1) Plan-9; 2) State Your Mind; 3) The Face In The Window; 4) Doll Squad; 5) Let's Go Out Tonight; 6) Groove Master; 7) Wavelength; 8) Stay Out Of The Light.
General verdict: Funny electronic grooves, but bring back that guitar, goddammit.
For his second album, Nile chose Alfa Anderson
instead of Bernard for his resident «memory of Chic» — bass credits go to Jimmy
Bralower, a hot Eighties jack-of-all-trades known not so much for his guitar,
bass, and drum playing as he was for his production and electronic programming.
As you can understand, there is not much by way of impressive bass playing to
be found on the album. Instead, there is a very glossy, synthetic sound,
occasionally warmed up by Nile's colorful licks — but overall, quite robotic;
think Duran Duran with a slightly funkier edge.
Nevertheless, Rodgers lost neither his sense of
humor nor his knack for delightfully lowbrow entertainment, and even if he is
not playing to his usual high standards, he almost makes up for this with the
fun quotient. The title of the record is not arbitrary: it is actually a semi-conceptual
piece, stuffed with memories of and impressions from various cheesy B-movies,
as if telling us not to take the music too
seriously, either. Titles like ʽPlan-9ʼ and ʽDoll Squadʼ are self-explanatory;
others take attention to understand, like ʽStay Out Of The Lightʼ, filled with samples
from Raiders Of The Lost Ark, even
though the main content seems to be unrelated (not that I cared to follow the
lyrics too closely, you understand). It all fits in kind of nicely into the
general hedonism and entertainment spiral of the mid-Eighties, but always in a
light, inoffensive, mildly funny way: Nile Rodgers is, after all, a nice and
polite fellow whose career still peaked in the suit-wearing age, so he ain't
going to pull no Alice Cooper or Mötley Crüe shit on you.
The only track to reach the single charts was
ʽLet's Go Out Tonightʼ, which could thematically be the B-side to Madonna's
ʽInto The Grooveʼ — a simple, unadorned dance-pop number with one synth bass
line, one synth keyboard hook, one vocal earworm, and some Japanese vocal
samples that modern audiences will probably love even more. Predictably, my
interest only perks here when Nile begins to replay the hook on his guitar, at
first strictly limiting himself to repeating a single phrase, then, towards the
end, finally getting tired of it and launching into some inspired variations...
that is, before they fade him out way
too early (people are here to dance, goddammit, not to listen to creative
guitar playing). Unfortunately, I wouldn't mind if they let him stretch out
somewhere else, but that charmingly optimistic ringing guitar riff is about as
much as you are getting from Nile Rodgers, the master of funky melody, on this
album. So I do mind.
Still, it would be unfair to bypass the fact
that there are some nifty grooves on the record — sometimes with a strong
futuristic touch, e. g. ʽGroove Masterʼ (where Nile is going all mechanistic-robotic-Kraftwerkish
on our asses), or ʽThe Face In The Windowʼ, whose interchange of dark and
threatening electronic pulse in the verse with the pure and shiny dance groove
in the chorus sounds almost frighteningly modern (all those purveyors of
Eighties' nostalgia who sometimes think they are expanding on what their
forefathers taught them are way too often just repeating the achievements of
tracks like this). Nothing really stands out in particular, and then there is
always the occasional boring ballad like ʽWavelengthʼ, but on the whole, the
grooves show a certain level of complexity and involvement — and when you
combine, say, the not-so-trivial interlocking of bass, keyboards, guitar,
percussion, and backing vocals on ʽDoll Squadʼ with the inherent light-hearted
humor, you get a track that can cozily rally itself under the Prince banner and
carried out of the burning house of Eighties' dance-pop as a good example of
why it actually mattered as a creative force. To some small degree, at least.
It makes even more sense when you think about
the relative artistic disasters Nile was producing for white guys at the time —
Jeff Beck's Flash, Mick Jagger's She's The Boss — and just goes to show
how important it is not to take yourself too seriously when you are investing
in overtly commercial projects. Somehow, of these three projects, B-Movie Matinee is the only one where
my own emotional response has been positive rather than negative. Still, it
does not change the fact that my overall involvement in any Nile Rodgers
project is proportionally dependent on the amount and quality of his guitar
playing, and in that respect, B-Movie
Matinee disappoints. In contexts like these, having a bigger ego couldn't actually
hurt, Mr. Rodgers.
You missed Bernard Edwards solo album from 1983, 'Glad To Be Here', also with Nile & Chic alumni.
ReplyDeleteis it me or has George been using profanity and curse words much more in the past few months? Hope everything is alright George.
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