[quote name='molan' timestamp='1498653959' post='3326135']
Watching on iPlayer right now and I must admit that some of Jerry Barnes' playing is getting on my nerves.
I don't necessarily believe that he needs to play Bernard E's parts note for note but the continued slides up and down the board seem a bit pointless and, at times, it's almost like he feels he has to fill in all those nice gaps that Bernard left to let the music breathe a bit.
Without the gaps the songs seem to lose their core groove in places. Of course, Bernard was a total rhythm 'machine' so very difficult to fill in.
Jerry's tone when he's just playing with fingers sounds good to me but some of the slappier stuff sounds a bit clanky to my ears.
One thing I was surprised at was My Feet Keep Dancing - the middle section of this has what is almost a bass solo section in it where Bernard just pumps a robotic groove straight through and a flourish at the end. The current live version loses that groove and is all clicky/poppy sounding.
I think this relentless groove stuff was core to the classic Chic sound but maybe not the most entertaining thing to stand and watch. Many songs barely deviate from a single groove all the way through with repetitive vocal lines and just the odd little flourish from bass or guitar. To listen, or of course dance, to this is great and the scarcity of those flourishes are sometimes pure joy (like when Niles comes back in after the breakdown in the full version of Good Times).
The other thing missing with the live band is the string section. The horns sounded great on some numbers but another key aspect of many Chic songs is the way they breakdown and then build back up again with sparse key stabs, strings & horns over that perfect groove. The live keys sounded like it was trying to cover too much of this and, again, wasn't giving that space for the songs to breathe a little.
I'm sure they would be great to see live if you're actually there but as a TV spectacle I kept finding myself reaching for the fast forward button
Mind you - that's true of lots of music on TV. Too easy to start over analysing and picking holes - just as I've been doing here, lol
[/quote]
This to a 'T'