Nile Rodgers & Chic
Royal Festival Hall, Meltdown Festival, London Until tonight
Meltdown, the Southbank Centre’s summer festival, exists to celebrate the arty end of pop. Over 26 years its guest curators have ranged from David Bowie and Scott Walker to Yoko Ono and Patti Smith.
But this year Meltdown has taken a turn towards the mainstream by signing up Nile Rodgers, the man who brought us the simple pleasures of Good Times and We Are Family.
As a curator, Rodgers is more of a party planner. The party starts before the opening gig, with a gospel choir belting out disco hits on the terrace for free, and it continues afterwards, with the Queen Elizabeth Hall allowing itself to be turned into a re-creation of New York’s Studio 54.
The gig itself, featuring Nile Rodgers (above) and his band Chic, feels like a party from the moment he walks on in a well-cut silver suit
The gig itself, featuring Rodgers’s band Chic, feels like a party from the moment he walks on in a well-cut silver suit. The seats at the Royal Festival Hall are unusually comfortable, but hardly anyone is using them.
The show opens with Dance, Dance, Dance and Everybody Dance – two sets of instructions to do what a packed crowd is already doing.
At 66, Rodgers doesn’t look a day over 55. He’s a survivor – of a tough childhood, addiction and cancer – who has thrived in three distinct roles as a guitarist, band-leader and writer-producer.
His set celebrates all three. Song after song opens with a funk riff emerging from his fingers without any apparent effort. Around him, eight musicians dish up a musical oxymoron: disco hedonism with disciplined precision.
After half an hour his own hits become a bit samey, so Rodgers pulls out the classics he produced for bigger names. On Like A Virgin and Material Girl, Chic’s latest lead singers, Kimberly Davis and Folami, add a layer of soul, taking Madonna to church.
But it’s the collaborations with Bowie – Modern Love and Let’s Dance – that bring an extra dimension.
To Rodgers’s slick Eighties craftsmanship Bowie added drama and idiosyncrasy (‘under the moonlight, the serious moonlight’). Later Bowie disowned Let’s Dance, arguing that its vast success had made him too commercial, and dropped it from his set list.
This dynamic rendition, featuring the deep voice of the drummer Russell Graham, suggests that Bowie may have got that one wrong.
In later life Rodgers has added just one hit to his collection – but what a hit. Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, from 2013, is as good as anything he ever co-wrote. Deliciously infectious, exuberantly nuanced, it captures the thrill and sadness of Saturday night as well as the Bee Gees once did.
On this particular Saturday night, it crowns an irresistible show. I’ve never seen the Festival Hall so animated.
THIS WEEK’S CD RELEASES
By Adam Woods
Bruce Springsteen Blinded By The Light Out now
Rating: 
The soundtrack of the film based on Sarfraz Manzoor’s Bruce-centric memoir Greetings From Bury Park corrals 11 Boss songs into a wonky sort of best-of, comprising hits, live tracks and a new Springsteen tune, I’ll Stand By You, a weightily earnest parent-child ballad
Chance The Rapper The Big Day Out now
Rating:
This debut album is a concept record about Chance’s wedding, his family, and his faith. Lengthy and stuffed with guests, its sunny gospel-rap is always amiable and never less than positive, so even when it descends into skits and thin tunes, it’s hard to dislike
Sleater-Kinnery The Center Won’t Hold Out Friday
Rating: 
The guitars might not always roar as dementedly as they used to, but there is a leaner, edgier sound to the band’s ninth album. It foregrounds the restless energy and intelligence of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker’s songs in a way that might prove a masterstroke
Lionel Richie Hello From Las Vegas Out Friday
Rating:
On this live album Lionel knows what they’ve come for: a ton of hits such as Easy, Hello and All Night Long performed with gusto. The singer, who has just turned 70, stakes a persuasive claim to be the heartiest – and definitely the hammiest – surviving Motown legend