book represents a much-needed resource about the group, and the author has clearly put much legwork into his look at Chic. His love of the music is apparent and his enthusiasms are often infectious. Although he was "preaching to the choir" with this reader, I nevertheless found much of interest in the book and recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excerpt from the book and an interview with the writer!,
By pocat "webmaster www.chictribute.com" (Stockholm, SWEDEN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Chic: Everybody Dance: The Politics of Disco (Paperback)
This book is amazing. If anyone wants to read an interview with the writer, done by Glen J. Russell (see above) and an excerpt from the book, please visit: http://www.chictribute.com/glens/texts/text06de.html
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