10cc Album: “The Complete U.K. Recordings: 1972-1974”

I don't need to say how fantastic the first 2 10cc LPs were. . . and they are both here, along with all the B-sides and single mixes of the A sides. Totally complete, nice liners and photos of sleeves, and I completely disagree with the reviewer who says the mastering stinks. I compared with Repertoire remasters and the latter are EXTREMELY HOT, like most remasters in these days of the loudness wars. Dan Hersch at DigiPrep did a great job here, and did not mess with these tapes, which were excellently recorded by Eric Stewart at the group's own Strawberry Studios. YES, there is hiss. YES, these are quieter than the juiced up remasters. But they also have the full dynamic range of the music and compare favorably to my clean vinyl LP of Sheet Music. At $20, it's a steal. Get it.

These guys are Oxford-Cambridge material...and they have "never done a day's work in our life..." but they're "working on it." This music is like colored candy Leslie Gore-Brian Wilson-John Lennon-Phil Spector kaleidoscopic synth-guitar, with encyclopedic musical knowledge, genre-bending in a way that surpasses Gram Parsons or Paul McCartney, in both musicality and intelligence. There is also a filmic kind of theoretical mind-bending anomolous play going on here, as well, in some of Creme-Godley's compositions, where we are introduced to everything you need to know about what has happened in Iraq or Saudi Arabia since oh, 1991 or so, in "Oh Effendi", and then everything that happened in Hollywood, including Turner Classic Meltdown, in "Somewhere In Hollywood." Also the writings of Canadian gay film theorist Robin Wood. Also included in this collection is the prior eponymous album, 10cc. It gets a little politically incorrect as we listen nowadays to slight asides in "Hotel" and "Baron Samedi" but as the steely reverb-voiced Lol Creme tells us "There's a lot more goodies int he pipeline.." indeed. These albums sounded absolutely incredible in 1974 when I played this album afte a girl from Iowa Falls gave me some kind of strawberry wow, this album rocked me, then, and it still rocks me now, straight sober and shot into a kind of spiritual thing.

Ten. See?

See? Also here are brief surveys of the record-selling business, as apart from music itself, and dance tune crazes, a mucho mas mockingery of dIsco: "Sacro-Iliac", how it really feels to be a terminally ill, thoroughly addicted, helpless hospital patient, wh is dead-on, no pun intended ("The Hospital Song") and several other scorchers, such as "Speed Kills", and "4% of Something". The Stewart-Gouldman popmeister pairing yields these and the "Wall Street Shuffle", wh, in itself is very accurate, Beatlesque, and prescient. So how does music manage to make more accurate forecasts and predictions than phoney psychics, Mayan astrologers, and financial analysts? It comes from the heart of the Mother, Who is All. The Original. Buy this album, keep in touch.

10cc's complete discography for Jonathan King's UK label make their U.S. appearance. Yes, these albums have been released and re-released multiple times with a variety of remasterings but this is the first time ALL the band's recordings including some of their alternate single A sides have appeared on CD.

The band's first two albums are presented here (the only other mastering that is as good as this one is the 1990 Hoffman mastered CD

without the over compressed that have marred some reissues of this album. In spite of another review here that claims this doesn't sound as good as the Repetiore remasters, this edition is BETTER and has the additional benefit of including the previously mentioned single versions which vary from the album versions in subtle ways.

The liner notes are excellent including information on the recording of the album and older as well as newer comments from Kevin Godley & Eric Stewart about their success as 10cc which is interesting given the band's success and then failure to chart again as Hotlegs.

A very nice mastering job by Dan Hersch is a highlight of this remastered/reissued edition of the band's key first two albums. While 10cc would court and win bigger fame with their third and fifth albums in the U.S., these are among their finest works.

Their first album in the states anyway, "Sheet Music" was and still is one of the best albums that nobody ever heard of. Everyone of their albums is brilliant. I like the work of Lol and Creme after they bailed from the band. I only wish I could have seen them live.