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| It's KC...! |
KC & the Sunshine Band has earned lifetime worldwide album sales well past the 100 million mark and secured #1 hit smashes with “That’s the Way (I Like It),” “Get Down Tonight,” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” as well as numerous signature songs like “I’m Your Boogie Man,” “Boogie Shoes,” “Keep It Comin’ Love,” “Please Don’t Go” and more...
The band is celebrating 40 years by going on tour both across the country and internationally. Oh and they have some new music out, hit it KC!
MS: Hey KC, it's funny I was watching one of my favorite shows last night, "Scandal" and you had a song on there last night.
KC: What song?
MS: "Get Down Tonight" I thought well isn't that ironic, I am speaking with him tomorrow.
KC: A little haunting there, wasn't it? (laughs)
MS: You've had a 40 year career which is pretty amazing!
KC: That is pretty killer! The fact that I'm still alive, too!
MS: Part of that has to do with your knowledge of how the music business works, you started out doing a internship in the biz.
KC: I surrounded myself with something I loved. When I worked in record distribution I was able to know exactly what was coming out on the radio before it was even promoted.
MS: Well it worked in your favor, your videos on YouTube have millions of hits.
KC: That's pretty crazy, right?
MS: I had an album with some of your music on it when I was growing up.
KC: Oh, was that one of those K-Tel compilations?
MS: Yes! It was K-Tel.
KC: There's a company called Now 100 that does the same thing currently.
MS: I've never heard of them, but my knowledge of current music is limited. I lean more towards alternative music.
KC: My musical taste is R & B, unfortunately I think music froze my taste for me on that. It seems like it's coming back around, but I don't think it will ever be like those great R & B records from the 60's & 70's, ya know.
MS: Ike & Tina Turner were my favorites from that era, their stuff was amazing!
KC: They were incredible. I grew up with all the Mowtown stuff, Atlantic Records, you know, with The Drifters and Aretha Franklin....God all that great music.
MS: Let's address what being in the music business for 40 years has been like for you, what kind of a ride has it been?
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| Get Down Tonight |
KC: Well, you know, it has been exciting! There have been some ups and downs, some of them were calculated, well all of it has been I made all or the decisions and did what I wanted to do. In the beginning it was very lonely for me and also very exciting. I was very saddened to find out how political the business was, I knew that going in, but I did not realize it was as political to the extreme that it is. It was disheartening and kind of took the bang out of the whole thing...that was the 70's.
In the 80's after my last hit with "Give It Up" I kind of retired and partied up until '93 - '95, until I went into drug rehab. During that part of my career I didn't want to have a career, I didn't want to be told what to do anymore...how to do it, when to smile, when not to smile, when to be happy, when not to be happy, I didn't want to have to worry about making a record or dealing with lawyers and agents, managers or anything. I just shut down and partied, I wanted to get back to the reality of life, which was who I was, all that sort of thing.
Then in the 90's Arenio Hall wanted to see a reunion of the band. I did a reunion show and realized: "Wow, dude this is what you really love to do". So I started booking shows and started doing it again, but in '93 I was still on the drug thing, I had to make a choice do I go back to my career or keep partying? I chose my career.
I've been performing again for the last ten years doing all these shows and stuff. It's taken me thirty to forty years of the last ten years to realize "I'm KC of KC and the Sunshine Band" number one, number two to understand everything that happened to me and be comfortable with it. Most importantly to go with the flow more and stop fighting everything.
MS: Oh, I get that.
KC: Understanding being KC and having my life outside of that.
MS: The down time can be weird, you kind of feel like you should be on all the time.
KC: Right!
MS: Let's talk about your song "I Can't Get You Out of My Mind".
KC: My manager suggested I get in touch with Bimbo Jones - their DJ's in Europe, who've done remixes for Madonna, Lady Gaga...you name it. I met with them, they sent me this track and nothing clicked. So I went on tour and then went on Holiday, so a year later I contacted them about working on the track, I was procrastinating, I don't really know why I was doing that. So I put that track on and listened to it, and all of the sudden, boom! The melody was there, the word were there, the title was there! Everything just started happening like crazy, insane I had no control over it, I went in the studio and did the vocal, pretty much within an hour.
Right now we are getting a lot of remixes of the song, from the song an album has started happening as well, that has evolved into two albums now. (laughs)
MS: The one thing I found interesting about revisiting your music that I did not notice growing up was, how much of an actual R&B artist you are. All I heard then was disco.
KC: I just did what was natural to me.
"Shake Your Booty" with KC at:
http://www.heykcsb.com/
