musical youth

when i was seven years old my dad got promoted. the promotion involved us moving from yorkshire to manchester. there he managed a team of people and within his team was an avid record buyer. periodically he would arrive home with a pile of records. like a kid in a sweet shop i would listen to the new sounds coming from the stereo and thumb through the pile of borrowed albums getting lost in the sounds and the images. i have no idea who this team member was but he certainly added fuel to the musical tastes of our household. from fleetwood mac to the saturday night fever soundtrack. from don mclean to abba. from billy joel to chic. we listened to (and recorded) them all. i had quite a wide musical knowledge by the age of nine. by the age of twelve i had my own music taste which sat very squarely with duran duran. i was an ardent fan who would watch or listen to any interview, bought magazines with them on the cover, wore the t-shirts and saw them live. i listened to them talk about their musical influences and vividly remember listening to john taylor talk about nile rodgers and bernard edwards of chic. talking to fellow duranies, i realised i was the only one who knew who chic were let alone what they sounded like. of all the tapes that dad recorded during that period there is one that was well loved, one that endured beyond all others, one that found its way into many of my cars. the a side was billy joel the stranger, the b side was chic c'est chic.

the memories hold so strong with the music and that tape that i still have it even though it now looks like this; unplayable, even in the old tape deck of my car.

at the end of a long day yesterday i sat down to find something to watch to unwind. i came across this documentary called nile rodgers: the hitmaker. i smiled when the first person on screen after nile rodgers was john taylor. i urge you to watch it. i guarantee if you think you don't know any chic music you will find that you do, and as chris stein of blondie says "the base line of good times became the foundation for modern hip hop." not bad for a band that started out as a disco outfit. have a listen and try and keep still, i dare you. 

Emma