A Year of Blind Spots: Risqué

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die:

Recorded at Kendun Studios, California, the Power Station, and Electric Lady in New York over eight weeks in winter/spring 1979, Risqué is Exhibition A in the case against those who suggest that there was little substance to disco music. The album is the acme of Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers' creative partnership. Backed by a budget of $160,000, it remains a widescreen record with widescreen ambitions.

With its jet-engine drone and its achingly gorgeous repetition, "Good Times" is Chic's lasting monument to pop, an ironic recreation of Depression-era standard "Happy Days Are Here Again." Edwards' 20-note bass refrain came to define not only urban music, but hip hop as well, famously sampled by the Sugarhill Gang in "Rapper's Delight." Although it could be argued that the whole album struggles to live up to that track, it is a fantastically dark listen, with only "A Warm Summer Night" and "Will You Cry (When You Hear This Song)" offering respite among the relentless groove.

It was released in August 1979, with a full design concept that looked like something from the Hipgnosis stable, its sepia sleeve sat well alongside the other major Atlantic release that summer, Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door. Atlantic even went back to its silver label, a staple of its jazz and R&B roster, as a one-off for the album.

Risqué is a record that dwells on relationships: bleak, unrequited ones, ones tinged with sadism and despair, relationships with the past, and, of course, with the dancefloor. Ornate and detailed, it was soon eclipsed by the "disco sucks" movement.

Joe:

In my household, all concerns of Chic revolve around "Le Freak." It's documented in multiple corners of this blog already, so apologies, but "Le Freak" was our first kid's first favorite song, the moment she figured out she could have a first song. It lives on too: we were listening the other day, and middle child asked me why they were saying "shit" (had to explain they were saying "Chic," which sounds like the curse word that she was saying and probably shouldn't again).

As it turns out, we know a song on this album too. Ain't that almost always the case on these Blind Spots? How many times in the past six years have I said something like "oh shit, it's THIS song"? Too many to count. The oh shit song here is "Good Times." I know it because it's ubiquitous. My kids know it because it was in (ALERT ALERT ALERT) Trolls World Tour. I never knew it was Chic.

As the 1001 Albums blurb hints at, there's not really anything worth worrying about after the big hit. A couple slow songs, a few propulsive but generic disco tracks. That's probably the biggest takeaway here, that Chic is, or was for a spell, a disco band (or "band," if you know you know). Having "Le Freak" burned into my brain, I never really thought about it that way. Wait, is that song disco too? It's tough to say when it's all more easily categorized into "pop."

I don't find myself recontextualizing what disco means to me. That doesn't concern me. Though maybe it would if I didn't find "Good Times" annoying at best. I don't know if all this is enough to combat preconceived notions about disco either, but you could do a lot worse in terms of listen to music. That's as much faint praise as I'll damn it with.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting a little tired of covering albums that are "big hit + forgettable deep cuts." In order to be memorable, it can be mostly that equation but also plus a memorable deep cut. Which has definitely happened enough in my experience that continuing to find and plod through "blind spots" remains worth it. But when the song ends up being "Good Times," I get weary.