Well I don't know about you but one of the highlights during the year at our high school was the School Disco which we were lucky in that we had a proper dj set up and mc spinning the discs some of which we supplied from our own modest collections.
One the most in demand request for discs was from the group Chic which I had a decent set of 45's at the time to which we danced to loving funk and Soul music at the time.
This takes me to a recent 2cd set issued by Music Club a budget UK label called Chic Magnifique which I purchased.
This disc has 37 recordings by them including all the hits we loved such as Le Freak, My Forbidden Lover, Good Times, Hangin' as as well as a few tracks from the 1992 Chic-ism comeback album .
It comes with excellent notes that reveal just how many of these tracks have been sampled by today's R&B/Rap acts and reminds me so much of those 'Good Times'.
Also up on the deck but for different reasons is a disc by the noted singer-songer writer Linda Ronstadt except that for me at least this was amongst the stuff we heard on FM radio back especially at weekends and evenings in the dorm then so frequent that although many of her hits from that period are burnt into my brain I never bought any albums by her then or afterward.
Born in 1946 in Tuscon, AZ, Linda's career started in 1967 with the Stone Ponys which is represented on this disc by Different Drum but then sh went solo recording for Capitol having a huge hit with You're No Good and Asylum/Warner with a swathe of hits throughout the 70's such as Blue Bayou, It's so Easy and Hurt So Good. Later on she explored jazz-pop with Nelson Riddle and Mexican folk which is also covered on this set with such tracks as What's New but inevitable it's the 70's material you come back to and has the lion's share of generously packed discs.
An artist who plows a musical furrow for a while and moves on is hard to compile and at times it's almost as if you've put Linda's songs on shuffle but outside of shorter less value themed collections it's hard to see what else the compilers of this set could do. It's certainly better value from both volumes of her Greatest Hits sets.
It's true, Linda Ronstadt just keeps moving on and not looking back; it seems like she's always trying something new. I have a lot of respect for that.
ReplyDeleteI was the same way, listening to so many of her early solo songs on FM that I never got around to purchasing one of her albums. But if I had a soundtrack for my early to mid-teen years she would definitely be there.
ReplyDelete