I like Good Times more than Le Freak. It's importance can't be understated especially given it was the sample bassline to Rappers Delight later that year, and even a group like Duran Duran you could argue owed their career to trying to copy that sound.
Bad Girls Toot toot, beep beep Donna Summer singles were always good, and this is no exception. Good Times Chic and Donna were the best things going in disco, and they were both bowing out from topping the charts with these two songs. * *(although Donna would do it once more in a duet) If there was a bass line hall of fame, this bass line would have to be one of the first chosen. Clams on the half shell and rollerskates! Not exactly how I would sum up summer fun, but they make it sound fun and happy. So long, disco. You were never as bad as I thought you were at the time.
Thom Bell was great. I'm a big fan of his Stylistics and Spinners productions. But, I'm not hearing his production magic on this one.
There was lots of bad disco.. but lots of good disco too. Like any genre of music. If you were a club goer in those days you heard it all. But it was mostly about the atmosphere. And the women.
I was in high school, so I didn't hit many clubs. I'm sure discos were great places to meet women, though.
This ("Good Times") is one of my favorite songs of the year. And one of my favorite disco songs of the genre.
Chic - Good Times Without living through this time period or without studying when and where everything happened, I would've assumed that this track was from a few years earlier. I guess I just never thought that something this iconic came out as the decade was winding down. I don't even think of this as a "disco" song, even though it has the elements. It's a much harder-hitting funk than a lot of the songs. It totally makes sense the the Sugarhill Gang would use this as the bed for Rapper's Delight. It's interesting that you can change the voice around and you have an entirely different music form, just keep that primary groove. It's great to see Sylvia Robinson's role in this sea change from funk to hip hop. As for Good Times, it's a great track and the bass line super cool. This song hits hard. Just because it needs to be here:
Nile & 'Nard wanted to sue the Robinsons but the mob let them know that it wasn't a wise thing to do. True story. Anyway, in my high school, the cool thing was to be able to rap the entire 14 or so minutes non-stop. The record was seen as a novelty hit, as no one had ever heard such a record, although "Here Comes The Judge" by Pigmeat Markham in 1968 could be considered as the first rap record.
That's a cool track and it's great to see that the beginnings of rap weren't in 1979. Just like how "rock and roll" didn't suddenly come out of nowhere in 1955.
The word "rap" was a 60s and early 70s Black slang term for having a discussion. Black radio often had a DJ 'rap" about community issues over a bed of music in the background.
We have that 1968 single at my parent's house. I played it all the time as a kid. I recorded it digitally a few years back so I no longer have to play the vinyl 45.
Thom Bell had Mr. John singing in a lower register, which may have something to do with that performance (besides the nose candy). Mr. Bell did this too, earlier in the decade, with Johnny Mathis.
Mr. Bell himself seemed to be running on fumes by the time he worked, however briefly, with Mr. John.
Although country had its own antecedents - "Big Bad John" by Jimmy Dean, "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash . . .
'Good Times' basically birthed the first mainstream hip-hop song. The bass line for the song was sampled on 'Rappers Delight' by the SugarHill Gang. 'Rappers Delight' only peaked at #36 on the Hot 100, but was a Top 10 hit much of everywhere else, including going #1 in Canada and The Netherlands. That's something that needs to be mentioned. HIP-HOP is beginning to make a name for itself.
Ditto. It is great. It's the reason I joined this forum after spending a lot of time reading it. And!It's relatively free of the bitter and pointless arguing on so many other lengthy threads And! I said this before but I'll repeat myself gladly. Reading about these songs absolutely takes me back in time to that place , that moment of my life. I can see it all in my mind's eye. It's not all good but it sure is all there. Cheers, all!
'Bad Girls' is a great song too. Donna performed it once on TV and at the end when the cops come and disrupt the group of 'night girls' a cop grabs her and begins to take her to his car, where he exclaims 'You're coming with me!' Donna, puzzled at the suggestion goes, 'Where? To the jail house?' The cop turns around and goes, 'No! To my house' and then throws her in the police car lmao I don't know why but I laughed for minutes on end at that part.
Loved this track, although that's a horribly compressed rendition on YouTube. This one is decidedly less-distorted: It always sounded really dated to me, though - very 1977/78 - even though I loved it. Harked back to that early '74-'76 disco sound, with lush Love Unlimited strings and arrangements. I didn't realize for years that it was actually recorded in 1977 but not released until two years later. Such a great song it rocketed into the Top 10 anyhow. Broke a long Top 10 drought for Elton, and to some degree its sound - vibes and bells and pulsating synths - set the stage for his next US Top 10 in 1980. I've often wondered what might have become of Elton if this hadn't been a hit. He was so long gone on the US charts by this point you have to wonder if radio programmers and DJ's would have bothered spinning his extremely mellow 1980 hit if "Mama" hadn't been such a success the year before.
Granted, the members of Chic did very well in the 80s as producers and musicians, but I'm surprised how drastically Chic the group itself dropped off after Good Times. It was their final top 40 single to boot and their album sales plummetted starting with the next album. Seems like a case like the Bee Gees where people loved their production and songwriting for other acts, but yet the name Chic itself carried a stigma for some reason even when they were buying a Diana Ross album that has "A Chic Production" in clear writing on the record label itself. I know the disco backlash was in full bloom by then, but it's odd that people were embracing other artists doing Chic music in all but name while Chic's albums post-Risque all did worse than the previous one to the point 1983's Believer didn't even chart when Nile and co. were having huge success with David Bowie the same time, and then of course Madonna and Duran Duran the next year and hits pretty much for the rest of the 1980s.
The irony is that overseas, it's another track off the same EP that is one of Elton's most iconic songs, although via a re-release nearly 25 years later.. "Are You Ready For Love" I will admit I'm in a very tiny minority that I actually kinda like Elton's followup single that would be debuting on the chart shortly after "Mama..." started dropping down the charts. The album itself is a disaster but the title cut is actually a better track than given credit for and might've done better had it come out a few months prior before the disco backlash began to set in. I was actually impressed that the song was used in a scene in Rocketman given Elton essentially excising the album from his discography over the last 40 years, although the usage was meant to symbolize a low point for Elton, which admittedly the album was (only a #35 peak and off the charts in 9 weeks when Elton could spend nine weeks at #1 on the chart a couple years prior)
I am somewhat amused at comments that say "this doesn't sound like 1979, it sounds like 1977 or 1978". For me, things are what they are.
#36 is impressive when you consider we're still about seven years off from when Run-DMC and Beastie Boys really put hip hop into the mainstream. There were a few moments of hip hop doing well on pop (Chaka Khan using Melle Mel on I Feel For You, Blondie's Rapture, etc...), but "Walk This Way" in 1986 was really the moment that hip hop really began to blow up and it became part of mainstream music instead of being seen as a novelty genre
