btw, Castle Music (part of Sanctuary group now) recently released a compilation of the Gouldman-Stewart-Godley-Creme "hit factory" period called "Strawberry Bubblegum: A Collection of pre-10cc Strawberry Studios Recordings 1969-1972". It looks ace!
― zebedee (zebedee), Tuesday, 7 October 2003 15:56 (twenty years ago) link
Strawberry Bubblegum is a great idea in theory (it's something I've been going on about for years), but the final product is somehow unsatisfying. What we really need is a compilation of Graham Gouldman's beat-era recordings/compositions.
― harveyw (harveyw), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 07:00 (twenty years ago) link
Must say I'm a big fan of humorous 10cc stuff like "Donna", "The Wall Street Shuffle" and "The Dean and I", as well as the *staggeringly sublime* "I'm Not In love", of course. "Lazy Ways" is certainly another real favourite.
― Tom May (Tom May), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 01:28 (twenty years ago) link
Settle for "Freeze-Frame" instead (although Soulseek may be the only possible place to find Godley & Creme albums these days)
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 01:42 (twenty years ago) link
Not very well, but I gotta credit them for getting a major label to release what is basically a technical demonstration album for the Gizmo.
Consequences is a spectacular example of the old tradition where the songwriter(s) of a band leaves and then hoodwinks their record label into funding a completely bizarre and self-indulgent album that's PR-ed as being genius, but is really just bulldada. Treat it as a Zappa album only with Peter Cook/Goon fixations instead of Zappa's barnyard humor. If you're going to start with Godley/Creme, I'd go with L first. I believe it got reissued with Freeze Frame together on one CD, but I'd go to slsk first just so you know what you're getting into.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 03:47 (twenty years ago) link
― harveyw (harveyw), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 13:01 (twenty years ago) link
(BTW: I was thinking about you the other day when I noticed that one of the few good things about 'The Dreamers' was the snatch of Polnareff that drifts onto the soundtrack halfway through. They were playing it in the lobby before the film too.)
(This is Stevie T speaking, btw)
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 13:05 (twenty years ago) link
― harveyw (harveyw), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 13:12 (twenty years ago) link
I will be reading the LJ with keen interest.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 13:15 (twenty years ago) link
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 13:24 (twenty years ago) link
― LondonLee (LondonLee), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 13:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 20:25 (twenty years ago) link
Still waiting for the three 80s albums by 10cc to be re-released too, particularly "Ten Out Of Ten", which is IMO their best post-Godley/Creme album.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 21:41 (twenty years ago) link
mmm, i do suspect there's at least one more place - a very BIG "place", just east of the estonian border - where godley/creme albums, among other things, mightn't be particularly hard to find :)
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Thursday, 12 February 2004 00:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Ajamateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 03:34 (nineteen years ago) link
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 12:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 12:51 (nineteen years ago) link
"Mandy" was a continuation of the story started in "Clockwork Creep" on "Sheet Music".
I like their albums from "Sheet Music" to "How Dare You" the best. The debut contained a lot of great stuff, but there are a bit too many obvious novelties on the album for me to be able to take it fully seriously.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 16:58 (nineteen years ago) link
And as for I'm not in love, how beautiful is that after years of not hearing it?
― Daniel Giraffe (Daniel Giraffe), Thursday, 6 July 2006 11:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:12 (seventeen years ago) link
Great song, that, if only for the pretty amazing drum sound.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:26 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk (xheddy), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:30 (seventeen years ago) link
It was called Thinks: School Stinks. Alice Cooper may or may not have pinched an artwork idea from it.http://www.planetmellotron.com/images/hotlegs-thinks.jpg
― LC (Damian), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:55 (seventeen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 31 July 2006 22:59 (seventeen years ago) link
― chaki (chaki), Saturday, 10 February 2007 12:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― I Tried to Use My Cock as a Bong (noodle vague), Saturday, 10 February 2007 12:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― pisces (piscesx), Saturday, 10 February 2007 13:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― I Tried to Use My Cock as a Bong (noodle vague), Saturday, 10 February 2007 13:48 (seventeen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 10 February 2007 15:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― electricsound, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:45 (seventeen years ago) link
― electricsound, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:45 (seventeen years ago) link
― electricsound, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:58 (seventeen years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 19:06 (seventeen years ago) link
― chaki, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 19:46 (seventeen years ago) link
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 19:52 (seventeen years ago) link
― chaki, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 20:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― zaxxon25, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 20:28 (seventeen years ago) link
― everything, Friday, 2 March 2007 04:45 (seventeen years ago) link
― babedad, Saturday, 3 March 2007 10:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― pisces, Saturday, 3 March 2007 12:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― grebtesthit, Saturday, 3 March 2007 18:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:30 (seventeen years ago) link
― everything, Monday, 5 March 2007 22:21 (seventeen years ago) link
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 02:18 (seventeen years ago) link
every so often i find myself with an overwhelming desire to listen to 10cc. and every time i find myself thinking, jesus, they *really fucking were* that good. walking up the street earlier, blasting "rubber bullets" into my ear, was a moment of utter joy.
as with so, so many bands, i need to get more of their albums.
― grimly fiendish, Friday, 29 June 2007 14:30 (sixteen years ago) link
also: WTF with whoever it was above who doesn't understand/get/whatever "i'm mandy"? that song ROCKS my SOUL.
― grimly fiendish, Friday, 29 June 2007 14:42 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― ✖, Saturday, 9 October 2021 23:45 (two years ago) link
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.
― Portsmouth Bubblejet, Sunday, 10 October 2021 06:35 (two years ago) link
Kinda surprised Bon Iver Nation hasn't made its way into the 10cc back catalogue, via Gayngs' cover of "Cry" several years back.
― henry s, Sunday, 10 October 2021 14:35 (two years ago) link
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.
― brimstead, Sunday, 10 October 2021 17:01 (two years ago) link
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
― Buckfast in America (Master of Treacle), Sunday, 10 October 2021 17:40 (two years ago) link
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.
― lemmy incaution (emsworth), Sunday, 10 October 2021 22:16 (two years ago) link
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.
― Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 10 October 2021 22:31 (two years ago) link
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).
― lemmy incaution (emsworth), Monday, 11 October 2021 01:38 (two years ago) link
Casual racism and sexism? That's just 70s UK in general.
― Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Monday, 11 October 2021 07:03 (two years ago) link
Last 4 posts illustrate why these dudes never broke with hipster USA. Way too British!
― kurt schwitterz, Monday, 11 October 2021 07:27 (two years ago) link
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.
― primate marmite (NickB), Monday, 11 October 2021 07:40 (two years ago) link
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."
― henry s, Monday, 11 October 2021 12:33 (two years ago) link
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
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 25 October 2021 18:06 (two years ago) link
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.
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, 24 August 2022 17:09 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRce_GTksw
― Live and Left Eye (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 17 July 2023 21:13 (eleven months ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 02:44 (eleven months ago) link
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.
― Naive Teen Idol, Tuesday, 18 July 2023 14:29 (eleven months ago) link
I seriously don't think they are.
― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 14:33 (eleven months ago) link
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.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 18 July 2023 14:42 (eleven months ago) link
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".
― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 14:44 (eleven months ago) link
What sort of enlightened racial and cultural attitudes would one expect from a gang of US mercenary gun runners in the 70s?
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 18 July 2023 14:57 (eleven months ago) link
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.
― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 15:04 (eleven months ago) link
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."
― Vast Halo, Tuesday, 18 July 2023 16:39 (eleven months ago) link
Well, I just got back and I wish I'd never leave now
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 16:41 (eleven months ago) link
Each night in this thread...
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 18 July 2023 17:33 (eleven months ago) link
...could be your last
Americans are funny foreigners too remember.
― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 17:36 (eleven months ago) link
I try to pretend I'm Canadian.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 18 July 2023 17:36 (eleven months ago) link
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/
― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Saturday, 22 July 2023 14:29 (ten months ago) link
― Live and Left Eye (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 22 July 2023 17:27 (ten months ago) link
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.
― Portsmouth Bubblejet, Sunday, 23 July 2023 10:02 (ten months ago) link
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
― mark s, Sunday, 23 July 2023 10:31 (ten months ago) link
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.
― Portsmouth Bubblejet, Sunday, 23 July 2023 11:08 (ten months ago) link
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).
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 24 July 2023 01:04 (ten months ago) link
Seems like a lot of the songs on the Hotlegs album date from the Frabjous Days period.
― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Monday, 24 July 2023 06:48 (ten months ago) link