Dropping Names

On Myspace, users have a little window called 'status' where we write our current mood and little notes about what's going on.
Nile Rodgers of Chic fame wrote and said he was suffering from writer's block and that Paul Simon had always warned him that this might happen.
So I commented back and gave him a bit of advice: start a song-circle, (like Katy, Nadya, Rowen and me) and the ideas will come flowing back.
Giving advice to Nile Rodgers? that's something I never thought I'd do!
I had a small discussion once at a conference about Chic, because the academic presenting a paper on them was drawing a time-line between James Brown and D'Angelo and putting them there in the middle.
But I have always felt Chic owed a lot to punk rock and it's on-the-beat hurry-up style.
Mykaell Riley (once of Steel Pulse) told me that Nile Rodgers liked punk rock, so maybe I was right.

Listening to those old disco records, like Ladies' Night by Kool and the Gang, Ain't No Stopping Us Now by McFadden and Whitehead, and Best of my Love by the Emotions, you can hear where about 2/3 of the way through, the BPMs are revved up just a fraction to push the record towards its finale.
I used to start dancing at six and end at twelve, just about every night of the week at the Art College Basement Disco in Brighton, and then walk a mile and a half home.
My favourite record from the 1970s disco era is Number One Deejay, by Goody Goody.
I still have a very scratched copy of this, which must be very rare (I did read that it might be the first 12" single but I don't think it was).
I have not found the track anywhere online, but wherever and whenever I have the space to fire up my record deck, it's the first one on and I go bombing round the kitchen and back to the disco in my head.
I had a green and yellow budgie who use to like standing on my head while I was dancing at home before I went out, gripping on for dear life with his little claws and flapping his wings in panic when he lost his balance.

Like Julie Andrews charging up the hill with her guitar, I am about to go charging down the hill with mine to King's Cross and the train to Newcastle, ready to record the album-in-a-nutshell (I have four hours)
Will I succeed?
Watch this space!