Review by Dan Backman published in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) on July 30th 2003.

CHIC performed at the Stockholm Jazz Festival on Tuesday night at 10:15 PM, July 29th 2003

INCREDIBLY GOOD WITH THE KING OF DISCO MUSIC

The smartest, most stylish and grooviest disco music the world has ever known was heard over Skeppsholmen (island) on tuesday when Chic performed with Nile Rodgers.
 
On Monday night Nile Rodgers walked around the festival area like an ordinary visitor. He ate hot dogs and listened to Roy Hargrove, like everybody else. A day later he's leading a band of whitedressed aliens onto the stage. They're all from Planet Disco. Their mission: to seduce our minds and bodies with the smartest, most stylish and grooviest disco music the world has ever known. An elegant and complex music aimed towards the intellectual sense just as well as the sexual.
 
This is their first ever visit to Sweden and, despite the fact that Swedish rock critics can't understand this, it is an event completely in parity with the recent visits by Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones. The Skeppsholmen (Jazz Festival) audience knows that Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards importance to black and white pop music can't be overrated and from the start the love flows to and from the stage. With the password "Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah" the floodgates open for a hedonistic dance music which in its manic exstatic relentlessness almost becomes shamanistic. It is incredibly good.
 
The track list is unbeatable. Excepting the overexposed 'We Are Family', which was written for Sister Sledge, the classicals line up; "Le Freak", "Dance, dance, dance", "I want your love", "Good Times". The fact that guitarist Nile Rodgers is the only one left from the good old days doesn't really matter. Of course his partner, bassplayer Bernard Edwards (who died in 1996) is missed, but his place is satisfactorily filled by Jerry Barnes. The best part is that the vocal performances work at least as well as before. The three singers do their vocal parts with precisely the accuracy and soulfulness which is required.
 
If you want to go looking for weaknesses, the band presentation is too long. This is music built on collective rather than individual performances, so why waste time on silly little solo's which doesn't come near jazz festival standard anyway? Yes, the collective also includes the audience; to clap your hands to the beat can often be a bit awkward, here it is a necessity. (translated by pocat)