Character Building Exercises Dept.

That Nile Rodgers interview, man. So much to mine out.

In the old days, Rodgers said, "we have to overcome all of those [technical] problems that the equiment gave us, and the net benefit of overcoming all of those variables was an artistic statements in and of itself."

This is a slice of something from that interview I've chomped out before — the idea that, as Nile put it, "the old restrictions in technology forced us to do things right." There's a danger to romanticizing that idea — just be...