No one will ever confuse Harry Casey’s lyrics with Yeats—or Frost for that matter.But that was never the point of the music of KC and the Sunshine Band. This 1970s disco-funk band was always about escapism to a persistent beat.
I recently attended a KC and the Sunshine Band concert in Rockford, a welcome diversion from unsettling times. While the experience brought many of us back to junior high days, I couldn’t help but notice that the band wasn’t stuck in the ’70s.
Instead of playing the tunes exactly like the original album cuts, Nyne—KC’s incredibly talented musical director—took a different approach. The introductions and bridges of the songs were often improvisational, bringing in elements of funk, rock, and hip-hop. Yes, the original choruses were still there, satisfying the mostly well-seasoned audience.
It was to their credit that the band stretched themselves—the eager fans probably would have settled for a note-by-note recitation. Always a diverse group, the band combined skilled musicianship with Casey’s self-deprecating humor and surprisingly agile vocals and dance moves.
In an era when some Americans long for the past and others want to focus solely on the present, KC and the Sunshine Band gets it right. Keep those aspects of the past that worked, but be open to the new ideas of the present. That’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.
I’m Lori Drummond-Cherniwchan and that’s my perspective.
