10cc Album: “Sheet Music”

10cc was a band that got better with every album, up until How Dare You! any ways: I've only heard Deceptive Bends and Bloody Tourists after this (though Look Hear and Ten out of Ten are in the mail) so I can't really judge those albums. But while the first album was a perfect mix of goofy jokes, innovative song writing and playing, and great satire, this album not only one ups that album musically, but ten ups it! sorry, bad pun.

The music gets much more complex on this album: the strange styles have amagalized into a style of complex genre changes, complex chord changes and harmonies, multiple parts, and on somewhere in hollywood, a sweeping, dramatic feel.

The lyrics are good too: funny, catchy, very great word play. Not my main focus in the band: gotta love those songs!

Pick up the Double Disc Uk Records Collection. It has this album, plus the first, all their b-sides from the two albums, and the single versions of the singles, plus some cool liner notes. It's easy to find if you live in america, and a steal!

This album made a really horrible summer over into a great one for me in 1974. Fresh out of hospital, supposedly dying from pulmonary emboli in both lungs, new apartment, beautiful summer evening, a young girl, and a tab of something strawberry...Totally unlike me, NOW, but THEN, I dug this album the most since chicks seemed to dig it. Rolling stone dug it. Clapton's release from Miami sucked, period. These guys were like evil twin genius Lennon-McCartney clones gone horribly wrong and kind of glam, corny, and gay all at the same time, an arrow shot straight into the heart of where rocknroll was headed. Springsteen was the other dude who was gonna rock the cradle a bit. But do not forget! No! Not once, ever! To facetiously quote a lamented recently impeached president--these guys were Cambridge and Oxford material who happened to dig music too. So, panegyric re the music business, natch, forthright economically sound "Shufflin" on "Wall Street", some what politically incorrect "Oh Effendi" and "Hotel" and perhaps "Baron Samedi" as well, but these guys were Brits, a mad, Monty Pythonesque, pop sensibility twisted like Terry Gilliam's, predicting disco and ridiculous dance crazes("Sacro-Iliac") forecasting the Western World's Waterloo in the Middle East, all over that black gold ("Oh Effendi") and even using the Republican's war words "liberate the region" some thirty years in advance...breathless as I am, so is the music. It just never stops. The "Silly Love" song, pre-Sir Paul, and much better, thank you, because it really is silly, and monstrously guitarish at the same time, will play in your head for days. "Samedi" and "Hotel" are a hoot, listened to uncritically, like on the beach, smearig the lotion on yr sunglasses...that kind of music. Have a beer. "Clockwork Creep" is a tense little totally pop masterpiece dialog betwixt a plane and a bomb. Did I say prescient? Well, I suppose if one were only smart enough, we woulod have seen all this coming, but... These guys were very intelligent, very musical, I suspect they had read Kenneth Anger and Robin Wood, and out popped "Somewhere in Hollywood" which would absolutely outdo any other genre mashup, satirical piece ever written before or since. Brian WIlson got in here as well,in "Wild Old Men", as someone else mentioned, but these guys were simply encyclopedic in their musical knowledge, both pop and theoretical, and not too proud to show it. Every single beat of every song has been absolutely marbleized by tiny little fingers. Whew. Frank Zappa finally took a bath.

Amazon readers will know that I don't award 5 stars easily, but this is, in my view, 10cc's finest album by a long distance.

10cc, like Steely Dan, was a name chosen for its penile association. The band began as a backing group for Neil Sedaka, although in 1970, minus Graham Gouldman, the other three (as Hotlegs) had a hit single in the form of 'Neanderthal Man'.

The first eponymous album contains the single 'Donna', a parody of 50s doo-wop (apparently), but sounding very similar to a Beatles song. In fact, 10cc of this period played very much in the same musical space as the Beatles, and all four members had strong backgrounds in the Manchester beat scene of the 60s, and one wonders why 10cc didn't make it bigger. Were they just not photogenic enough? Too individualistic to be persuaded into identical suits? Or just five years too late?

But 1974's 'Sheet Music' is their classic. Foot-tapping rockers 'Wall Street Shuffle' and 'Silly Love' opened sides one and two of the original LP. 'Clockwork Creep' features the dark humour that makes all air travellers feel uncomfortable -- it's about a bomb waiting to go off, but it's a catchy tune. But the pure-gold classic track on this album is 'Somewhere in Hollywood', which was too complex ever to be an A-side single. No compilation of intelligent 70s popular music should be without this.

The British rock band 10cc was comprised of four exceedingly clever musicians and songwriters, all of whom brought considerable gifts to the table. They'd all been working in various capacities since the mid-60's - most notably Graham Gouldman (who had written hits for the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, and the Mindbenders), and Eric Stewart (who was a member of the latter group). These two were the pop oriented half of the band, while Kevin Godley and Lol Creme contributed the more experimental, offbeat flourishes and compositions. All four sang and were multi-instrumentalists.

Their terrific debut album "10cc" got them off to a roaring start in their homeland. Two singles from it - "Donna" and "The Dean And I" - made the U.K. Top Ten, and "Rubber Bullets" hit number one. "Rubber Bullets" was a regional hit in parts of America, and gained them their first exposure here. It was about a prison riot, and sounded like the Beach Boys parodying Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock". Other tracks also had a comical slant, sometimes sung 1950's doo-wop style. Even some of the song topics were 50's-centric. The title character in "Johnny Don't Do It" became a teen angel in a motorcycle crash - "Sand In My Face" is about being picked on by a bully and invokes the Charles Atlas ads found in comic books of the era. As a whole, the album portended great things to come.

That would happen with the release of "Sheet Music" (1974). I love their first 3 albums equally, but I'm spotlighting this one because I think it's the most neglected and forgotten. "Wall Street Shuffle" was the British top-tenner off this one, while "Silly Love" only cracked the top 30. In America some of these songs received FM airplay, but none were hit singles.

10cc came into their own and found their voice on "Sheet Music". It wasn't just parodies of 50's song styles and subject matter. The humor continued unabated, but was in the service of their own concepts (less obvious and more original). It rocked harder than the previous album, and featured heavier guitars and instrumentation. "Somewhere In Hollywood" was their first Queen-esque mini-opera, a "trial run" they would build upon on later efforts. The whole album is perfect.

Same goes for their highly acclaimed third album "The Original Soundtrack". It's widely acknowledged as a masterpiece, and deservedly so. "I'm Not In Love" was surely the most fussed-over song since Brian Wilson obsessed with "Good Vibrations". Stories of the band layering the vocal chorale in the studio are legendary, and it was a worldwide smash. The "One Night In Paris" suite was their second encroachment on Queen territory, and exquisitely well done.

Their fourth album "How Dare You!" showed signs of strain between the pop and progressive halves of the band, with the songs varying wildly into one camp or the other. It yielded the big British hits "Art For Art's Sake" and "I'm Mandy, Fly Me" - but didn't cohere as well as their earlier work together. Godley and Creme left to record as a duo, and became video innovators. Gouldman and Stewart carried on as 10cc, and issued the wonderful "Deceptive Bends" album. "The Things We Do For Love" was a big hit, and "Feel The Benefit" was another exemplary song suite. They then added more members (including former Cockney Rebel keyboardist Duncan Mackay) for the excellent follow-up "Bloody Tourists" (1978). The humorous track "Dreadlock Holiday" became their last number one British hit. For most fans, this marked the end of the classic years. The band faltered with the hitless, comparatively weak "Look Hear?", but rebounded creatively (if not commercially) shortly after on their next release. Gouldman and Stewart brought in singer/songwriter Andrew Gold to collaborate on the quite pleasant "Ten Out Of 10" (1981), with Gouldman and Gold later recording as a duo called Wax. Since all this, the four original members have reunited on occasion as 10cc.

If you want to collect their best, buy "10cc", "Sheet Music", "The Original Soundtrack", "Deceptive Bends", and "Bloody Tourists". For a good greatest hits package, you can't go wrong with "The Very Best Of 10cc".

Their sense of humor is always there but the melodies are strong and every song is a winner. I hope they continue to release new albums despite their advancing age. Eric Stewart's voice is as sweet as ever.