10CC : they really *were* that good weren't they ?

true sound of home counties local radio, it's the '87 model fleet car sledgehammer

they have some good stuff and "i'm not in love" is one of the greatest recordings ever yep

yeah that Wax is better than most of the late-period 10CC

and not forgetting..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIRJYTTeAWk

"I'm Not in Love" is such a staggering, endlessly-replayable work of genius. I'm awe-struck every time I listen to it.

yes. this.

as indicated earlier, i picked up the classic album boxset, and, it's bloody brilliant.

this is excellent

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06r14pr/im-not-in-love-the-story-of-10cc

Yeah, watched it this morning.

Funny how the TOTP perfances all seem to survive. I reckon they had them all recorded for themselves.

Just saw said doc now with my girlfriend Kate -- great stuff.

Yes, they absolutely were!

Sheet Music > The Original Soundtrack > How Dare You! > 10cc > Deceptive Bends > Bloody Tourists >>> the rest.

So 7 years later im taking Ned’s advice, and incredibly glad for it. Really enjoying Sheet Music. The prevalence of hyper-flat american accents and intonations is disturbing as hell to my understanding of their identity. The crosscultural code switching thing is pretty arch, I guess? I dunno, it was not really part of my expectations. Was it just them or were all englishes doing this and i just didn't notice?

Have you never heard rock music before?

lol theres a dif between what limey rock myoosishuns sing like and what creme is doing there- he’s ~convincing~

He's a talented fellow! And he only sings lead on three of the songs.

Top Gear's Richard Hammond always looked like Lol Creme having a petrol-induced mid-life crisis.

yup i was tryna josh you- i have no idea who’s doing the vox, song to song yet, i’m am def trying to get informed. but first, listening.

If you’re really into 10CC the Consequences Podcast is about the greatest thing going:

https://consequences.podbean.com/

It began as a multipart deep dive into G&C’s recently reissued epic but the album-by-album breakdowns of the 10CC albums proper since—with an entire episode dedicated to “I’m Not in Love”—are equally fabulous.

What a voice Kevin Godley had. Now that guy could sing.

Ok, the eras are different, so the palettes are different, but the band that 10cc reminds me of on Sheet Music, in terms of WHAT they’re doing, and the spirit and ability with which they do it (though not HOW they sound), is RATW Super Furry Animals. Which is a real favorite.

Woah Naive that podcast sounds great.

What a voice Kevin Godley had. Now that guy could sing.

― The Inner Mounting Phlegm (Tom D.), Sunday, September 15, 2019 10:58 AM bookmarkflaglink

I mean it's in his name

Woah Naive that podcast sounds great.

Im trying to revive my life so im distracted, but i’m stoked to listen when i get round.

But for now, endless sheet music is inspiring as hell.

Thanks, this is an excellent set of podcasts with an great eye for production detail. It's very much been put together by fans of Consequences though, so they rate the quirkier side of 10CC higher than I would.

I also don't share the love for How Dare You?, with the obvious exception of the album's singles.

Didn't realise until I listened to the Consequences podcast that, after the recording of How Dare You!, Godley, Creme & Gouldman called a band meeting at which the group's manager informed Eric Stewart that the trio no longer wanted to work with him. Godley & Creme then decided to strike out on their own to record Consequences, at which point Gouldman had to go back to Stewart and ask to work with him again as 10CC. This is according to Eric Stewart's autobiography Things I Do For Love.

The incident helps to explain why Stewart and Gouldman started to drift apart so soon after the first couple of albums recorded by the rump 10CC. There couldn't have been much trust left on Stewart's side after that. Can't imagine too how Godley & Creme sat through the band meeting at which Stewart was ejected knowing that they were going to be working as a duo anyway on Consequences.

Help me out here (or maybe not )... I've always adored what were their big singles in the US : "I'm Not In Love" and "The Things We Do For Love" but listened to a Greates t Hits collection and found them overall too... jokey? Was this just their overall schtick or am I missing something?

No, they were pretty jokey.

Agreed. I haven't listened to 10CC's albums since I was in my early teens, and they now very much come across as a band whose humour you would appreciate more at that stage of one's life than in your later years. The Zappa influences seem stronger in retrospect, as do some of the dodgier aspects of 1970s British humour - clumsy foreign accents and stereotypes on 'Hotel' and 'Oh Effendi', for example, and a nasty Yewtree vibe on 'Iceberg' (whose lyrics, according to the podcast, Godley wanted to be even more stalkerish and scatological).

10CC had the same combination of 1950s references and art school pretensions as Roxy Music, but Roxy would never have written a closing song to an album such as 'The Film of my Love', which sounds like an over-extended outro to a Monty Python film, while 10CC could never have written a song such as 'In Every Dream Home a Heartache' without inserting at least one mildly humorous middle eight that pastiches an entirely different musical genre to deflate the mood.

Is the Godley & Creme stuff just as jokey - I only know "Cry" - or is the goofiness absent?

I associate the jokiness and slightly sneery humour more with Godley and Creme than Gouldman and Stewart tbh.

clumsy foreign accents and stereotypes on 'Hotel' and 'Oh Effendi'

... "Une Nuit a Paris", "Dreadlock Holiday".

Godley & Creme were almost 100% responsible for the group's goofiness, and their post-10CC albums as a duo are full of it.

Having quit 10CC in part because they had grown tired of Stewart's more saccharine songs such as 'The Things we do for Love', Godley and Creme are ironically most remembered for songs such as 'Cry', which you could imagine them having rejected if Gouldman & Stewart had written it in 10CC. Probably the best track on their Consequences triple album is also the most straightforward ballad 'Five o'clock in the morning'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-3z2FdJXSo

Thank you kindly!

xhuxk and Stormy's favorite 10CC song and probably mine as well, is a jokey rewrite of "Jailhouse Rock" that Nick Lowe might have been proud to have written:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dTnvhGHDGA

ha my 15 y/o loves loves what he understands as rockabilly and jump blues and 50s stuff generally, and also he loves rubber bullets, so i asked “you get that’s a sendup mostly of jailhouse rock, right?” and i was glad he said- “of course it’s obv,” so there’s that. aaaand then he goes back to extolling fats domino, dion, and brian setzer but also as tho they were all contemporaries. which is probly no less accurate than my 50 y/o history of rock so whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhjl6kibE_s

Been listening to the first two albums a lot recently.

(xp) That's one of the geekiest things you're ever likely to see. It's great how they don't remember recording it at all!

quite telling that Graham and Kev cooperate, and that Eric and Lol don't; Eric particularly loathes Graham for continuing the 10cc brand… it is exciting to hear the track broken down…

Kevin's got a solo album to promote and Graham Gouldman just seems like a really nice guy.

Don't want to tell you how far I was into the video before I realized that "The Great Stockport Bake-off" is not the title of a previously unreleased 10CC song.

Yeah, I heard Graham Gouldman on one of the Finders Keepers radio show things, an amiable bloke certainly.

I'm revisiting 10cc lately...and discovered Dee Dee Sharp rescued "I'm Not in Love" from narcolepsy along with Gamble and Huff.

Really brings out the polish. How did I miss this? It's stunning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNg3RQRTgiQ

Also good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfXkNOdlVxM

Woah

From the Strawberry archive, a previously-unheard full version of an early mix of 10cc's I'm Not In Love. What genius to have realised that less was more for the final version! Thanks to @SeanMMedia for baking the tape and transferring the sound https://t.co/CNs8fYFq3v pic.twitter.com/wETpsXlUjX

— Strawberry Studios (@StrawberryNorth) August 3, 2021

I'm kind of shocked that 10cc has yet to become, to coin a phrase, a hip musical crush.

Are any of the young people learning about Queen these days also exploring similar acts like 10cc, or Sparks? All these guys need is a biopic called Une Nuit À Paris and the revival will be started.

Sparks had a 2hr 15 doco released internationally in multiplexes this year

Right, I'm not saying Sparks are neglected now, but I'm wondering whether the specific audience that is discovering Queen are listening to other groups that were popular enough to be seen as rivals at the time. I mean, I suspect that even most of the people today who stream "I'm Not in Love" are not going to go on to listen to a second 10cc song; there's only a limited amount of public attention available.
I suspect one thing that could prevent 10cc from being seen as hip today is that their image and artwork were pretty dreary even by mid-70s standards.

Also, unlike Queen (but like Sparks, and Steely Dan) there is a real smartass/snide/acidic/satirical quality to a lot of the lyrics that some might find oft-putting, or less accessible.

Maybe, although hasn't that lyrical aspect has been part of the appeal in the Sparks and Dan revival?

The band might have been dreary to look at but I wouldn't say their artwork was? I think I said it before itt but there's a lot of Let's Laugh At Foreigners And Their Funny Ways stuff going on in their work, which seems very UK in the 70s and probably deserves to stay there.

There's a quote from Gouldman or Stewart: "we had two arts students in the band, so why were our sleeves always such crap?"

Let's Laugh At Foreigners

Surely appropriate in the age of Brexit!