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

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!

Blame Hipgnosis.

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

Absolutely, I was saying that more in comparing/collecting 10Ccc to/with Queen, who lacks that acid tongue.

Let's Laugh At Foreigners

Is there? I know there's "Dreadlock Holiday," but I always thought the narrator was the butt of the joke there, kind of like in a Randy Newman song, or "Safe European Home."

There's also "One Night in Paris" (making fun of the French and Americans), "Oh Effendi" (Arabs and Americans), "Hotel" (unspecified Third World cannibals and their Western victims), maybe "Baron Samedi"?

I think Godley and Creme were largely responsible for those.

I think their albums are kind of difficult and dense for your average American dan fan that buys mash up shirts on Etsy. The Original Soundtrack is so sick tho and every time I DJ and play Blackmail, a lot of youngins freak out and ask me what it is.

Anyone read this?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41jOme9WPZL._SX338_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Gonna suppose the reason sparks and 10cc aren't experiencing a breakout with the youth is that they lack an iconic character of a frontman and had one hit song in the US between the two of them

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 also a fair amount of 1970s misogyny in 10cc's lyrics that deserves to stay there, especially the stalker song 'Iceberg' on 'How Dare You'. Kevin Godley apparently wanted to make the lyrics even darker and scatological, but other band members disapproved. Eric Stewart said it was 'one of the songs that almost split the group', although the split wasn't far away by that point.

Kinda surprised Bon Iver Nation hasn't made its way into the 10cc back catalogue, via Gayngs' cover of "Cry" several years back.

I don’t really like or “get” this band except for “I’m not in love”. “the things we do for love” just sails past me. “Dreadlock holiday” yikes. They seem to have recorded lot of deliberately goofy stuff that’s not my cup of tea. I understand they did incredible things production/studio-wise. “I’m Mandy (fly me)” is pretty okay. I’d listen to an ilmer-compiled comp of fav cuts sans goofy stuff.

I feel with 10CC there are a lot of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” aesthetic choices that just seem bewildering when divorced of the context in which they made them. More so than Queen, who, when faced with the same issue, could at least go *bigger*/more anthemic

I feel with 10CC there are a lot of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” aesthetic choices that just seem bewildering when divorced of the context in which they made them

So well put. Despite finding these guys pretty hard to get into, it helps a tiny bit if I think of them as related to broadly the same cultural moment that’s responsible for Kenny Everett or The Goodies. Which gels well with the presence of Peter Cook on Consequences I guess? Douglas Adams / HHG2G kind of in this space as well maybe? Also feel like Rupert Hine/Quantum Jump are related to this vibe.

I don't know that Godley or Creme would have been too pleased to be associated in people's minds with the Goodies tbh. Peter Cook, obviously. Kenny Everett, meanwhile, was still a slightly dangerous maverick at the time. Clever dickery in general though.

Ha yeh probably conflated a few thoughts there - Goodies sprang to mind because I watched a few episodes with my kids recently and was shocked at the degree of casual racism/sexism. Cue slightly flustered explanations about how the past is a foreign country (as it were).

Casual racism and sexism? That's just 70s UK in general.

Last 4 posts illustrate why these dudes never broke with hipster USA. Way too British!

They should do a post-brexit comeback now that we've fully wound the clock back 50 years. Plus they'd now be free to call themselves 0.34 fl oz.

As a young-un I thought that 10cc referred to some kind of engine or motor, and had assumed that the band trafficked in what was would later come to be known as "classic rock."

Speaking of 10cc, I just heard (or I should say, listened to) "Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel, and there are some striking similarities with "I'm Not In Love." Not just the electric piano, but also the vaguely Latin rhythm and, most conspicuously, the ghostly vocals droning in the background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STugQ0X1NoI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaA3YZ6QdJU

You aren't the only one:

Composer and music theory professor Thomas MacFarlane considered the resulting "ethereal voices" with distorted synthesized effects to be a major influence on Billy Joel's hit ballad "Just the Way You Are", released two years later.

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

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.

This is just next-level dickery.

I mean, that's Stewart's account, so it makes sense he'd remember it that way. Another account I've heard was that it was the other way around and that G&C were booted for doing Consequences on their own. Regardless, there aren't a lot of bands that can subsist as long as they did with four songwriters.

As for the comments upthread about their songs about foreigners, the funny accents and the like, I do get the sense that this was something of a mid-70s UK thing -- but it also feels to me as if most if not all of these pieces are poking fun at colonialism above all else. At least one of the transcriptions of the lyrics to Hotel I found online uses Uncle Remus/Br'er Rabbit-like spellings ("Can see, cross water, to de' mainland") for the first verse. That seems rather intentional.

Anyway, no, you could never get away with the *way* they do it today -- and I'm not doubting that there may be some actual racism in there as well. But the white people seem to be the punchline of almost all of these songs.

I seriously don't think they are.