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

^^This!! Thanks for bumping this thread, I need to check out their first 4 albums!

Listening again today and the "oooh, you wait a long time for me/ooooh, you wait a long time" section is, to me, one of music's greatest moments. Sublime, now and forever.

Kind of surprised this band never quite caught on (belatedly) as a hip touchstone. Beach Boys plus Queen bubblegum plus plus Sparks plus ... soft rock? Is it all just a little too much? Can imagine a lot of bands digging them, but can't imagine many bands sounding like them, or daring to try to sound like them.

Yep

They maybe dont have the personality to latch on to? Unlike Brian Wilson, Mercury, Mael, Fagen even?

To my mind, if you like The Raspberries you should give these guys a try. But maybe that is already a small subset to start with.

I have a pathological hatred of dreadlock holiday and it's affected my ability to like anything they ever did

that tune is truly vile. that that band, of all quasi colonialists fucking around with this "exotic" rhythm, made the worst british white guy reggae record is peculiar, although I despise "I shot the sheriff" more out of it being shoved down your throat for 40 years and…y'know…clapton.

I urge you and anyone else to fuck with the first five records, of which the last is just Stewart and Gouldman. Never had the inclination to go further…but yeah, steely Dan is probably an apt comparison…

There's a vein of "Let's laugh at other cultures" running through their work that is very 70's Britain and fairly unpleasant... great band though!

Check out "Don't hang up" from "How Dare You", it's 10cc in a nutshell, there's great music and poignancy in places, but a whole chunk of comedy wackiness spread on the top like too much nutella.

Interesting. The more I listen, the more I hear Steely Dan, sure, and I guess Randy Newman, at least in spirit (both of them). But they sort of lack the grasp of irony that Randy Newman mastered, and are more on the nose than Steely Dan, which can teeter toward the ... smug? Lots to enjoy, though.

http://www.mdmarchive.co.uk/gfx/400-6772.jpg

feel like the tagline/pun would make more sense with a photo of Creme holding a pint of Boddingtons- did they ask Lol Creme, but he turned then down? did they think that Godley was more recognisable? or is it meant to work as a visual pun (Godley and 'Cream')?

I mean Creme is the Creme of Manchester but Godley would be the Godley of Manchester, surely?

probably spent 7 hrs trying to bash out a pun on 10cc, then thought fuck it, creme of manchester, job's a good un

I went on a big Graham Gouldman kick recently, finding his various songwriting credits for Herman's Hermits etc. The 10CC wiki entry on their various studio projects, like recording "Sausalito," credited to The Ohio Express, is really interesting.

In which case, don't forget "Man from Nazareth" by John Paul Jonas

(or "Jones" )

Not Jonas, Joans!

Damn spelling corrector.

had totally forgotten about this one song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1isRH9E9WAE

kinda catchy, kinda terrible, i didn't mind hearing it again though

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