From solenoid Sent Mon, Jul 5th 1999, 18:50
From solenoid Sent Mon, Jul 5th 1999, 18:50
On Mon, 5 Jul 1999, Sean Portnoy wrote:
> someone wrote:
>
> How strongly do you feel the bassline for MOST of those songs
> arerelated to
> the Chic catalog? ("....these - are - the - good - times....")
oh, yeah, I forgot about that tune! I was just mixing Le Freak with my
friend pasta for a bbq July 4 in my studio; Chic had such perfect
production.
For a little Chic: http://hem1.passagen.se/discoguy/tributes/chic.html
---- from the above site , not sure how accurate the story is -----
Especially when you listen to "Le Freak" you can hear the special
"Chic-technique" Nile and Bernard used when they wrote songs. They used to
start with a intro and then they went right on the chorus. Almost every
other song used the "standard" rutine... with intro, verse
and then the chorus. But this technique of building a song was something
Nile had picked up from an old jazz musician. Check out your Chic records
and you will hear this for yourself.
The next year the group returned with one of the most
important singles of all times... "Good times". Edwards great bassline was
copied by Queen in "Another one bites the dust" and the song was used in
"the Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the wheels of steel". The song
was also the base for the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's delight".
The first time Nile heard "Rapper's delight" was in a
New York club. He first thought it was the DJ who was rapping over his and
Bernard's "Good times". He thought it was quite cool and went up to the
DJ and came to find out that this was actually another group using "his"
song in their record without having got the permission in any way to use
the song.
Nile and Bernard naturally threatened to sue these
people. These people answered by sending armed gangsters to the studio,
the gangsters pointed guns at Nile and Bernards' heads and told them NOT
to try to sue these people. The guys were shocked of course, but they
didn't want no one to get away with the stealing of their song. They
contacted their lawyer, who happened to have been working for the mafia
earlier, and he actually know these people. He managed to work out a deal
with them and Nile and Bernard got paid - half a million dollars ! In cash
!!!
"Good times" is still a anthem and floorfiller in nightclubs, and many new
artists uses samples of either Chic's remarkable
basslines or the catchy hooks in their songs. It's probably only James
Brown who has been sampled or
copied more than Chic and Bernard's basslines.
> rapper's delight does indeed use "Good Times" itself as its musical
> basis and were sued by Chic (who eventually got songwriter credit).
> queen's bassline on "another one bites the bust" is pretty much a rip
> of the "good times" bassline.
>
> btw, though i love "jam on it" and other early electro-type stuff, my
> early 80s favorite is still junior's "mama used to say."
>
> :-)
>
> sean portnoy
> xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx
>
>
> coming very soon--grooves issue 2 with articles on...
> funkstorung
> jake mandell
> add n to x
> trans am
> suction records
>
> and many others.
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