By the time this, Chic’s seventh hit, came out in December 1979 I was a bona fide Chic fan and bought the twelve-inch version on the day of release. I had a gig that night with Radio Claudine, the Student Union mobile disco of Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh.
We weren’t in truth all that mobile; most gigs were in-house or at Corstorphine Rugby Club where a member of the teaching staff was a regular. This gig was different. A former student had booked us to play for a dance at the farm where she volunteered. The place was a halfway house for people with mental health issues trying to re-enter the society from which in various ways they had fled.
I had been warned that some of the guests were fragile and in my ignorance of such conditions I was apprehensive of the night ahead. I needn’t have worried. Everyone was happy to be having a party; there was no alcohol; and they had turned the barn into a dance hall lined with straw bale seating. It was a great atmosphere. I played for seven straight hours from 8pm to 3am; and after a short nap I and everyone else started up again from around 5am for another four or five hours. It’s one of the nicest bookings I’ve ever had. All our feet kept dancing.
Not having heard My Feet Keep Dancing ahead of the gig, I played it early in the set in case it was a dud. As if. I liked it so much that I think I played it a further four times over the next twelve hours. Partly because of its association with that booking it remains my favourite Chic single.
Every hit has its hook, and My Feet Keep Dancing had three. The first is its chugging beat; while the drums play a relentless 4:4 of kick-snare kick-snare, the chords advance every three beats, jumping the gun and making your feet feel they have to catch up. The repetitive arrhythmic “Dancing!” of the chorus plays a similar trick.
Second, and almost unnoticed at first, are the strings. They play one note throughout (bar a little riff at the end of every eighth bar); but in a stroke of genius, three minutes into the song, the note starts to go up an octave every two bars. This incredibly simple device ratchets up the excitement until all that matters is the dancing.
Third, you can’t help but smile when halfway through the track the rhythm cuts to simple drum and bass to make way for … a tapdance solo. I defy any dancer not to be tempted to join in.
In the weeks that followed the gig I made several return visits to the farm as a volunteer, partly because I admired its work and partly because I admired the sleepy smiling eyes and wild red hair of the woman who had booked me. She and a colleague were, unknown to anyone, an item all the time and eventually left the farm together to do more good work elsewhere in the country. I was booked back for their farewell party, which was a very different affair.
My set was cut short after only two hours by the attempted suicide of one of the residents, a friendly young man with a bipolar disorder who could not cope with the imminent departure of my client. He locked himself in a toilet cubicle and made a pretty good attempt at cutting his wrists. Farce followed tragedy: the farm was in the dark in the middle of nowhere, and the attending ambulance could not find the entrance to the farm track. We watched frustrated from the farmyard as its blue light raced back and forth in the night on various West Lothian country lanes. I’m glad to say the unhappy man survived.
Thirty or so years later, Chic’s leader and guitarist Nile Rodgers was appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to promote his new autobiography, Le Freak. His formal event was an interview by a famous Edinburgh author; it was a disappointment. The author was foul mouthed and Rodgers, out of politeness, responded in kind. But the night before that he had a spot in the festival bar which may be the best gig I’ve ever been at. As we filed in, he was sitting there on a high stool noodling on his famous transparent Fender Stratocaster. Then he began to talk to us, articulate thoughtful, witty. He overran his one-hour slot by at least an hour, regaling us with tales of his life and snatches of song.
At one point, when he invited questions, a bedroom guitarist in the fifth row asked if he could play the legendary guitar – “Gie’s a shot o’ yer guitar, Nile?” The room recoiled at the impudence, but not Nile, who passed it over the heads of the intervening four rows and listened patiently while the lad premiered his latest composition. Then Nile played the chaotic chords back to us all note for note, but embellished them with his trademark flare and rhythm. What an act of kindness and flattery by a charming, generous man.
No comments:
Post a Comment