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

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.

The westerners in "Oh Effendi", at least, are also specifically Americans (which is why the music is quasi-Southern rock), and they're definitely included in the satire. Also "Hotel" has musical elements that echo the 30s and 40s, so in many ways it's a parody of the xenophobic attitudes of those eras, and the films of the times. Also a song like "Punchbag" on L shows that Godley and Creme were recipients of racist attacks and sensitive towards the issue.

I had always heard the story that Godley and Creme were ostracized from the other two as a consequence of planning their own album. I have trouble imagining Gouldman deciding he had more in common with those two rather than Stewart, or unilaterally deciding, once they were a trio, that they couldn't return to the group.

OK so "Oh Effendi" is (I assume) about westerners desperate to make deals with Arabs for oil. But it manages to mention white slave girls, harems, turbans (Arabs don't wear turbans) and also finds time to refer to the French as "frogs".

What sort of enlightened racial and cultural attitudes would one expect from a gang of US mercenary gun runners in the 70s?

Having their cake and eating it I'd call it, lampooning uncultured American assholes (it's never British arseholes you'll note) while getting to slip in a few funnies about Arabs etc.

If it was only one song too...

I do get the sense that this was something of a mid-70s UK thing

I agree. The turn the thread has taken reminded me of the episode of Rising Damp that opens with Leonard Rossiter returning from his holiday in Spain, wearing a sombrero and glumly shaking a pair of maracas. His lodger asks him, "How was the food?" "Greasy." "And the people?" "The same."

Well, I just got back and I wish I'd never leave now

Each night in this thread...

...could be your last

Americans are funny foreigners too remember.

I try to pretend I'm Canadian.

A few years ago we had a compilation of the pre-10cc bubblegum material - a period memorably (and pretty accurately) described as "a load of crap" by Kevin Godley - but this looks more interesting...

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/godley-creme-frabjous-days-the-secret-world-of-godley-creme-1967-1969/

Well, I just got back and I wish I'd never leave now

I mean, that's Stewart's account, so it makes sense he'd remember it that way.

10cc manager Harvey Lisberg confirmed in an interview for the Consequences podcast (about 18 minutes in) that Eric Stewart was summoned to Manchester and told that Godley, Creme and Gouldman didn't want to work with him any more. Godley and Creme were unhappy not only that the group's music was becoming blander, but also with Stewart's dictatorial approach to studio production and engineering.

They resented the fact that their work was being produced in a certain way. They wanted the freedom to do it their way, instead of having to argue every minute. So, obviously, they pinpointed Eric - from their point of view, they wanted to get away from that. Graham was stuck in the middle of the deep blue sea, and I think... Graham was in an impossible position, because Kev and Lol definitely wanted to leave, and the question was "Do they carry on as 10cc with the three of them? How does it work?" But the reality was Kev and Lol wanted to do their thing, they wanted to do Consequences, and they wanted to be free.

Lisberg also suggested that, if Gouldman had stayed on the Consequences project, he "would have also been controlling them (Godley and Creme) to a degree, probably in deciding whether they would have done a single album", as opposed to the triple LP that emerged.

in the bbc doc lol (lol) describes consequences as a heaven's gate* project, and hints that here was a symptomatic ballooning that a better managing of band politics (by everyone) might have mitigated

*= the 5 and a half hour cimino western that destroyed united artists at the start of the 80s: i don't think you cite it as a comparison -- even as a joking drive-by -- to induce a positive response

Yeah, Gouldman and Godley both think now that they should have just put the band on hold for a year to allow Consequences to be recorded and then reconvene afterwards.

As for 10cc trying to continue as a trio after Stewart had been removed: Gouldman said in another interview on the Consequences podcast (about 1hr 17 minutes in) that he had not been 'part of the initial Consequences team,' as had been suggested in Godley and Stewart's books.

I don't think it was going to be a three-man team, I think Kevin and Lol just wanted me to play on the album. I remember doing some stuff right at the beginning. Their sessions would start at sort of 10 at night and go on until 6 in the morning. I didn't like that at all. And I just sort of eventually drifted away from it.

So at some point Gouldman must have gone back to Stewart, who he'd just co-ejected from 10cc, and suggested that they carry on with 10cc after Godley and Creme had formally left. Can't imagine how that conversation went, although Gouldman said that he and Stewart were both 'on a mission' with Deceptive Bends to prove that they could deliver as a duo.

Thanks for that info, it sounds like everyone has their own perspective on the break-up.

I was curious about the Frabjous Days compilation, although the Hotlegs album from 1971 doesn't encourage my hopes: it has a fair amount of decent music, but not a lot of 10cc's specific virtues (the lyrics, in particular, are vague or self-consciously dumb).