10cc - Where should I start?

the production on The Original Soundtrack is so sick. that muffled heart beat kick drum on "I'm Not in Love". the buzzy tremelo of "Blackmail" which sounds like a Devo-Spark collab.

Devo-Sparks

"I'm Not in Love" wasn't taken seriously by most of the band at first. they thought it was a nothing of a song and happened to remake it in order to experiment with the poly vocal technique.

Stewart spent three weeks recording Gouldman, Godley and Creme singing "ahhh" 16 times for each note of the chromatic scale, building up a "choir" of 48 voices for each note of the scale. The main problem facing the band was how to keep the vocal notes going for an infinite length of time, but Creme suggested that they could get around this issue by using tape loops. Stewart created loops of about 12 feet in length by feeding the loop at one end though the tape heads of the stereo recorder in the studio, and at the other end through a capstan roller fixed to the top of a microphone stand, and tensioned the tape. By creating long loops the 'blip' caused by the splice in each tape loop could be drowned out by the rest of the backing track, providing that the blips in each loop did not coincide with each other. Having created twelve tape loops for each of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, Stewart played each loop through a separate channel of the mixing desk. This effectively turned the mixing desk into a musical instrument complete with all the notes of the chromatic scale, which the four members together then "played", fading up three or four channels at a time to create "chords" for the song's melody. Stewart had put gaffer's tape across the bottom of each channel, which meant it was impossible to completely fade down the tracks for each note; this resulted in the constant background hiss of vocals heard throughout the song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Not_in_Love#Recording

now that background hiss fuck up - that error - is largely responsible for this song having an incredibly magical nostalgic sound to it that has made it a global hit 40 years on.

it's important to fail in art. look at what they created from that failure.

the production on this record is sooooo good. those arrangements. they have so many tracks going on at once and yet it's very dynamic and you can make everything out.

adam, have you read this? https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-10cc-not-love

start with the Tori cover of I'm Not In Love

Jeez, I never heard that version before, very cool. Kudos to her for her song selection on "Strange Little Girls", too!

thanks for posting that article, that was a great read!

someday im going to have to put myself into debt and get a U67 tube mic. the second that came up i was like, oh shit, they had the secret weapon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtnqZj76H4E

I got 100cc as a kid. I had no idea who they were. At first, I thought they were too soft, but they really grew on me.

Is that Steve Lukather on guitar?

Okay, I can live with the studio version of “Dreadlock Holiday” even though it is no “Safe European Home,” but that live version really highlights its awfulness.

Vintage TV used to show the Graham Gouldman version of 10cc doing DH live in a small Swansea venue, everyone seated and still, the band similarly motionless and inert. Then in the coda Graham changes it briefly it to "I don't like Swansea, I love it" to, say, two or three very muted squeals in the audience. Bless.

Graham stretching the bounds of credibility there.

Why would the guy who wrote For Your Love, No Milk Today and Look Through Any Window choose Dreadlock Holiday as his showcase number?

I guess it's the only 10cc hit he sang.