Night Music: Chic, “Good Times”

I don’t like prejudice, and so I don’t like knee-jerk evaluations of stuff. Oh, it isn’t your style? I would hope you listen instead and think instead of jerk your knees. Or shoot your mouth. Criticize, don’t bleat like some pop/punk princess.

I was working at the Food Coop today, enter Portlandia sound effect, and the squad leader put on a Pandora stream of early 80s pop disco. Reminders of lots of cheesy tunes, lots of dark nights, and also a reminder that at a time when Punk was ascendent, the Disco vision was also ascendant. The outcomes were totally different, but the motivations of the two were locked together, at least until AIDS erupted.

I and almost every other rocker I knew loved Good Times. It’s a great groove.

7 thoughts on “Night Music: Chic, “Good Times”

  1. Yeah, I know “everyone” loves this and everyone else is supposed to love it too. I don’t. It’s boring after about one minute and goes on for eight.

    1) Simply does nothing for me. I can’t lie and I can’t strike the pose. It’s background noise.

    2) My rocker friends didn’t like this.

    3) Disco sucks.

  2. Yeah, well, I never hated disco. I hated a lot of it (Taveras used to drive me up the wall) but there are a few great disco songs that hold up to this day. I remember Good Times but I never knew it was called Good Times. Good bar music, but there was never a reason to buy disco records, except for the few greats, because I heard them everywhere I went. Good Times lifted quite a bit from this piece of hilarity, which literally had me on the floor the first time I heard it. “You’re no tramp but you’re no lady” indeed.

  3. Chic looked cool, not silly like most disco groups. Chic didn’t look like they were going to a disco, they looked like they were going someplace cool.

  4. Nile Rodgers is a big Roxy Music fan, how bad can he be? And 70s disco had some good silliness. My sister Eileen was big into disco from 1973 if not before, I went a few times early on. I had some ridiculous fun although I’m not a great dancer – and that was what disco was all about, out on the floor. That was also the beginning of the DJ’s blending songs and doing sonic shit. A lot of the music that is instantly tiresome on the radio is a lot better when it’s brand new and you are dancing to it with a cute girl or guy.

    • My post came about because I was working at the food coop, doing checkout, and listening to Good Times while scanning food items was just a little like dancing. Until I rang up that bag of Ranier cherries at $10+ a pound twice. Then it’s time to put Linda Ronstadt back on.

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