10cc: Live And Let Live

10CC: LIVE AND LET LIVE (1977)

1) The Second Sitting For The Last Supper; 2) You've Got A Cold; 3) Honeymoon With B Troup; 4) Art For Art's Sake; 5) People In Love; 6) Wall Street Shuffle; 7) Ships Don't Disappear In The Night; 8) I'm Mandy Fly Me; 9) Marriage Bureau Rendezvous; 10) Good Morning Judge; 11) Feel The Benefit; 12) The Things We Do For Love; 13) Waterfall; 14) I'm Not In Love; 15) Modern Man Blues.

For some reason, 10cc never got around to releasing a live album while still in their prime — not that, being a «pop» band by definition, they should have felt as obliged to do it as their colleagues in the heavy rock and prog rock departments. But with Godley and Creme out of the band, Stewart and Gouldman may have sensed a need for proving that «10cc still exists!» in as many ways as humanly possible — and so, with Deceptive Bends only six months away, they hurried­ly followed it up with a sprawling double LP of live recordings, made in June-July 1977 in London and Manchester. Another possible goal was to flaunt their newly reassembled band, showcasing Rick Fenn (who gets a bass solo on ʽFeel The Benefitʼ), new keyboardist Tony O'Malley, and no less than two different percussionists.

Unfortunately, even in their prime 10cc were not a particularly great band to enjoy outside of the studio — and in 1977, the only reason to buy this live album was to show financial support for the band. Deprived of contributions by its weirdest, riskiest members, the 10cc setlist was now al­most exclusively limited to Stewart/Gouldman material, which, of course, had plenty of winners, but this also means that Deceptive Bends is reproduced here almost in its entirety, so you are basically buying the same album twice — and it's not as if the live renditions had anything to prove that was not already proven in the studio.

Other than that, ʽShips Don't Disappear In The Nightʼ is stretched out to unreasonable limits with the addition of a slowed down part; ʽArt For Art's Sakeʼ is stretched out to include a jamming part at the end, with a passable, melodic, but rather out-of-place solo from Eric; and ʽWaterfallʼ fares better, since its desperate romanticism is perfectly compatible with guitar heroics — so Stewart adds an epic solo built along the same lines as Jimmy Page's solo on ʽStairway To Heavenʼ (in fact, one might actually state that they are trying to transform ʽWaterfallʼ into their own private ʽStairwayʼ). All in all, Stewart's guitar playing skills is more or less the only thing that distingui­shes these songs from their studio counterparts — and they are not nearly as unique or inventive as should be required to make Live And Let Live into a lead guitar lover's wet dream.

Nevertheless, the album still sold well, reflecting 10cc's general level of fame and prosperity: with Deceptive Bends still showing traces of the classic spirit, Stewart and Gouldman were only on the verge of squandering the band's artistic reputation, and the power and the glory of their hit singles still rang out loud and clear — enough to make people buy even something that nobody really needed. Besides, most of the songs are so good, why not buy them twice anyway?..

10cc: Live In Japan

LIVE IN JAPAN (1993)

1) The Wall Street Shuffle; 2) I'm Mandy, Fly Me; 3) Good Morning Judge; 4) Welcome To Paradise; 5) Things We Do For Love; 6) Across The Universe; 7) The Stars Didn't Show; 8) Art For Art's Sake; 9) Feel The Benefit; 10) Dreadlock Holiday; 11) I'm Not In Love; 12) Bullets Medley.

Originally released as simply Alive, with a slightly extended setlist (including cover versions of 'Paperback Writer' and even 'Slow Down'), but today more easily found as Live In Japan or Best Of Live or, perhaps, under a further extra dozen titles, and with fewer tracks. Not that it makes any difference: there is no reason whatsoever even for major fans to own this album.

It does, I suppose, present a relatively faithful picture of 10cc's live power circa the early 1990s: golden oldies mixed in with recent material, performed with enough professionalism and energy to justify the ticket price. But if the old-time 10cc at least bothered to make their immaculately polished studio stuff acquire extra vivaciousness, at the expense of neutralizing some of the hooks but with the added benefit of genuine rocking-out, this late-period 10cc is, in all respects, stiffer than a stiff. 'Art For Art's Sake' is the only track on which the band dares to jam a little towards the end, with Stewart churning out a solid extra guitar solo. Everything else is just scared shitless of adding something to or detracting something from the originals, no matter how fresh or how bearded those are — even to the extent of wiping out most of the audience noises, a technique that is very rarely encountered. We've all heard of "false live albums" with overdubbed applause, but how often do we hear of true live albums with suppressed applause?

A particular sign of bad taste is when the bad songs — like 'Welcome To Paradise' — are given all the necessary time to further ingrain their badness in us, but the great songs — like 'Rubber Bullets', 'Silly Love', and 'Life Is A Minestrone' — are crammed together into a medley, as if the people at the show actually bought tickets to hear 'there's a coup coming on, there's a coup co­ming on'. Of course, they do faithfully run through their biggest commercial hits — 'Good Mor­ning Judge', 'Dreadlock Holiday', and a further adult-contemporarified 'I'm Not In Love' — but none of that is particularly adventurous either.

Thumbs down, of course, primarily from the brain that is justified in seeing no reason for the record's existence, although that does not mean these are technically "poor" performances or that the setlist isn't mostly consisting of great material (I certainly could do without the over-emotive cover of 'Across The Universe', and I have little reason to believe that their 'Paperback Writer' is a threat to Paul McCartney's stature in any way possible, either). If it's your only chance to get to know 10cc, there's no reason to turn it down, but it destroys my brain to even attempt to imagine that kind of real life situation.

10cc: Mirror Mirror

10CC: MIRROR MIRROR (1995)

1) Yvonne's The One; 2) Code Of Silence; 3) Blue Bird; 4) Age Of Consent; 5) Take This Woman; 6) The Monkey And The Onion; 7) Everything Is Not Enough; 8) Ready To Go Home; 9) Grow Old With Me; 10) Margo Wants The Mustard; 11) Peace In Our Time; 12) Why Did I Break Your Heart; 13) Now You're Gone; 14) I'm Not In Love.

At least this one does not pretend to be a "reunion", but that's hardly a sufficient excuse for the album's predictable weakness. If ...Meanwhile was made somewhat marginally acceptable with the aid of one or two strong melodies ('Woman In Love') and relaxed party atmosphere on its barroom rock numbers, then Mirror Mirror plunges the listener back into the stale waters of adult contemporary head-on.

The best I can say is that Stewart is jumping over twenty-feet high fences, trying at all costs to emulate the melodicity of Paul McCartney, as if their 1985 collaboration on Press To Play was the most important event of his life, deserving to be waxed nostalgic about every time he crosses the threshold of a recording studio again. 'Yvonne's The One', the opening number, is, in fact, a ten-year old outtake from those sessions, and Paul even drops by to play rhythm guitar on it, which never saves the song from being completely pedestrian and forgettable (well, it's hard to expect anything other from an outtake for the sessions for McCartney's worst album). And 'Blue Bird' is not a cover of the McCartney song, but it sounds eerily like a fifty-fifty cross between McCartney and Justin Hayward (also, by the way, one of Eric's good friends — coincidence? may­be not, although why is the track credited exclusively to Gouldman, I wonder?); so eerily, in fact, that I am completely unable to judge it on its own, and the most that it gets me is a nagging desire to relisten to my Moody Blues collection.

I can't say that Mirror Mirror is not melodic; that would be a direct lie. But these aren't melo­dies that one should live or die for, and certainly not when they're used to convey straight-faced, deadly serious sentimentality ('Code Of Silence', one of the most revolting songs about broken relationships I've ever heard from a formerly good artist; 'Grow Old With Me' — much worse than the Lennon song of the same name; 'Why Did I Break Your Heart' — yuck) with the help of synthesizer arrangements that, by 1995, were already considered the epitome of cheesiness by just about everyone who wasn't a ten-year old ten years before that. Another heavy blow is that barroom rock is out, and in its place they reinstate their bland reggae and calypso schtick ('Take This Woman', 'Margo Wants The Mustard', etc.). And as a final insult, the record includes a re­working of 'I'm Not In Love' (some editions include two different reworkings of 'I'm Not In Love'!) that dares to suggest their limp adult contemporary of 1995 somehow owes something to their masterpiece of 1975!

On second thought, it does owe something, but it just goes to show you what twenty years of taste deterioration can do to one's creativity. Thumbs down; a most ignoble end to a formerly brilliant career — at least no one seems to have noticed, because for most people 10cc had already died a quiet death at least twelve or fifteen years ago, and only a few unfortunates (like record reviewers) are forced to see these old ghosts.

10cc: ...Meanwhile

10CC: ...MEANWHILE (1992)

1) Woman In Love; 2) Wonderland; 3) Fill Her Up; 4) Something Special; 5) Welcome To Paradise; 6) The Stars Didn't Show; 7) Green Eyed Monster; 8) Charity Begins At Home; 9) Shine A Light In The Dark; 10) Don't Break The Promises.

A ten-year long break can sometimes work wonders... not in this case, though. After spending a decade working on their individual projects, Stewart and Gouldman have come back to pick up from the exact same place where they left us with Windows In The Jungle, as if neither the Eighties, with their tackiness and their perverse charms, nor the early Nineties with their drastic shift in musical values have ever happened. Well — you don't have to love this judgement, but maybe you have to respect it.

A long-term tactical blunder hailed this as a "Reunion" album of the original 10cc — under the pretext that Godley & Creme were mesmerized into appearing in the studio for the sessions to add backing vocals for some of the tracks (Godley also sings lead on 'The Stars Didn't Show'). But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that neither of the two had even a pinch of creative im­pact on the proceedings; ...Meanwhile is, if possible, even more straightforward and simplistic a record than Windows.

It isn't worse, though; perhaps it's even a little better. About half of it is the same old boring adult contemporary refuse, but the other half at least cheers up the proceedings with some upbeat bar­room rock, on which the band is assisted by the piano-playing talents of Dr. John. And the lead-off single, 'Woman In Love', is at least a good pop song: it somehow manages to tap-dance on the bottle top of retro-Seventies "cock-sentimentalism" (i. e. sentimental songs emanating from artists with a general cock rock attitude, by default one of music's greatest offenses against both good taste in general and the feminine sex in particular) without getting stuck in the bottleneck, maybe because of exquisite guitar work from Stewart.

One bothersome thing is a striking number of déjà vus I am getting — consciously or subcon­sciously, Gouldman and Stewart seem to be so strung up on creative songwriting that they keep yielding either atmospheric or melodic bits that belong not to 10cc, but rather to someone else. 'Wonderland', for instance, for the most part sounds like the Police circa Synchronicity; 'Some­thing Special' keeps reminding me of some McCartney song I can't recall the name of; 'Shine A Light In The Dark' borrows a line from the Hollies' 'Long Cool Woman In A Red Dress', etc. Not that it's necessarily bad: if your own sack of ideas is depleted, a little borrowing can be a big help, and if this helps make ...Meanwhile more listenable — why not? Except that it doesn't make it all that much more listenable, certainly not to the point where we could count it as a minor latter day masterpiece. The best songs here, like 'Woman In Love', or the flat rocker 'Charity Begins At Home', would still be forgettable filler on any of 10cc's major albums.

Nor do I understand why Godley agreed to sing lead on 'The Stars Didn't Show', a tepid synth ballad every inch of which is so square they should make it an anthem of McDonalds' or some­thing. They didn't even manage to squeeze out any money of this effort, because the old fans had been washed away and who'd want to be a new fan? Part of the blame can perhaps be laid at the feet of producer Gary Katz of Steely Dan fame — what may have been good for Steely Dan, namely, extreme cleanliness and "stiffness" of the sound, compatible with the Dan's exquisite taste in arrangements, only augments the suffocation one experiences from Gouldman and Ste­wart's late-period musical values. On the other hand, maybe the tables should be turned and perhaps it was actually Katz who saved the album from becoming a complete snoozer. But complete or incomplete, it still hurts my brain so bad that it temporarily shuts down my heart — guaranteeing the usual thumbs down rating.

10cc: Windows In The Jungle

10CC: WINDOWS IN THE JUNGLE (1983)

1) 24 Hours; 2) Feel The Love (Oomachasaooma); 3) Yes I Am!; 4) Americana Panorama; 5) City Lights; 6) Food For Thought; 7) Working Girls; 8) Taxi! Taxi!

The final squeak from the band, before it went on a decade-long hiatus. What we have here is a desperate, but even so, only half-hearted attempt to squeeze the last bit of power from the few remaining drops of fuel — you can almost literally hear the agonizing sounds of the engine dying down in the middle of an Arizona desert. Windows In The Jungle is just another mix of sappy ballads, now veering on the brink of choppy adult contemporary, and all-natural reggae grooves made from 100% concentrate; "auto-pilot" is the best way to summarize it in one word.

The saddest thing of all is that the Gouldman/Stewart duo still had some creative songwriting left within — many of these songs have sane, interesting melodic ideas, nothing too original, but, under better conditions, you could at least shape 'Americana Panorama', 'City Lights' and 'Wor­king Girls' into convincing New Wave rockers. But it's not enough to string together memorable choruses — you have to imbue them with some sort of sense, to energize them, so to speak, and neither the musical arrangements nor the singing betray any signs of energy. The music is all ei­ther syn­thesizers or Eric's gentle, but — by this point — lethargic jangle, and the singing is completely passionless.

Windows In The Jungle also has the merit of featuring at least two of the worst tracks ever crea­ted by the band. If the main problem of the album opener '24 Hours' is the length (eight minutes may be too long even for a good progressive rock number, it certainly is overkill for a synth-pop one), the next two songs are enough to kill off any semi-decent impression or semi-tepid hopes you had for the record. 'Feel The Love' is "cod reggae", an attempt to imitate Bob Marley that miserably fails because of its rigid and robotic attitude, and 'Yes I Am!' is every bit as pathetic as the most pathetic ballad you'll ever see on a Foreigner album — which is pretty pathetic. Just how sad is it to hear a band that used to have some of the sharpest lyrics on all the British Isles permit itself a chorus like 'yes I am, I'm ready for love'?

The only redeeming moment on the whole record is the coda to the album closer 'Taxi! Taxi!', a trifling, but pretty instrumental passage based around Eric's looping guitar theme and some non-ugly keyboard work. It is quite sympathetic in its position of a humble goodbye to the fans (not that Eric and Graham were really meaning it), as long as you manage to detach it from the rest of the song. There is no greatness here, of course, just a drop of sadness, warmth, and nostalgia. And it is obviously not redeeming the existence of this album as a whole, justified only by the fact that it would be a great help in accelerating the milk-curdling process if you play it next to your milk. Thumbs down — from the indignant brain, mostly, because the heart has long since fallen asleep.

10cc: Ten Out Of 10

10CC: TEN OUT OF 10 (1981)

1) Don't Ask; 2) Overdraft In Overdrive; 3) Don't Turn Me Away; 4) Memories; 5) Notell Hotel; 6) Les Nouveaux Riches; 7) Action Man In Motown Suit; 8) Listen With Your Eyes; 9) Lying Here With You; 10) Survivor.

The band was once again "stripped down" for this release, with Gouldman and Stewart exclusive­ly sharing all the songwriting and most of the playing credits (for the American release, several songs were replaced by collaborations with American singer-songwriter Andrew Gold). However, essentially this is just a bit of trivia: in spirit, there is no significant difference between this record and the few ones before.

Except for the sad fact that there is no spirit whatsoever on Ten Out Of 10. In fact, it may be the first 10cc record that has absolutely no reason for existing; I do not have the vaguest idea of the kind of serious music listener who could be satisfied with it. It's just a bunch of mid-tempo, mid-volume, mid-relevance, mid-everything mid-pop songs written by two mid-aged gentlemen that seem to be but mid-knowing what they're mid-doing. Someone like Paul McCartney could proba­bly allow himself to get away with it from time to time; but, after all, Paul's gift for melody has always been more generous than Gouldman's, and Paul's vocals have always been lovelier than Eric Stewart's (a debatable opinion, that, but I'd probably be supported by the masses here), and even then Paul did not always get away with it — and it is hardly a coincidence that Paul's least satisfying record, Press To Play, was but a matter of several years away from 1981, and would be representing the pitiful results of his collaboration with none other than Eric...

...but I digress. Although, frankly, I'd rather digress a while than speak about these songs. As usu­al, they fall strictly into two genres: sappy ballads, only saved from the ultimate depth of fall by slightly above average lyrics, and limp pop rockers that crumble into reggae every now and then, as if that still mattered in 1981. 'Don't Turn Me Away' stands out as an okay representative of the former, and the biting, but toothless social critique 'Les Nouveaux Riches' stands out as an okay representative of the latter; both were singles, and both deservedly flopped — of course, they didn't flop because they were bad songs, but rather because they sounded so miserably outdated against the background of 1981's hit material, regardless of quality.

I have encountered several critical opinions on the record stating that it was really a creative re­bound for the band or even a true "return to form" after Look Hear? I have no idea what that meant, and I have no idea how or why in between two really weak records they could have mana­ged to place a true artistic winner. My feelings and thoughts on Ten Out Of 10 are in full agree­ment with each other: it's just one more step down the ladder from two guys who continue to go on making music because it's their professional duty and for few, if any, other reasons. And if the album title is indeed a shameless psychological trick (after all, if you simply state that something is good, there'll always be someone who'll believe it without questioning), it's just one more rea­son to hand this a certified thumbs down resolution.

10cc: Look Hear?

10CC: LOOK HEAR? (1980)

1) One Two Five; 2) Welcome To The World; 3) How'm I Ever Gonnna Say Goodbye; 4) Don't Send We Back; 5) I Took You Home; 6) It Doesn't Matter At All; 7) Dressed To Kill; 8) Lovers Anonymous; 9) I Hate To Eat Alone; 10) Strange Lover; 11) L.A. Inflatable.

No thank you. I can still look (especially since the album has two different covers — the UK release had 'ARE YOU NORMAL' written on it in huge letters, and the US release had a picture of a sheep reclining on a Roman-shape bed located on a beach, transatlantically suggesting, per­haps, that the cor­rect answer to the former question is NO), but I'd rather not hear.

The only redeeming quality of Look Hear?, in contrast to the following two albums that lacked even that, is that it's still nicely melodic. Apart from a completely non-descript bad prog rock contribution by two new members ('Welcome To The World'), Gouldman and Stewart can still ensure that the bulk of the record is constituted by chord-based pop melodies that took time to write and incorporate some real feeling as well.

The trouble is, tons of people can write moderately decent pop, but from these guys we have come to expect more than that. We expect some wit, some grit, some laughs, some unpredic­ta­bility — in short, that 10cc feel that everyone brought up on Sheet Music instantly recognizes. Well, Look Hear? is the first 10cc album that sounds nothing like 10cc. It doesn't rock out at all — the closest it comes to rock is on Rick Fenn's 'Don't Send We Back', but even there the sound is seriously watered down. It isn't in the least unpredictable: same reliance on McCartney-style balladeering and reggae influences as on their last record.

But, worst of all, it isn't funny at all. Almost as if Mother Superior had removed the crucial mem­bers' tongue-in-cheek mechanisms for long-term repair, most of the songs take themselves dead serious. The love ballads are lyrically straightforward, the character impersonations almost try to make you care about the impersonations, and 'Don't Send We Back', entrusted completely to the cares of Rick Fenn, is the band's first ever straight social song — not satire, not sarcasm, but an angry comment on the sad fates of illegal immigrants. What the heck??

The best song is Gouldman's 'I Hate To Eat Alone', a pretty and touching ode to loneliness that could have creeped in as a minor highlight on one of the band's better albums — unnoticed and unloved at first, perhaps, but cherished later. (See 'Old Wild Men' on Sheet Music). But the rest of the ballads, such as 'I Took You Home', pompous beyond reason, or 'Lovers Anonymous', go way too heavy on the melodrama and unpleasantly remind me of the worst excesses of Seventies' pop. I've already mentioned how 10cc managed to end up sounding like good Foreigner — on Look Hear?, way too often, they end up sounding like bad Foreigner without the heavy guitars. So much so that it's even a relief to have the album ending on a lightweight, forgettable, but — in the context of it all — heartwarming bit of generic boogie ('L.A. Inflatable').

So this is the real beginning of the end, although the agony would be prolonged further for seve­ral unhappy years. Thumbs down from the brain, who thinks himself so insulted he is seriously considering challenging the G-S duo to a brain duel, and likewise from the heart, which does not accept betrayal of its confidence lightly.

10cc: Bloody Tourists

10CC: BLOODY TOURISTS (1978)

1) Dreadlock Holiday; 2) For You And I; 3) Take These Chains; 4) Shock On The Tube; 5) Last Night; 6) Anony­mous Alcoholic; 7) Reds In My Bed; 8) Lifeline; 9) Tokyo; 10) Old Mister Time; 11) From Rochdale To Ocho Rich­dale; 12) Everything You Wanted To Know; 13*) Nothing Can Move Me.

Somehow, 'Dreadlock Holiday' managed to be a huge hit — maybe because its village-idiot style nod to reggae fell in with the emerging New Wave's preoccupation with Jamaica (after all, if 'Roxanne' could be a hit, why couldn't 'Dreadlock Holiday'?). On the coattails of its success, the entire album managed to sell respectably. In retrospect, however, Bloody Tourists, now quite explicitly, continues 10cc's slide into mediocrity and irrelevance.

I feel obliged to stress that the songwriting is still at a high level, and that there are plenty of de­cent pop hooks, and that, given time enough, the album is a "grower", not a "shrinker". Stewart and Gouldman still continue to do their best trying to come up with interesting subjects and match them with unpredictable music. But they're mildly interesting, and the music is mildly un­predictable: for one thing, they have completely lost the ability to rock out — when the 'hard' section on 'Shock On The Tube' takes over, it turns out to be little more than 'clown-rock', a term that I think well-suitable but almost unexplainable.

For another thing, they start going too heavy on the ballads; in fact, the entire album is divided almost evenly between straight-faced sentimental balladry and the 'weird' numbers — this sort of worked on Original Soundtrack, where 'I'm Not In Love' was a swell tilter that made you lose sleep over thinking just how much they actually meant it, sandwiched in between 'Une Nuit A Paris' and 'Blackmail', but when these things become the rule rather than the exception, and when you take them in perspective — CLICK! — you really understand that this band has changed, and not necessarily for the better.

But I repeat: if you manage to stay away from the perspective, Bloody Tourists, on its own, isn't bad at all — I'd put it on the same shelf with some second-rate solo Paul McCartney album. I do like 'Dreadlock Holiday', with its eerie tale of an unfortunate English guy on an unhappy vacation in Jamaica (apparently inspired by a real incident that happened on a real vacation undertaken by Eric Stewart and Justin Hayward) — one might complain that the band really knows nothing of reggae, but that would be missing the point, because they're not here to play reggae but rather to make fun of the reggae craze; I feel happy about the catchy retro-pop of 'Take These Chains', simple, unpretentious, and fun; I think that 'Anonymous Alcoholic', appropriately starting out as slow barroom rock and then going into a hot funky section, is more of an artistic success than a hoodlum failure; and I even like some of the ballads — why not? They're pretty.

So, as you understand, this is where the brain enters into a serious conflict with the heart. The best advice here, I think, would be — for those who were primarily enthralled with 10cc for their quirkiness and experimentation, to stay away from this album (let alone everything that follows; it would only get worse from here); for those, however, who loved 'Rubber Bullets' and 'I'm Not In Love', but hated 'The Worst Band In The World' and 'Clockwork Creep', Bloody Tourists is recommendable. And since I do not insist that a record has to be both intellectually stimulating and emotionally pleasing to be good, I still give it a thumbs up.

Useless bit of trivia: on this album, 10cc are once more a 'full' band, adding drummer Paul Bur­gess, guitarist Rick Fenn, keyboard player Duncan Mackay, and an extra percussionist (Stuart Tosh). Does it show? Not really. But some people like to know.

10cc: Deceptive Bends

10CC: DECEPTIVE BENDS (1977)

1) Good Morning Judge; 2) The Things We Do For Love; 3) Marriage Bureau Rendezvous; 4) People In Love; 5) Modern Man Blues; 6) Honeymoon With B Troup; 7) I Bought A Flat Guitar Tutor; 8) You've Got A Cold; 9) Feel The Benefit; 10*) Hot To Trot; 11*) Don't Squeeze Me Like Toothpaste; 12*) I'm So Laid Back, I'm Laid Out.

Despite leaving so abruptly, Godley and Creme couldn't help but leaving some scent behind them, and for a brief moment of one or two years it almost seemed like the castrated Gouldman-Stewart variant of 10cc might be able to make it anyway. Deceptive Bends may be a small step down from the level of the fearsome foursome, but it is still a thoroughly enjoyable and frequently un­predictable record that not only pledges allegiance to the band's old credo, but even manages to uphold that allegiance in more than just words.

After all, one might complain that the songs have become more streamlined, featuring fewer sur­prising twists and grotesque stylistic clashes than we came to expect from 10cc, but wasn't that already the situation on How Dare You? and its "mature" type of sound? Deceptive Bends is generally made in the same mood, mixing up tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and sweet sentimentality until you cease to understand which is which and what is where.

Only occasionally do we get true signs of the decay and decline to come: the percentage of slow ballad stuff is ominously going up, and although a song like 'People In Love' is quite melodic and quite exquisitely arranged with its light-symphonic mixture of pianos, weepy slide guitars, and strings, in the end it lands in MOR territory where 10cc have never landed before. 'The Things We Do For Love', too, is like a slightly de-arenified version of Foreigner, although that might as well be a compliment (given how Foreigner's first two albums weren't that bad at all). Still, 10cc turning into Foreigner isn't exactly a heartwarming observation.

And yet these unhappy feelings are still quite muted next to the album's successes — 'Good Mor­ning Judge', 'Modern Man Blues', and 'Honeymoon With B Troup', in particular, are all catchy, funny highlights, showing that the Gouldman-Stewart duo is still able to handle both ferocious melodic hooks (the opening to 'Good Morning Judge' is simplistic, but nevertheless one of the most energetic openings on a 10cc record) and snappy lyrics (no record with lines like 'My baby goes topless and brings her beauty to a bottomless day' can be all bad).

Finally, the duo's brave take on a multi-part suite ('Feel The Benefit'), although it feels somewhat meaning- and directionless next to 'Une Nuit A Paris', is still easily listenable throughout all of its eleven minutes. I used to get somewhat indignant at its openly "borrowing" the melody of 'Dear Prudence' for the main opening theme, but now that I think of it, its complex structure, bom­bastic conclusion (featuring some truly soaring leads from Eric — arguably his most "spiritual" playing in 10cc) and overall feel are all intended to be Beatles-like, reminding one of the closing sym­phony on Abbey Road. In this light, 'Feel The Benefit' is not only pardonable, but forms an ex­cellent conclusion to the album — and, in fact, just like the closing symphony on Abbey Road, forms an excellent swan song to the band's career as a whole.

For all I know, Deceptive Bends might, and should, have been a goodbye record — created by just the duo of Gouldman and Stewart (with a little help from Paul Burgess on the drums), with the spirit of Godley and Creme still whirling around in the studio. Everything that follows is but one large footnote, and one that gives fairly little pleasure to study. Deceptive Bends is our last and smallest piece of Turkish delight to gobble up, but it's still a piece of Turkish delight and so deserves a good thumbs up from both the emotional and the intellectual departments.

10cc: How Dare You!

10CC: HOW DARE YOU! (1976)

1) How Dare You!; 2) Lazy Ways; 3) I Wanna Rule The World; 4) I'm Mandy, Fly Me; 5) Iceberg; 6) Art For Art's Sake; 7) Rock'n'Roll Lullaby; 8) Head Room; 9) Don't Hang Up; 10*) Get It While You Can.

With How Dare You!, 10cc have comfortably and gracefully settled into middle age — an age which might have lasted forever, had the very fact of it not been grating heavily against the rest­less souls of Godley and Creme. Usually it is the more "commercially-oriented" members of the band that tend to carry the blame for a great unit's falling apart, but in this case the situation is reversed — Godley and Creme left the band entirely of their own will, unsatisfied with its crea­tive stagnation (at least, that seems to have been the pretext).

Ironically, the creatively stagnant How Dare You! turned out to be a far more greater record than anything that either the experimental unit of Godley & Creme or the "commercial" unit of Ste­wart & Gouldman's 10cc managed to produce since 1976. In a way, it is the band's Abbey Road: a record that consciously rejects any more musical revolutions, but in terms of pure quality al­most manages to outstrip all of its predecessors. And just like the Beatles may have had a sub­conscious feeling that Abbey Road were to be their swan song, boosting the desire to make it a superb piece of product, so could the four members of 10cc have felt the same — and turned their creative volume knobs all the way up to eleven.

There is no return here to either the dazzling energy level or the diversity of Sheet Music; the songs are generally more quiet and relaxed, the amount of melodies per song more limited. But that's merely a sign of maturity. The melodic hooks remain stronger than ever, the lyrical wit and the unique story-telling ability undamaged, and the arrangements, if possible, have become even more polished, refined, and complex than on The Original Soundtrack. The flow is wonderful, with a few weaker tracks carefully dispersed among the stronger material and the lazier material only better attenuating the energetic stuff. And if there is no one or two songs that are particularly jaw-dropping, like 'Silly Love' or 'I'm Not In Love', that's only due to the quality of the rest.

Much of the album is sweet and sentimental — Sir Paul might have loved this — like the lead off single, 'I'm Mandy, Fly Me', sort of a fantasy sequel to 'Clockwork Creep' off Sheet Music, with a totally off-the-cuff story of how the protagonist is saved by his lovely stewardess in the midst of an airplane crash. Taking a stupid airline slogan ('I'm Cindy, fly me'), the jokers make it into the basis for a love confession which, as is usual with 10cc, is stuck somewhere in between sincere and sarcastic — as confusing for some as it is exciting for others. 'Lazy Ways' and 'Rock'n'Roll Lullaby' have sweet vocal hooks that will send spinning the head of anyone with a thing for sweet vocal hooks; and the album closer 'Don't Hang Up' is the band's most realistic ode to quiet despe­ration, culminating in... hanging up, of course!

The harder side of the album is illustrated by the blistering 'Art For Art's Sake' (the opening riff is one of the most memorable moments in the catalog) which takes several evil punches at The Artist ('give me your love, give me it all, give me in the kitchen, give me in the hall'), and the equally biting and hilarious 'I Wanna Rule The World' ('I wanna be a boss I wanna be a big boss I wanna boss the world around I wanna be the biggest boss that ever bossed the world around'). And finally, the 'sonically creative' side is featured on the title track — a (possibly) Zappa-inspi­red instrumental that isn't so much enjoyable per se as per trying to figure out where exactly it will be heading off in the next ten seconds. Good luck hunting!

All said, How Dare You! requires a little time (say, a decade or so) to properly sink in, as do all such lazy, mature, deep, flash-less (but certainly not flesh-less) albums. Once it does, though, there's nothing preventing one from even thinking of it as 10cc's finest hour — at least, that's one possibility that's worth exploring. Naturally, with the brain harboring respect for it from the very first minute and the heart gradually accumulating love for it over the years, this is a thumbs up all the way. Don't hang up on it.

10cc: In Concert

10CC: IN CONCERT/KING BISCUIT FLOWER HOUR (1975; 1995)

1) Intro; 2) Silly Love; 3) Baron Samedi; 4) Old Wild Men; 5) Sacro-iliac; 6) Somewhere In Hollywood; 7) Donna; 8) Ships Don't Disappear In The Night; 9) The Worst Band In The World; 10) Wall Street Shuffle; 11) Rubber Bullets.

This is the only live album from 10cc recorded in their glory days (might, in fact, be the only live 10cc album as such), and, although it is sort of semi-official (like all the "King Biscuit Flower Hour" releases), it is quite essential for any fan of the band, and even worth checking out if you're just casually interested in these eccentrics.

Given that most of 10cc songs are strictly and straightforwardly studio creations, based on meticulously planned combinations of arrangements, special effects, and tricky melody shifts, one would naturally be curious to learn how they handled all this on stage (a decade earlier, the Beatles basically ran off the stage for much the same reasons). Plus, like with so many art- and prog-rock bands, there was the evident danger of their just being happy to reproduce the original sound on stage as faithfully as possible — a feat in itself — and leaving the fans in the audience well-contented and the live album buyers equally well-disappointed.

In the light of this, it is a relief to learn that on stage, they behaved themselves like a good rock band is supposed to behave. This setlist, although it was recorded on November 11, 1975 (Santa Monica Civic Center), focuses entirely on Sheet Music and, to a lesser extent, 10cc, even though The Original Soundtrack had already been released and was riding up the charts. Not knowing the facts, I'd guess that, perhaps, they might have played some numbers from that album, but that they weren't too keen about recording and broadcasting them, preferring to let all the extra liste­ners in on the simpler, more rocking stuff.

Indeed, it is far more exciting to hear the band jam on the ending to 'Silly Love' or on the middle part of 'Baron Samedi' than attempt to recreate the icy synthesizer patterns to 'I'm Not In Love' or to replicate, bit-by-bit, all the operatic details of 'Une Nuit A Paris'. The best news is that they can jam — not that you'd doubt it, given the pedigree of the players, but it's nice to have documental evidence. Stewart is the main star of the show, playing inventive, aggressive, and diverse solos throughout, but the rhythm section of Gouldman and Godley deserves honorary mention as well.

Some of the songs don't have jam sessions and are, in fact, faithful recreations of the studio wi­zardry, e. g., 'Somewhere In Hollywood'. Some are crowd-pleasers that don't always go off as well as you'd like them to go off ('Donna', in particular, is ruined by some off-key singing and poor harmonizing - apparently, these guys didn't have a natural gift for doo-wop after all). And the eight-minute jam on 'Rubber Bullets' might be pushing things a bit too far. But, twenty per­cent misfires aside, the album is still forty percent enjoyable rock'n'roll and forty percent skilled demonstration of the uniqueness and inventiveness of the band. Therefore, a thumbs up from both the heart and brain departments.

10cc: The Original Soundtrack

10CC: THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK (1975)

1) Une Nuit A Paris; 2) I'm Not In Love; 3) Blackmail; 4) The Second Sitting For The Last Supper; 5) Brand New Day; 6) Flying Junk; 7) Life Is A Minestrone; 8) The Film Of My Love; 9*) Channel Swimmer; 10*) Good News.

If 10cc was the sound of a genius band in its infancy, and Sheet Music — the teenage wild child running round and trying all sorts of nasty tricks on its neighbours, then The Original Sound­track is, by all means, a mature and much more responsible young man looking for a job. (Hint: not everyone will consider this to be a good thing).

Experimentation is still the word of the day, and so is Satire and Sarcasm; but Madness and Whirl­­­wind no longer are. They seem to have gotten tired of genre-hopping, for one thing, and most of the selections here are strictly within "pop rock" territory, or maybe "prog-pop" territory... it's still a huge territory, to be sure, but the most oddball of styles, like the calypso of 'Hotel' or the tribal airs of 'Baron Samedi', do not make any more appearances.

For another thing, the piecemeal melodies are almost gone as well. They have relegated all the jig-saw puzzle constructing to just one track, the opening mini-operetta 'Une Nuit A Paris', about the life and death of a, so to speak, respectable courtesan, but mini-operettas are supposed to be multi-part, and since when do we have a band like 10cc doing what it is supposed to do? The element of surprise is pretty downtrodden here, to say the least.

Or maybe this whole feeling of increased seriousness and solemnity is due to 'I'm Not In Love', the band's first (and biggest) hit to not sound like a parody. The song stupefied listeners with its arrangement — layers upon layers of vocalizing synthesizers and synthesized vocals that created an atmosphere of such heavenly dreaminess as had never been experienced before. Today, much of this is routine matter, and the same tones and tricks have been used over and over again in un­countable "adult contemporary" ballads, so it's almost as hard to realize the groundbreaking po­tential of 'I'm Not In Love' back in 1975 as it is to marvel at the wonders of the first notes played on electric guitar. But that doesn't make the song itself any less inspiring, or its lyrics any less inspired — 'I keep your picture upon the wall/It hides a nasty stain that's lying there' sounds sad upon first listen, hilarious upon the second one, and soon afterwards achieves a perfect synthesis of irony and des­pair so that guess all you like, you won't be able to discover the primary motiva­tion behind the composition.

It's little wonder that after the grand opening of 'Une Nuit A Paris' and the groundbreaking follow-up of 'I'm Not In Love', the rest of the album seems rather hastily slapped on, or, at best, just somewhat out of place. For instance, 'Blackmail', a lively pop-rocker about a hilariously botched attempt at blackmailing a promiscuous girl's husband, would feel more at home on Sheet Music or even 10cc — closing out the first side with this little ditty is a bit anticlimactic. And as for the second side, I can never memorize much of it except for the blistering heavy metal ope­ning of 'The Second Sitting For The Last Supper' (the lyrics, about how we really need a second Last Supper these days, are great, though) and the carnivalesque optimism of 'Life Is A Minestro­ne' (served up with parmesan cheese, no less). It's not bad, just not up to 10cc's better standards.

Therefore, although the brain, as usual, is on highly friendly terms with this band (that is, while it was still a band rather than a duet), it is only reluctantly that the heart issues its thumbs up, which hardly applies to the second half of the record. Still, this is certainly not "the beginning of the end", rather just a momentary loss of focus justified by ambitiousness of the goals.

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10cc: Sheet Music

10CC: SHEET MUSIC (1974)

1) Wall Street Shuffle; 2) The Worst Band In The World; 3) Hotel; 4) Old Wild Men; 5) Clockwork Creep; 6) Silly Love; 7) Somewhere In Hollywood; 8) Baron Samedi; 9) The Sacro-Liliac; 10) Oh Effendi; 11) Waterfall.

The jump from 10cc's first album to their second one is, in all fairness, enormous. 10cc was basically a set of weird pop songs. Sheet Music is, on the contrary, a set of pop-tinged weirdnes­ses. Not that it's atonal or anything — it is easily their most melodic album ever, simply because there's an average total of five or six different melodies per song... sometimes per twenty seconds of it, too. "Never A Dull Moment" — what is this title doing on a Rod Stewart record?

I have heard criticism that tended to basically just write off 10cc from this moment as a pack of goofballs. However, if anything, Sheet Music is even more lyrically focused and biting than 10cc. No matter how "goofy" the actual songs might be, most of them carry a message: tearing apart the capitalist world on 'Wall Street Shuffle', acidly self-ironizing on 'The Worst Band In The World', ridiculing lyrical cliches of popular music on 'Silly Love', butt-kicking oil-pumping sheiks on 'Oh Effendi', and even stopping on the way to take the time for a tender lovin' tribute to the silver screen — 'Somewhere In Hollywood' is almost like a more sophisticated response to the Kinks' 'Celluloid Heroes', released two years earlier. All of this makes perfect sense, regardless of the oddness of the form it has been presented in.

Predictably, my own favourites are those where the melodies go on just a little bit longer, or at least have a memorable central theme to them. For instance, the wall-rattling opening riff on 'Wall Street Shuffle' that is even more of a threat to Wall Street than the lyrics themselves ('Bet you'd sell your mother/You can buy another') — this is instantly classic. So is the mock-metallic thump of 'Silly Love' that, of course, dissolves fairly quickly into attractive pop fare ('hey toots, you put the life into living, you brought the sigh out of sight') and ends up formulating the band's main principle: 'take up your own time, make up your own rhyme, don't rely on mine — 'cause it's SILLY!'

These two songs that bookmark Side A are the obvious highlights, but the whole record brims with such boundless, boiling energy that it never lets go even when it doesn't let you memorize it too easily. Only once do they take a short breather, on the Gizmo-dominated soft ballad 'Old Wild Men', but it turns out to be the album's lowlight, because their incessant shuffle of patterns really only works when it's backed up with plenty of adrenaline; otherwise, it's just boring.

Of course, it goes without saying that the amount of genre territory covered is quite spectacular. Completely dropping their penchant for doo-wop, they instead proceed to deconstruct calypso ('Hotel'), Haitian tribal-voodoo stuff ('Baron Samedi'), prog rock ('Somewhere In Hollywood'), folk balladry ('Waterfall') and... uh, what­ever 'Sacro-Liliac' is supposed to deconstruct. And if these songs won't struck you as magnifi­cently planned compositions, most of them are at least guaranteed to give you a good laugh (ex­cept 'Waterfall', which seems to take itself rather seri­ously — but I don't mind, given how pretty the guitar and the singing are).

Not only that, but they really master all these genres: the pompous, ominous introduction to 'Somewhere In Hollywood' could easily fit on any second generation prog band record, and the percussion on 'Baron Samedi' could make you swear Kevin Godley must have spent his child­hood drifting around the Caribbean instead of around the boroughs of Great Manchester. It's only when they start combining the uncombinable — for instance, bringing in a lumbering hard rock middle eight for 'Baron Samedi' — that you feel you're living in a post-authentic world after all.

Needless to say, the brain wins the race here with a solid gold thumbs up, praising the record for its phenomenal inventiveness. But it should be known that, after several listens, the heart is well on the way to catch up with the brain, and if you haven't grooved along to 'Silly Love' at least once in your life, you've all but missed out on the art of intellectual headbanging, and I feel great overwhelming pity for you.

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10cc: 10cc

10CC: 10CC (1973)

1) Rubber Bullets; 2) Johnny Don't Do It; 3) Sand In My Face; 4) Donna; 5) The Dean And I; 6) Headline Hustler; 7) Speed Kills; 8) The Hospital Song; 9) Ships Don't Disappear In The Night; 10) Fresh Air For My Mama.

An album so utterly brilliant and well-balanced that it comes off as no surprise that so few people actually know about it or remember it these days. You'd expect that when a skilled, experienced popmeister (Graham Gouldman) teams up with an inventive and innovative guitar player (Eric Stewart) and a couple of brilliant freakout weirdos (Lol Creme and Kevin Godley), the results should blow the roof off the public conscience. But no ­— public tastes are much too differen­tiated these days, and while the bold adventurous mind will want to shrug this stuff off as way too commercial, the unpretentious pop-loving spirit will shy away from it as way too odd. Those are the ways of the world, in which Captain Beefheart and Karen Carpenter will never shake hands.

This is pop music, very much so ­— in fact, this is inarguably the original 10cc's most accessible record — but thoroughly irradiated with Satire and Unpredictability. Listing all of its musical ingredients would take a sleepless night of research, but ones that are recognizable off the cuff include [a] the Beach Boys and surf stuff in general ('Rubber Bullets'), [b] doo-wop and its tribu­taries ('Johnny Don't Do It', 'Donna'), [c] psychedelic pop-rock (splattered almost everywhere), and more, much more. You keep recognizing the oddest touches in the oddest places. Why does the buildup to the chorus on 'Headline Hustler' sound so much like solo George Harrison, with its weeping slide guitar and pleading vocals? No idea. Just cool, without any easy logic to it.

No single melody overstays its welcome, indeed, most understay it: after a little while, you aban­don all hope of discerning between verse, bridge, and chorus, and simply begin treating every composition, including the shortest ones, as little independent mini-operas (although this is still way too timid compared to the band's even more radical approach on the sophomore album, Sheet Music). Normally, there's always a chance such mini-operas will devolve into unmemo­rable pretentious chaos, or will treasure the "story" far above the music, but not with Gouldman always steering the band into the "hook" direction: cleverly combining time honoured melodic phrasing with unexpected twists makes much of this unforgettable.

Besides, what's wrong with the stories? "Rubber Bullets" is about suffering for trying to amelio­rate your cell block conditions ('...is it really such a crime for a guy to spend his time at the local hop at the local county jail?' — indeed!). "Johnny Don't Do It" is about a wannabe biker with way too few braking experience. "Sand In My Face" is about getting your girlfriend back from the local beach bully ("dynamic tension make a man out of you!"). "The Dean And I" is about, oh well, the extreme forms of college romance ("it was no infatuation, but a gradual graduation"). And that's just the first side, and I haven't even mentioned "Donna", probably the sweetest, tende­rest parody on doo-wop ever made — Frank Zappa (who, by the way, is unquestionably one of the godfathers of 10cc-style music), for all his doo-wop affection, only wishes he could approach the same effect on his own tribute albums like Cruising With Ruben & The Jets.

Less you did think, though, that it's all about the stories and that the music comes in as an afterthought, there is also a special near-instrumental ("Speed Kills") which gives the band ample opportunity to showcase its playing skills and dexterity. It rocks with a vengeance, and, the title notwithstanding, would certainly sound cool even today blasting from one's car windows on the highway. The curious "synthesized guitar" riffage on it, produced by a special device that Godley and Creme called the "Gizmo", is a little outdated today, but since they play music with it rather than merely fart around, it doesn't really matter all that much.

Finally, one shouldn't forget about the immense diversity of ways they use to arrange and present this content. Vocal arrangements alone draw on almost the entire experience accumulated in that respect over the past several decades — solo crooning, group harmony, echoey Floydish back­ground, highest falsetto, deepest bass, opera, theatre, it's all in there (all of the group members happened to be vocally endowed, a rare blessing even for "supergroups"). Instruments range from basic guitars and pianos to just about everything I've still got to learn a name for. The only thing they don't bring in is the "wall of sound" à la Phil Spector, but I'm just mentioning it for the sakes of ending a paragraph with a negative, always the cool thing for a reviewer to keep in stock.

In the heart against brain battle, both sides come out equally satisfied — a rare feat indeed, as the heart just can't stop digging all the catchy melodies and singing along, either to "hum-drum days and a-hum-drum ways, hum-drum days and a-hum-drum ways" or to "he was an angel, such an angel", whereas the brain is simply left dumbfounded by how many wonderfully creative musical and lyrical ideas one can fit in per record inch, provided "one" means "four scruffy-looking guys from early 70s England" — then again, there also used to be those four scruffy-looking guys from early 60s England that did pretty much the same thing. A tendency at work? Hearty thumbs up, from both departments.

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