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

'im not in love' was surely a big hit stateside

ive only heard the album 'bloody tourists' (dreadlock holiday was on it) and it was dissapointing. i might pick up their greatest hits sometime if i see it for cheap.

god, i heard i'm not in love all the time when i was a kid. i certainly knew who they were in the 70's in the u.s. that and the things we do for love were huge on the radio.

i wonder what kind of station would have played 10cc. they don't seem like they really fit. i was born in 1974 and the earliest thing i ever remember hearing on the radio was eddie rabbit.

"i wanna rule the world" is like.. ambient techno ambient highway 61 style queen or something.

Amazing BBC doc online here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kn4q5/The_Record_Producers_10cc_6_Music_Producers_Cut/

Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart provided the entire package. Not only were they great musicians but they also wrote all their hits in various group combinations, produced their own recordings and, in Eric Stewart, had a built-in engineer. They also owned their own recording studio which made them a highly productive self-contained unit.

Featuring new interviews with all four band members and exclusive access to the original multi-track recordings of Donna, Wall Street Shuffle and I'm Not In Love.

This extended 6 Music Producer's Cut includes additional 10cc tracks and related music. Broadcast on:BBC 6 Music, 9:00pm Saturday 9th May 2009
Duration: 120 minutes

No, they were much better.

"Please install Real Player".

Fuck that noise.

maybe not so much of a "any american has heard them" band

Most Americans above a certain age have probably heard their two huge sellout hits "I'm Not In Love" and "The Things We Do For Love." Beyond that pair (and among younger Americans), maybe not, though.

(Ha ha, just looked up their chart positions and found out their third biggest U.S. hit -- only went to #40 -- was something called "People In Love." I can't even think of how that goes. And like their two top fives, it has the word "love" in its title.)

Actually, "Cry" would be their third biggest U.S. hit if it counts, and "Neanderthal Man" their fourth biggest.

Amazing BBC doc online here

AH DUDE thank you for sharing this link: I knew nothing about this. That's one to luxuriate in tomorrow.

"Please install Real Player".

Fuck that noise

WTF, you keeping it real with your Babbage Engine there or something?

"People In Love." I can't even think of how that goes

"People in love do funny things
walk under buses, um tum ti tum tum..."

Fascinating article about the recording of "I'm Not In Love" here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun05/articles/classictracks.htm

About recording the a cappella backing:

"Each note of a chromatic scale was sung 16 times, so we got 16 tracks of three people singing for each note. That was Kevin, Lol and GiGi standing around a valve Neumann U67 in the studio, singing 'Aahhh' for around three weeks. I'm telling you; three bloody weeks. We eventually had 48 voices for each note of the chromatic scale, and since there are 13 notes in the chromatic scale, this made a total of 624 voices. My next problem was how to get all that into the track.

"I mixed down 48 voices of each note of the chromatic scale from the 16-track to the Studer stereo machine to make a loop of each separate note, and then I bounced back these loops one at a time to a new piece of 16-track tape, and just kept them running for about seven minutes. Because we had people singing 'Aahhh' for a long time, there were slight tuning discrepancies that added a lovely flavour, like you get with a whole string section, with a lot of people playing. Some are not quite in time, some have slightly different tuning, but musically a lovely thing happens to that. It's a gorgeous sound. A very human sound, very warm and moving all the time."

as nice as this thread is, it is still SERIOUSLY lacking in worship and praise for the guitar sound(s) on silly love. and it sounds just as glorious live:

OK, the BBC doc is absolutely tremendous: thanks again for sharing, piscesx. I didn't realise it'd cover so much of Godley & Creme's later material, too (must go and revive that G&C thread) ... what, with that and the Sound on Sound article I can become the world's most tedious I'm Not In Love bore.

So basically, "Hotel" on Sheet Music (1974) sounds like Vampire Weekend, three and a half decades before the fact. (Lots of the album sounds too indie/twee to me, in retrospect. Convinced nothing much matches th side openers, "Wall Street Shuffle" and "Silly Love" -- well, maybe "The Worst Band In The World" I guess -- though feel free to try to convince me otherwise. Also guessing they liked Zappa a lot.)

hey who's drummer number 2 on that live clip?!

If only Vampire Weekend had had the same wonderfully slick and absolutely perfect production...

i don't think there is a rock band working today that has that production. and i wouldn't call it slick. it's hand-crafted and...words fail me. it's wonderful. i'm talking about the early stuff that chuck was listening to though. they did get much slicker. and great too, but in a different way.

massive desire to hear "Rubber Bullets" now need to find my LP...

So, maybe this is common knowledge, but it never occured to me before today that pretty much the entire (great) first side of 10cc's first self-titled album from 1973 is done as ironic but loving nostalgia for high school life in the '50s and early '60s, with music to match. "The Dean And I" is probably my favorite track on that side, but I swear I could imagine the Dictators doing "Sand In My Face" (only they'd do it a lot louder, of course.) Second side isn't as good but does include the album's (and probably the band's) best song in "Rubber Bullets," definitely the funniest fusion of rockabilly and proto-Eurodisco ever.

Also just noticed that they didn't chart in the States until Sheet Music in 1974 (which got to #81; debut didn't even hit #200.)

I did pull out and listen to "Rubber Bullets" like 4 times in a row after my post immediately above xhuxk's.

except I don't have the first album, I have it on this:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/102/271548150_cdd96c3906_m.jpg

The first album is great, but a bit too tongue-in-cheek for its own good maybe. Their golden age for me remains 1974-76 - all those three albums were absolutely awesome.
Then, they parted into two, and even though still making great music, the split was a disadvantage for both parts. Goldman and Stewart lost the creative x-factor and that the two others provided, whereas Godley & Creme were often just too weird, and didn't quite match Stewart and Goldman when it came to writing great pop songs.

My 100cc LP looks different than the one Stormy posted -- actually says 100cc Greatest Hits Of 10cc, released in 1975 on UK Records, but apparently only draws "hits" from their first two albums (making it one of the fastest best-ofs in history probably), since I guess they'd switched labels to Mercury, at least in the States. (My copy's a Brit import, which might explain the different cover.) Anyway, B-side is six useless outtakes -- what sounds like a back-to-the-land Neil Young tribute or parody ("Waterfall"), a quasi Clapton blues rock hack thing ("4% of Something"), some forgettable elevator music instros and a couple maybe goofier songs that aren't particularly catchy. Any reason I should keep hanging on to this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qXm4nzyev8

ok I never actually knew the dude's name was lol creme
I just thought that people thought he was funny
so when they typed his name they would just ad the word lol in front of it

LOL :D

love this thread title

"I'm Not In Love" is so frickin' uber-classic it's not even funny. Monster of a song, especially the "big boys don't cry" whispers in the middle.

I still reckon this one was their best ever moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUhjVWA2S8Y

2 weeks ago, due to hearing Cry and wanting more of the same, i had a real urge to pick up the three albums that have been reissued by mercury on cd (original soundtrack, deceptive bends, bloody tourists, how dare you).
i used to have soundtrack on tape, and have a vague memory of loving most of it.
as yet i've not acted upon this urge.

can't believe that in the almost-8-years since starting the thread i've never put up a link to the official promo for Don't Hang Up:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2pth8_10cc-dont-hang-up_music

still unsure why it even had an official promo. anyroad it beats many of the singles into a cocked hat.

Godley and Creme's late period was strange but wonderful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hjkXxHogPc

so, late last week, i was writing some things about the Oakland General Strike and what not and googled the term 'rubber bullets,' and 10cc came up, and i listened to it and was blown away, and then my australian housemate was like, "what, you mean you didn't know 'i'm not in love,' and then i was like OOOOOOHH SHIT THIS SONG. such a great band.

Anyone else like that Ramases "Space Hymns" album they played on / produced before they were actually 10cc?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuD9tT1qmxE

o'ye, i love the sweet bejeesus outta lots of those ramases songs!

I just received word that Hotlegs, the Godley/Creme featuring band just pre-10CC that had a random American hit via "Neanderthal Man," is getting a full reissue of their 1970-71 work. A quick google search led me to this amazingly detailed post about 'em -- anyone interested should give it a full read:

http://accelerateddecrepitude.blogspot.com/2011/12/hotlegs-thinks-school-stinks.html

And as for that reissue:

https://www.burningshed.com/store/progressive/product/99/4137/

huh, i dont know 10cc beyond the ubiquity of i'm not in love, the off-putting falseness of dreadlock holiday, and the straight corn/cheeze of things we do for love, but based on that exposure, i figured the correct usa equivalent would be h&o, not steely dan. i should probly check them out then, i guess.

Yup you should.

first EVER 10CC box set coming:

http://theseconddisc.com/2012/10/03/new-box-set-spotlights-10cc-and-the-things-they-did-for-love/#more-17145

10cc come together for the first time in 36 years to explain where it went wrong
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/22/10cc-tragedy-didnt-stay-together

Anyone check out the "Tenology" box set? I've just got a single disc best-of that I'm thinking of replacing, possible with the first 4 albums, possible with the box or the 3CD "Collected". Opinions?

much of it (not all of it though for some bizarre reason) is on Spotify http://open.spotify.com/album/37Iqxhq5QHYHhLn9kcAkHu

not interested really in the tenology box set.
i think just the 'classic' albums boxset thats just come out will suffice for me.
all being well, i hope to get a copy today
(hence todays need to listen to that other purveyor of high production excess ELO, and the Moody Blues)

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

I should really get some of their albums, really really.

^^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?