“ Official Charts: Are you surprised how influential your music and disco has become – especially when there was such a backlash against disco in the late ’70s. Under the “disco sucks” campaign, people even came together to make bonfires out of disco albums.

Nile Rodgers: “I’m completely surprised. I was surprised when they said that it sucked. I was so shocked that you could demonise an entire category of music like that. Of course there’s formulaic music in every genre. Are you telling me that when the ‘hair bands’ dominated rock and roll, that that wasn’t totally formulaic?

“Every genre has that type of thing, but with disco it was so vitriolic and hate-filled, it was shocking to me. I was like, ‘guys, this is music, this is art’. You don’t have to like it, that’s the whole point. Everyone has a different opinion. It seemed to me so racially motivated, so politically motivated, it was well beyond the music because I can guarantee you those people who were burning those records, they were guilty pleasures - half of them had to have them in the first place. They didn’t go and buy them to burn them. They had them at home.”

Official Charts: Does the fact that you music continues to be sampled today illustrate just how important the music you were making all those years ago was?

Nile Rodgers: “Not only did it feel important to us at the time we were doing, it felt vital. We couldn’t live without what we were doing. We were drawn to the disco movement because it was open and inclusive. We were basically jazz fusion, R&B funk guys that had morphed into that because we were a rock band when we first started - but we couldn’t get a record deal because we were black. So we went into the jazz fusion area, because we thought that would be a little bit more open. But we still couldn’t get a record deal.

“Then when we started playing dance music, the very next thing we did made a lot of noise and netted us a record which went to Number 4 on the pop charts, so we went from complete obscurity to a Number 4 pop record.””

— Nile Rodgers: “Get Lucky is more special for me than any other Number 1”

May 23 2013 4 notes

This is the full set that Zest of Yore performed during this year’s edition of “Escapes,” a series of unofficial SXSW shows.

Songs: “Rock and Roll Times Two,” “Back to Ash,” “In Shades,” “A Decade for the Queen,” and “I’ll Do the Thinking”

Members: Stephen Pierce (vocals & guitar), Sean Padilla (bass & vocals), and Alan Lauer (drums)

Filmed by Alexandria Tarver!