One moment they were, after Godley and Creme's departure, producing Deceptive Bends, one of the great power-pop albums of the 70s. There is a recognition in the way the set is assembled - with almost all the audio from 1978 onwards confined to disc two, as if to admit it into the record but prevent it adulterating the good gear - of how 10cc's golden era gave way almost instantaneously to their wooden one. 'Rubber Bullets'! 'The Wall Street Shuffle'! 'Art For Art's Sake'! ("Money, for God's sake," pleads its bathetic corollary.) And that, at last, brings us to this four-CD/one-DVD box set, and an opening disc of singles which expands upon any 10cc best-of, and is thus altogether marvellous. Such as their first, 'Donna', a sweet, hilarious Frankie Valli-style number, akin to Frank Zappa without the superior sneer - which is to say, immeasurably preferable. At their headquarters, Strawberry Studios, Stockport, they worked in ever shifting combinations to create mocking, loving enhancements and mutations of early rock & roll, doo wop, FM radio fodder, production numbers for imaginary musicals, operetta, lounge/easy listening - and straight-up 70s rock that wasn't straight-up, parodied the 70s even as they happened, but undoubtedly rocked. Two of them (Kevin Godley, Lol Creme) were capital-A Art pranksters. Two of them (Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman) had been proper 60s pop types. No band after The Beatles had been so daffily diverse, nor has any since. They could do the comic without descending into gimmickry. There were four of them, all of whom wanted to be John and Paul and George, and were happy to take their turn as Ringo. What were 10cc? Prog rock? Art rock? Soft rock? AOR? Chart pop? Yes. If understandably so.10cc had been genre-hopping dilettantes throughout their existence up to that point, so why stop at reggae? Before that it had gone wonkily, enliveningly, erratically right: one of those great, prolific runs some acts will speed through, an album a year for five years, from '73 to '77, each crammed with more ideas, more tunes, more ambition, more indulgence, more experimentation - the experimentation is what excused the indulgence - than most acts will find room for in a career. So that was where it all went finally, decisively wrong. From Eric Clapton via 10cc through to Olly Cunting Murs, is there anything more cringe-inducing than dabblers in reggae? Especially when they do the accents. It had the chart-topping 'Dreadlock Holiday' on it, which was the last thing everybody remembered about 10cc which I found repellent from the first time I heard it and which underpins Bennun's First (and only) Law Of Reggae: only those who play nothing but reggae should be permitted to play reggae at all. But what the hell was Deceptive Bends doing there? Or Bloody Tourists? The other sleeves stacked up beside my second-hand Thorens turntable bore the legends "New Order" or "Cocteau Twins" or "Talking Heads" - I was catching up, y'see, for one reason and another - and that was all very commendable, according to folk who knew about this sort of thing. There was so much stuff going on here that kept snagging my attention. I was listening - not because I was smarter or more alert than anybody else, nor because I was one of those dreary twerps who embraces what most dismiss purely because most dismiss it. 10cc sounded bland only if you weren't listening. People thought 10cc were bland, if they thought about 10cc at all.
#10cc wall street shuffle cover full#
The road itself was cut through ever-changing terrain and full of hairpin turns. They were weird in a middle-of-the-road way. Or rather, there were lots of things that were a bit like bits of them, but nothing at all that was like all of them, all at once.ġ0cc were weird, in one of the weirdest ways. It took me a while to realise there wasn't anything else like them. I bought everything I could find by them. 10cc, by contrast, were in the bargain boxes at the second-hand record fairs where I did my monthly rounds. Even Status Quo were invited to open Live Aid. I'm trying to think of things that might have.
When I became fascinated with 10cc in the late 80s, nothing could have seemed less current.
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