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Hotlegs
aka 10cc “Thinks...School Stinks” (aka “You Didn’t Like It, Because You Didn’t
Think Of It”)
Um Wah, Um Woh/ Today/ You Didn’t Like It, Because You
Didn’t Think Of It/ Fly Away/ Run Baby Run/ The Loser/ Neanderthal Man// How
Many Times?/ Desperate Dan/ Take Me Back/ Lady Sadie /All God’s Children /Suite
F.A (On My Way/Indecision/The Return).
The
Album:
'The
blind amongst us can see, the deaf amongst us can hear, the dumb amongst us can
speak, the healer looks after the weak!'
We pride ourselves on digging out the obscure and
hard-to-find at the AAA and discussing albums that get short shrift or no
mention at all in most artists’ discographies. But this one really is a rarity
– the sole album by Hotlegs, the first incarnation of everybody’s favourite
numerical band 10cc, which was only ever available on CD as a limited edition (currently
priced £50 on Amazon second-hand) and was only ever re-issued on record twice
briefly after poor sales the first time round. And yet, this album – which
features Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme and even a guest appearance
by Graham Gouldman making this the first 10cc album in all but name – came on
the back of a surprise #2 hit in ‘Neanderthal Man’, a song big enough to throw
the band headlong into the mainstream – and yet a song so forgotten now that
the few people who remember it swear had nothing to do with the band at all
(even today, a lot of fan’s comments on this track appearing at the end of the
latest 2CD 10cc best-of was ‘what the heck is this song doing on here?’) It’s a
surprising album all round this one - it doesn’t sound like 10cc that much at
all, really, being a far darker and far more spontaneous version than the
albums the first line-up will become well known for, even if the tunes are
still vaguely 10cc-ish. In fact, it’s quite a one-off mix of the experimental
and the accessible – every song on this album is designed to be hummed and
whistled, but were there ever stranger songs around in 1971 than the drum-heavy
‘Neanderthal Man’ or the never-ending complex 'Suite ‘F.A.’ ? (I doubt any
other band would have thought of getting away with the latter’s title back in
1971 either).Yet the most surprising thing about this album is that it doesn’t
sound like its one-off, testing-the-microphones hit single either for the most
part; there is lots of craft and song structure going on here, just not to the
high point that 10cc will be making later in the decade.
It’s also a record dominated by the partnership of
Godley and Creme – weird not because they don’t deserve to be there (they do)
but because they were the unknowns in this band at the time – Stewart had been
the lead focal point for the Mindbenders once Wayne Fontana left (scoring most
of their biggest hits under his leadership) and Gouldman (who plays a far
bigger role in this record’s creation than the credits suggest) had already
written four top five hits (The Hollies’ ‘Look Through Any Window’ and ‘Bus Stop’,
The Yardbirds’ ‘For Your Love’ and the Herman’s Hermits’ single ‘No Milk
Today’). The biggest link to stardom Godley and Creme had was a five month
spell in Gouldman’s band the Mockingbirds for the former and a stint physically
painting the fences in the film adaption of ‘The Railway Children’ for the
latter. Not that I’m complaining: these early songs may be far more derivative
than the pair’s later, more challenging work but even this early on in their
careers they’re showing plenty of inventiveness and wackiness. But the band as
a whole seem almost embarrassed to stress two of their members’ former
credentials, despite the fact that this album could have launched a quite
successful career for all of them (in fact, stardom is only a year or two down the
road thanks to the #2 single [19] ‘Donna’ – a doo-wop song that’s a lesser
record than almost all the songs on this album – but nobody knew that back then
and certainly not 10cc).
So, if nobody’s quite sure what to do with this
album or the new group as a whole, how did this very rushed album come about?
Well, in a nutshell, it came about because Eric Stewart was tired of travelling
to London to make records and wanted to make them closer to home, establishing
his own ‘Strawberry Studios’ in Stockport (named after the guitarist's
favourite Beatles song 'Strawberry Fields Forever') which exists in some format
to this day. He even bought out the record shop where his first band ‘The
Staggerlees’ had tried, in vain, to get together enough money to make a record
in the mini recording booth round the back (something common in 1960s bands
before home technology was widely available, but costly in the days of vinyl
and generally used by rich grandchildren to send thankyou records to distant
relatives, not penniless rock musicians). Enlisting his friends Godley, Creme
and – when time off from his bubblegum Kastner Katz employers allowed – Graham Gouldman,
Stewart offered the services of himself and friends as backing musicians for
all sorts of bands in this period. All of them knew each other growing up in
different ways: Kevin and Lol had been childhood friends who reconnected at art
college, Kevin and Graham had played after school in a Boy’s Brigade band,
Graham had added Kevin to his breakthrough band The Mockingbirds and for a time
Eric had hired Graham as a ‘spare’ guitarist in the last line-up of his band
The Mindbenders. The trio (and occasionally quartet when Graham had enough of
living away from home and got his employers to rent out Strawberry Studios so
his pals could make record with him) made a whole number of records together
between 1969 and 1972 in their spare time away from backing other people under
a list of weird and wonderful names. But in order to do this – and make sure
the recording studio gained a reputation as one of the best ever in the North
West – the quartet had to test all sorts of microphones, instruments and
engineering equipment to make sure they worked.
This meant a lot of repetitive playing and testing
in between sessions, over and over, which is about as un-creative as music
gets. When it came to Kevin Godley’s turn to test out the drums for an hour or
so on a brand new state-of-the-art four track machine the others attempted to
rally him along by making up a silly tune with the right beat for the percussion,
with Eric adding some guitar riffs to the tune and Lol making up words based
around the first 'primitive' thoughts that came into his head. The resulting
drum-heavy song was quite unlike anything the musical world had heard before –
or indeed will again, with the band not yet sure how to replicate it. The
foursome had long talked about making their own music together – particularly
after seeing Neil Sedaka score a big hit with his comeback single ‘Solitaire’
in 1971 for which they were only paid a bare minimum session fee – but they had
no idea what to do or what direction would combine all their different styles.
Suddenly, without even trying, this silly song had seemed to hit a nerve – the
trio (Graham being in America still) thought that maybe they had stumbled upon
something with this song though that soon got stuck in all their heads. Fate
seemed to smiling on the band too when soon after making it Phillips Records
boss Dick Leahy took a business meeting to Manchester and, with time on his
hands, went to see his old charge Eric to talk about maybe getting some
recordings done in their studio. He naturally asked what the guitarist had been
up to who sheepishly admitted they had this silly song they liked but was so
off-the-wall they weren’t sure what to do with. Leahy said that it was an
obvious hit and was so adamant at getting the unsigned band that he offered
them a £500 cash advance there and then, exactly what Eric needed to keep the
studio open after a sudden spate of bills (with the band urged to go back and
make a B-side at double quick speed; ‘You Didn’t Like It because You Didn’t
Think About It’ keeps the drumming and even adds some proper guitars but loses
the humour). Despite almost no publicity at first and appearing almost by
accident, having never been intended to be anything more significant than a
funky drum track (actually the band's inner musicians might have got slightly
carried away as the drum track still doesn't sound that bright on the end
product) ‘Neanderthal Man’ was sent blinking into the top of the charts and
Hotlegs never looked back.
Well, almost. You see the problem with getting a hit
single by accident after years of trying to get one through talent is that you
are never quite sure how to get another one. Hotlegs could have gone back into
the studio and recorded a sequel about cavemen using a similarly primitive
sound, but after years of being stuck in 1960s bands tied by reputation and
image Eric didn’t want to do that (The Mindbenders were a terrific band but
record company interference meant that every great idea was flogged to death
repeatedly, while Kev and Lol with their art school background were adamant
about never following any sort of rule ever). Instead Hotlegs deferred, using
the proceeds from their hit single to have a holiday. And then another. And
maybe another one. By the time it dawned on the band that they really ought to
get on with things if they wanted to remain in the public eye it had been
almost a year since ‘Neanderthal Man’ came out and in the ever-changing 1970s
that was a lifetime. Hoping that lightning might strike twice they wrote this
album at speed, mainly filled up with emotional ballads that Kevin had been
writing and which suited his sweet falsetto. Good as these are (and some of
them are fabulous) what’s interesting is how very little like ‘Neanderthal Man’
they sound: the drums barely feature, Lol only gets to sing backup and these
tracks are all folky and acoustic, not drum heavy and rocky. These aren’t even
Neanderthal Man with clothes on so much as a whole different species who have
almost nothing to do with their extinct cousins. The addition of an oddly
juvenile title that doesn’t fit at all (‘Thinks…School Stinks!’ even though the
band were in their mid and late twenties already), an ugly cover of a school
wall a decade before Pink Floyd made the idea trendy and a mismanaged marketing
campaign that didn’t have a clue what to do with this odd sounding album all
missed the mark and meant Hotlegs didn’t sell like hot cakes at all. To
emphasise that point, this album makes no reference to the classroom antics of
the original title at all, not one (an idea and cover that was ripped off
wholesale by Alice Cooper not long after, right down to the graffiti on the
school desk). Fans of 1970, the very small handful who bought this album (plus
the even smaller amount who bought it in 1971) didn’t know what to make of it
all.
That’s even more true for fans in the modern era who
knows how the story pans out and are used to 10cc manic wordplay, production
gimmicks and most all variety, with a different singer in a different genre for
every song which are by and large made up of contrasting sections; in contrast
this is a lovely Kevin Godley album with some pretty Lol harmonies and some
natty Eric guitar played acoustically and where every song seems to exist for
the lyrics, to the point where even in the thirteen minute epic suite (this
band always thought big!) not very much happens at all. Thankfully nothing much
happens quite beautifully, but all the same you spend this record waiting for a
punchline that never comes and an extra dimension that never quite arrives.
This record is, however, never boring. Though tame by the standards of, say,
‘How Dare You!’ most of this album would have been deeply daring for its day.
‘Neanderthal Man’ remains one of the weirdest singles to ever reach so highly
in the UK charts (and at #22 with no publicity was no slouch in the US charts)
and its joined here by the only real follow-up, the caveman grunting ‘Um Wah Um
Who’ which is simultaneously the most philosophical song any of 10cc will make
for another decade. Not to mention the novelty song about Dandy comic strip
hero Desperate Dan (‘Oh my, he eats cow pie!’)
or the sniggering ‘Lady Sadie’. Perhaps the oddest track though is that
B-side ‘You Didn’t Like It…’, which starts as a raucous up-yours defensive song
that then has a nervous breakdown and ends up a soggy puddle on the carpet, all
that intense shouting giving way to a ghostly choir (in a sign of things to
come). This is a record that for all its dumb jokes, schoolboy humour and talk
of ‘making Neanderthal love’ is quite a deep and at times disturbing album,
more revealing than usual for 10cc who in time will learn to hide their feelings
behind characters and concepts rather than being as open as this. On most 10cc
albums to come the humour is there to counterpoint the stupidity and chaos of
the adult world, a knowing wink for those in the audience at home who’ve seen
through how surreal our boring daily lives are. This is an album where the
‘characters’ feel more hemmed in than that and where they are wondering if they
are quite literally going mad. Though the jokes are as funny if not funnier
than the songs to come, they also feel at times like a cry for help in a
miserable life where there isn’t much laughing going on at all.
Even though we're in 10cc's baby years here, this is
an oddly adult LP covering songs about moving on from unhappy love affairs, the
idea of fate with the fact that love always comes back when a relationship is
truly meant to be and that love means always having to 'care about my
whereabouts'. The later 10cc never really did love as directly as this (it was
always the punchline to a joke, whether it be the postmodernism of [35]
'SSSSSilly Love' or the denial of [43] 'I'm Not In Love', at least until Eric
Stewart nearly dies in a car crash in 1979 and realises that there's nothing
more important than love so he ought to talk about nothing else - this is a
good thing, not a criticism, by the way). So it's odd to hear 10cc (or a
version of them anyway) being so sweet and loved-up. There are no [34]
clockwork creep bombs about to go off in our ear, no attempt to be nice to
Vincent Price and no lyrics filled with swearing when little kids can't get to
sleep. This album is 'pure' all the way through, from Kevin's gorgeous falsetto
vocals to lyrics about how the narrator is 'drying' to profess his love, with
no trace of the later irony or hilarity. [-48] Life isn't a Minestrone here,
it's a more basic recipe, like winter vegetable or tomato that warm you up and
empathise with you. Hearing 'Hotlegs' after what came before it it's easy to
see why this version of the band became written off from band history - there
are other bands around at the time better at doing earnest and pure love songs
and it doesn't sound quite as original as most of what came later.
As a result, this first 10cc release (in all but
name) sounds completely nothing like the clever wordplay of their better known
material but still has enough charm and wackiness to secure several million
sales. For a start the band are not yet 10cc as, not expecting to get a hit and
not realising that they might be saddled with the name, they called themselves
‘Hotlegs’ as an in-joke after their nickname for their secretary Kathy (who
can’t have minded too much – she’s still hanging around to play the part of the
receptionist on [43] ‘I’m Not In Love’ five years later). People call it a
'false start' for 10cc and it is in that sense - this is nothing like the deep
and 'clever' material the band will become known for, or the production
masterpieces that come later when they have more time to make them. But that
doesn't make 'Neanderthal Man' and its companion tracks a bad song; actually
10cc could easily have got a career off the back of this song and recorded
another eleven jam songs based around different drum tracks and periods in
history ('I'm a Renaissance bloke, you're a Renaissance lady, watch out for
Michaelangelo, he's up to something shady') and no one would have batted an
eyelid. In a parallel universe somewhere Hotlegs – who also chose their a name
because the band were adamant no one was going to see their face and they
wanted the most unlikely name for themselves in rock history so their friends
could have a good laugh - might even have had a book in the AAA series in their
own right. After all, 'Neanderthal Man' isn't that far removed from the
'Kassenatz Katz' songs like 'Umbopo' the band had already come up with, even if
it is a lot catchier and lot more, well, relatable (Well, ish. I don't think
cavemen behaved like this, but then I can't even begin to guess what an
'umbopo' is!)
However, when the band were given the chance to make
a long-playing record, their musical instincts kicked in - eventually. As far
as 10cc were concerned, this might be the only record they'd ever get to make
together and they wanted to make it a good one that was based on the skills
they'd learnt in their 'other' groups. The band have had so many ideas piling
up for so long that they don't quite know what to do with them so we get all of
them, with the most 'complete' version of this record (the one re-released in
1976 at the peak of 10cc's fame) running for a full fifty-one minutes thanks to
a couple of extra songs. And they are songs too - real songs this time, based
around melody and prettiness and lyrical ideas, not drum tracks and chanting.
Well, by and large: actually fans of the single would have enjoyed the opening
track 'Um Wah Um Woh' for coming from a similar place to the single with its
caveman chanting and an early try-out for some of the ideas in future cannibal
novelty song [37] 'Baron Samedi', but that aside 'School Stinks' is not the
record fans of the single would have expected at all. Pretty much all the other
songs on here are gorgeous lilting Godley ballads, full of pathos and emotion
and sung far 'straighter' than anything 10cc will do, with the exception of the
sarcasm of the title of 'Suite: FA' and the desperate novelty of 'Desperate
Dan'. Even more confusing for fans who wanted an album like the single is the
fact that Godley sings on everything bar one song even though it was Creme who
sang on 'Neanderthal Man'. Even more confusing than that for modern fans is the
fact that Eric Stewart, as close to a 'leader' as any band as democratic as
10cc could have, keeps his mouth shut barring 'Run Baby Run' and plays perhaps
two guitar solos the whole record (they're both goods one though, right in the
middle between the bluesy blisters of the Mindbender records and the screaming
clarity of the 10cc years, especially the finale to 'Um Wah Um Woh').
The result is like hearing something familiar that
hasn't quite worked itself into shape yet, as if you trying to follow the recipe
for pancakes but somehow ended up inventing scones instead. You can just tell,
at several times across this record (usually when Eric's guitars are in full
flight and Graham and Kevin are gamely holding on just before an orchestra
takes the song into yet another dimension) that this band are going places and
aren't that far off from the band we know and love of later years. Yet the
basics are very out of kilter: you don't laugh anywhere across this record
(yeah, 'Desperate Dan' wants you to but it's really not that funny), instead
you go 'ah that's sweet' or maybe do a bit of crying at places, which is kind
of the opposite of the 10cc philosophy. It's as if a whole group of cartoon
baddies got together and went 'you know what? Let's be nice to people today and
give up our booty to the poor' or The Spice Girls got together and went 'you
know what? Let's write our own songs and start talking about feminist ethics
and the need for equality in society instead of shouting empty slogans like
'zig-a-zig-ah' at random'. It's the future, but not quite as we know it - 10cc
have a completely different outlook, belief system and attitude to Hotlegs yet
ask basically the same questions (how do we make the world a better and fairer
place?) and coming up with basically the same answers (by loving each other or
laughing at each other) but use entirely different equations to come to the
same hypothesis. Musically Hotlegs resemble 10cc a lot more than they do
lyrically, but even here Hotlegs takes the quiet, understated, languid approach
whereas 10cc - more often than not - demand your full attention. It's
performance wise and production-wise the band sound most like what they'll
become, but even here the same guitar 'n' drum sound, the same vocals and the
same natty mixture of rough but exciting backing track and elaborate but
necessary overdubs aren't always being used to the same effect and are used to
deliver a feeling not a thought. This isn't a record that's 'clever' the way
that many people complained that 10cc always were, this is a record that's
built from the heart not the brain.
But it is still awfully good, an album with many
highlights: 'Today' is gorgeous, a hit single in waiting in which Godley tries
out [43] 'I'm Not In Love' by both trying to hide and make himself known to his
future love that's playful and innocent and warm. 'Take Me Back' has Godley
pleading to be, well, taken back after listing all his faults and pining away
for a love over a slow, mournful, wordy backing that's simply gorgeous
(especially Gouldman's guest bass part which positively nails the mood of
questioning and doubt). 'You Didn't Like It Because You Didn't Think About It'
breaks up the tempo with an intense prog-rock freak-out (later recycled for [26]
'Fresh Air For My Mama' off the 'real' 10cc debut) that wonders out loud about
betrayal, bouncing back after slights and religion with Godley singing in his
lower 'natural' voice for the only time on the record. 'Suite: FA' is a
stronger first go at [71]'Feel The Benefit', an epic that takes place over
nearly thirteen whole minutes as Godley figures out his love life with all its
twists and turns, so much so that the band keep coming back for more. Eric's
guitar is masterful here on what is easily the most 10cc moment on the record.
'Um Wah Um Woh' might be a very daft record, but it's tougher than it sounds
and has a fascinating philosophical lyric underneath it's chanting and two
minute long caveman coda. And then of course there's 'Neanderthal Man' which
doesn't belong on this album at all (even though it sits right at the heart of
it in all three versions of this album released in 1970, 1971 and 1976) but
which is welcome on all these sets, a groundbreaking moment of funk and soul
and feeling to interrupt the lengthier wordier songs. Yes we also get the
silliness of 'Desperate Dan', the grunts of 'Lady Sadie' and 'All God's Children' is a variation on
'Today' too far, all three of which deserve to be buried away and forgotten.
Most of this record, though, is up to the standard of any of the main 10cc LPs,
easily. It's a tragedy this much-sought-after rarity isn't better known - it
was just that after the single this record was marketed wrong and to completely
the wrong audience. Then again if it had been a success then maybe the band
would have been stuck like this and, good as it is, it is no substitute for the
de facto 10cc sound.
You can kind of understand why none of Hotlegs/10cc
have gone out of their way to put this record out again - it is patchy and
occasionally downright embarrassing, while even the best parts of it tend to
ramble without the finely poised pruning shears of the later years. And yet
it's more than good enough to sit alongside the other 10cc releases, even the
best of the others. As overall listening experiences go it’s actually a far
less rocky ride than the exhilarating rollercoaster of ‘Sheet Music’ or the
patchiness of ‘How Dare You!’, perhaps because most of the songs are coming
from a similar place while even 'Desperate Dan' slots in as the record's
'oddball' the same way that [38] 'Sacro-Illiac' or [57] 'Iceberg' will on those
two albums. The exotic array of instruments – Stewart and Creme can play
practically anything and did, even back then – dominates the mix far more than
any vocalists though and overall it’s the quirky well-though-out arrangements
that make this sometimes tired mix of songs sound better than it actually is.
Ignored for far too long, this is one of those rare early records by a future
mainstream band that really does deserve a re-appraisal because - unlike the
early Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel records legally pulled from the shelves
several times over the years – it works as both a stepping stone towards what’s
coming later and as a genuinely interesting album in its own right. Hotlegs are
so hot they're positively cool and sound it (most of the time at least) even if
you haven't got a clue what's coming next to measure the band against.
The
Songs:
[1] ‘Um Wah, Um Woh’ might not be the greatest
song that Godley and Creme ever wrote but it’s certainly memorable and is
likely to be the song you’re still singing its manic funky riff hours after
taking the needle off the record despite the fact that there’s still so many
more songs to come. It’s the closest Hotlegs ever came to re-creating the magic
in a bottle that was ‘Neanderthal Man’ and a has a nicely rocky sound that the
rest of the album ignores except for brief moments. Stewart’s 1950s-ish guitar
licks and Godley’s groovy drumming are already locked into a great battle that
sounds like the darker side of the 1950s compared to the purity of [19] ‘Donna’
to come, while vocally this is a pre-cursor of the tribal-heavy songs from
‘Sheet Music’. But then the harmonies kick in (‘don’t suffer in
sii-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ilence now’) and suddenly this messy raw song changes
in a heartbeat and it sounds like CSN at their peak – blissful, effortless and
turning in dozens of directions at once thanks to the four very different
vocalists uniting as one. We’re getting every 10cc card they used, then, in the
first few minutes of their first (sort-of) record. But interestingly, there’s
hardly any comedy on this record – lots of bizarre ideas, yes, but nothing
designed to make you laugh out loud – and even this song’s silly title doesn’t
sound quite so silly anymore when you realise that it’s the sound of a tribe
desperately trying to communicate and getting frustrated that they can’t. It
sounds even less silly when you realise that your first instincts are wrong and
that the cavemen in the song are actually the modern us, still struggling to
communicate with each other and ‘dead inside’. In one of the cleverest twists
of any 10cc-linked record he contrast between the tribal monosyllabic verses
and the sustained soaring harmonies in the chorus sounds so huge – because it
represents the gap between how we are now and what we could be. By the end we
get a rare display of gospel as Godley realises that ‘the blind amongst us can
hear! The deaf amongst us can speak!’ and that everyone still has a chance at
communicating somehow with something. This realisation is celebrated by a
glorious two minute guitar solo from Eric that’s rare for him, building up out
of slow peaks and circling its way round the mixes’ panning system left and
right as if trying to soar away from us. This song then goes back to grunting
but in a much more exciting way than before, this a capella-with-percussion
moment going round and round for much longer than you expect it to, with a full
ten ‘un-wah un-woh um-wah-um-woh-who um-wah-um-wah-um-wah-um-wah-um-wooooooah!s
before the instruments suddenly kick back in. The result is gloriously exciting
as you hear each breathe in and every small grunt as Eric, Kev and Lol all
chant together and try to stay together, living out this tale of telepathy by
trying to stay in synch with each other. Hotlegs are good at this sort of raw
power and never more than here on this album highlight and it’s a shame in many
ways that 10cc lose this ability (only on [44] ‘Blackmail’ will they ever be
quite this exciting again). A deep slab of philosophy on what it means to
communicate masquerading as a novelty track with one of the best riffs in this
book - all that and its guaranteed to have you singing ‘um wah um woh um wah um
woh woh’ for hours. Good show, lads.
Next up we get the lilting [2] ‘Today’, a ballad
that displays all of the 10cc quirks not yet displayed in the last song. In
time to come most fans will recognise that there’s usually something up with
characters when Kevin starts giving them voice with his own vocals, sugary
sweet and innocent like this. More often than not they turn out to be secret
villains hiding something or are at least bitterly sarcastic and trying not to
let it show; this track though answers the questions about what a song where
Kevin sings sweetly and means it might sound like: beautiful is the result.
None of this track is particularly new or startling – it sounds like a load of
Paul McCartney ballads stuck together and sent through the wash – but it is
very very pretty and the contrast between the deliberately hesitant and unsure
vocals and the confident, constant backing track is impressive. In a neat
mirror of [43] ‘I’m Not In Love’ Kev’s narrator plucks up the courage to ask a
girl out, too shy to let her see him, mirrored by a later verse where he seems
to be patching things up after a split. Both times he knows that ‘today is a
very important day’ that can impact on the rest of his life, with Godley
overwhelmed that somebody loves him and ‘cares about my whereabouts’. The
simple tune is lovely too, circling round on three notes before stabbing on a
single note for the cry of ‘Today! Today! Today!’ but in a much more joyful way
than this song’s close cousin ‘Take Me Back’. I wonder in fact if this song was
original made up of the two stuck together, with the edgier ‘back’ intended for
the middle before the band realised it wasn’t working? Suddenly an orchestra
arrives out of nowhere (an orchestra! The band who made ‘Neanderthal Man’. This
isn’t what fans were expecting!) and its gorgeous, dancing around the song’s
tune and lifting it higher with every pass of the chorus the way a decent
string arrangement should (but rarely does). The lengthy middle eight about
finding someone else who feels the same way (‘I knew as much somehow!’) seems
out of place here but is still fairly impressive in its own right, slipping in
just enough unexpected notes to keep our interest while remaining true to the
balladeering aspect of the song. Listen out too for Gouldman’s bass lines –
officially this is the first ever song the quartet worked on all together, but
see my notes below as to why I don’t believe this is true..10cc at their most
beautiful, a much under-rated song.
Now for Neanderthal’s decidedly evolved B-side [3] 'You Didn't Like
It Because You Didn't Think About It'. Wow – a third genius song in a row! It’s all
going to be downhill from here but at the moment I don’t care because here’s
yet another special 10cc trick, stuffing seven or eight unfinished snippets
together and turning it into a single (lengthy) song. This in itself makes it
one of the most 10cc songs on the album, never settling down to be any one of
these things, but in terms of mood it couldn’t be more different, cycling
through stages of anger denial and grief as a depressed Godley howls over why
things keep going wrong and wondering what he can possibly put his faith into
this time that things are going to turn out alright. A jazzy opening, with
Godley’s out of control tom toms set up against a stabbing piano, castanets and
more earthy harmonies cycles for a full sixty-0five seconds, Lol’s smashed
piano chords echoed by Eric’s stinging guitar and occasional overdubbed Crème
guitar licks while Kev rolls around his drums in slow motion and a sea of
percussion all play. It’s the very sound of someone being trapped and
suffocated, made extra clever by the fact that the harmonies seem to be leading
us somewhere, only for their beauty to be interrupted by a snaky guitar line
playing what we’ve just heard more aggressively than ever. By the time the main
song arrives it appears without fanfare, quietly resolving into a chugging
turbulent blues song that sounds utterly miserable. Only with a further quieter
more reflective section that feels like a weary sigh does the tension finally
let up – and then it’s on a verse contemplating suicide. Godley moans in his
more natural gruffer voice that ‘you can’t keep a good man down!’, snarling
that he’s going to keep getting back up over and over again whatever life
throws at him. However even he admits defeat in the end, wailing ‘take me
away!’ and getting on the road to play again, realising that the drive that
made him take up this job in the first place ‘my God…its fading away’ and
asking for help. Even a switch to Kevin’s prettier falsetto feels like less of
a resolution and more of a rest, Godley’s narrator sleeping on his decision to
end it all, thankful that he’s survived this night at least and that it is a
new day, the old one ‘over and done’. He still ends the song pleading for
direction and help though, sounding deeply upset. Finally, after almost three
minutes, this formerly angry song lets down its guard and admits, with tears in
its eyes, that it ought to give up on the object of its affections. The band
were obviously fond of this section of the song as they steal it completely for
the second half of ‘Fresh Air For My Mama’ (from the first ‘proper’ album
‘10cc’), but what’s interesting is how much better the song sounds here,
surrounded by grief and troubles. Instead of being a minor spark of life as it
sounds on the later record, here it’s like the sun coming out.
autobiographical, the second sounds almost triumphant, as if the band have
overcome the obstacles by 1972 and have found hard-won fame and fortune, but in
1971 failure was a very real feeling. This, then, might well be the least 10cc
lyric any of the band wrote at any time, a deep confessional that makes perfect
sense for a musician who by now is twenty-four with nothing to show for his
life except a string of flop singles and an art college certificate (at least
Eric and Graham had had their successes by now but the closest Kevin ever came
was being told The Mockingbirds’ ‘For Your Love’ was too un-commercial to be a
hit single weeks before The Yardbirds’ cover of Graham’s song was exactly
that). Kevin sounds fed up and asking for divine inspiration, the twist being
that it comes with this song’s very A-side, against all odds. However I do
wonder how heartfelt this song is: the line ‘come pick up your Bible and pray
with me’ seems an odd thing for a Jewish lad who learnt to play in a Jewish
band to sing and we do know that this song is almost all Godley’s work (Eric is
the only Christian in the band, but even then atheist seems a closer
description of his beliefs). Could it be that this song started as a generic
blues offering before the band realised how heartfelt it was? The result is a
quiet triumph, brilliant in every way the A-side hadn’t touched yet and showing
just how much talent and heart was spilling over in this band. A one-two-three
punch as good as this? Wow, that won’t be bettered until ‘Windows In The
Jungle’!
So far so good, but sadly the rest of the album is a
far bumpier ride all round. [4] ‘Fly Away’ is the first poor track on the
record, repeating ‘Today’s ear-catching falsetto and fragile mood but without
the strong tune or hooks to go with it. Stewart (or is it Creme’s?) guitar work
is exemplary and the use of an unexpected woodwind solo is a work of genius,
but however well embellished this basic song sounds like exactly the sort of
thing future famous artists write for their earliest records and discard. The
lyrics are odd, recalling earlier Godley works performed as ‘Frabjoy and
Runciple Spoon’ or ‘The Yellow Bellow Boom Room’ by having Kevin waking up as
if out of a dream which is surely one more drug-inspired given some of the
imagery. He has been in this so sleep he has to teach his body how to work
again and his spirit seems to leave his body to go a-wondering while ‘my body
goes to seed, wo-aoh’. The song changes abruptly into a love song then as
Godley tries to follow a voice he hears ‘against the wind’ and he finds that
actually he isn’t flying at all but home in bed dreaming of flying away. What’s
odd is that we don’t get any sense anywhere of why this character needs to
escape so badly or what exactly happened when he thought he was; the later more
sophisticated 10cc would have a verse in here about him feeling sick and
grounded in his body, or have the wife waking him up making his heart soar in a
different kind of flying, or if this was from the later darker period have the
narrator awake to find nobody recognises him at all. This song, though, just
ends without having really thought about where it was going to fly to. Most
odd.
[5] ‘Run Baby Run’
is – significantly – the first time we hear a vocalist that isn’t Kevin
Godley in one of his many guises and its Eric Stewart sounding like he never
will again. Treated, distorted vocals are obviously meant to be there to give
this generic blues-rockabilly number an identity, but as it never changes tack
anywhere throughout it’s just annoying instead – Eric has such a great voice
that making him sound like a croaking frog is a waste. Stewart’s narrator is
getting drunk thinking about what his baby is getting up to in the city while
he’s stuck in the country. Though he never says what his job is he fact that
Godley hammers a glass bottle just like a chain-gang would might or might not
be a clue. Bonce again though there’s no variety here and even the last verse
where without explanation the couple are together again and ‘everything’s fine’
is performed in the exact same way. Elsewhere even the worst tracks on this
album have some idea of change, contrast and complexity – this is just a
stereotype that’s almost written on a single note and could have been made by
anyone. Why was this album lengthened to 53 minutes again?!?
The next promising song on here is [6] ‘The Loser’, although
to be honest this song can’t hold a candle to the first three on the album. Gouldman
isn’t credited as being on this track but I’d swear that’s his vocal on this
track, even with the dodgy accent and slight falsetto – it even has the same
kind of luckless character he’ll be making his own in a few albums time. It is
as if, after years of trying to sound poppy and commercial over with
Kassenatz-Katz, Graham is letting loose here with a ridiculously OTT song that
isn’t commercial in anyway and in 1970 would have seemed old hate with even the
1968 craze for rockabilly dead and over. This track isn’t really any more inventive
than the album’s other lazy tracks and repeats the few words it does have over
and over, but it is at least lively, brightened up by a terrific band
performance made up of a terrific piano lick from Lol Creme and great guitar
duelling from Creme and Stewart at their loudest. Note the ten second drum solo
from Godley, the closest musically this album comes to re-capturing the spirit
of ‘Neanderthal Man’. Interestingly, this track may well be the most 10cc-like
on here – it’s encouraging us to laugh at the narrator’s problems at least –
but never again will the band come right out and tell us that he’s a ‘fool’
(usually it’s because the 10cc characters don’t know any better why things keep
going wrong – if only the Hancock TV series had still been going by the 1970s I
can think of no better band to do the music for him). As a result, we as listeners are stuck as to
whether to join in with the stop-start ha-haaing of the backing track or listen
to the real desperation and hopelessness of the lyrics, which do break through
the melody from time to time. An interesting experiment, this is – again –
another track from this album that on the one hand sounds so 10cc-ish and yet
on the other is construction-wise nothing like the rest of this album or any of
the LPs to come.
Next is the album’s hit single [7] ‘Neanderthal Man’,
which is one of those songs you either love or loathe. As for me, I love it,
ah! – every repetitive, out-of-tune warbling minute of it. This song is so
simple it should hurt (and to many it does) but simplicity never hurt anyone
when its handled the right way and thanks to being largely improvised and then
re-worked this song is so cleverly constructed that it ticks all the right
boxes less cynically than most. We get the gist of the song in the first thirty
seconds (its caveman grunting about being Neanderthal men making Neanderthal
love) but the trick is how the song is going to build on that and keep our
interest – first we get the same tune an octave higher, then we get a moody
instrumental version, then we get a repeat with a much ‘heavier’ sound, then we
get some tin whistle accompaniment that could have come right out of the caves
and then we fade on a new riff altogether. People often under-estimate 10cc’s
sense of rhythm in amongst praise for their song structures, lyrics and sheer
amount of overdubbing but in actual fact many of their best songs ([44] Blackmail,
[30] Wall Street Shuffle, [23] Rubber Bullets) are built heavily on a single
rhythm which is then changed or developed in some way. Even [43] I’m Not In
Love’ centres around the fact that the rhythm is hardly there – there are so
few instruments involved the whole thing sounds like a heartbeat booming away. As
for the lyrics they take every other love song that was around at the time and
make it primal, the dance of love reduced to primal urges from two Neanderthals
who don’t need to think to enjoy their time together. The fact that this
thought comes with the deep throbbing pulse of Godley’s drums testing the
four-track is inspired, performed not the way most bands approaching this sort
of song would (all Who and jumpy) but slow and teasing, precisely because the
whole point of this song as first recorded was to get that heavy thud echoey
sound of the drums for safe-keeping on Strawberry Studios’ four-track machine.
You spend the song waiting for every inevitable thud which sound slow yet
graceful, so much so it’s easy to see why Lol’s brain began to think in terms
of Neanderthals when he was messing around with the song. Impressively though
this is not a song about stupid love so much as simple love – it may not be
quick, it may not be clever, but there’s still something downright beautiful
about this song that makes it work. What’s more it is an under-rated
influential song too, one driven not by plot or melody but by rhythm and with
the drums the lead part on a hit single for the first time since the flipping
Dave Clark Five. You wouldn’t want to hear a whole LP of it (even though that
is I suspect precisely the reason why ‘School Stinks’ didn’t sell to an
audience desperate for more of this), but ‘Neanderthal Man’ sounds so unlike
any other record made, even now, that it seems unfair to relegate it to the
status of an unloved, forgotten track forever doomed to pop up as an unexpected
extra on the more thorough 10cc compilations out there.
[8] ‘How Many Times?’ is the last true classic on
the album (yes, as early as the first track on side two the good times are
almost all over!) and is much more in keeping with the kind of progressive,
complex but still undeniably singalong pop that existed in 1970. It’s too
reserved to be glam and yet too flashy to be sixties pop; 1970 was one of the
biggest crossover period’s in music and this song seems caught up in the exact
halfway point between both. Godley is on strong form on the vocal once more
(impressive for someone who only had, I believe, three vocal appearances in the
whole of his career before this record and one of those was buried by Gouldman’s
lead with the Mockingbirds), asking a series of rhetorical questions that he
knows will never be answered. This song tries hard to be ‘Blowing In the Wind’
with a similar sing-songy melody and lyrics that are just a series of
rhetorical questions (can rhetorical questions ever work in music? Is that gag
too postmodern?) but unlike many songs on this album Hotlegs keep the tension
up throughout, switching gears in a way that will become second nature to this
band and which they nearly pull off here. The backing is what makes this
curious song about pulling yourself back up from defeat over and over – there’s
a glorious bubbling bass (surely Gouldman’s uncredited work again?) and some
sunshiney guitar that in true 10cc fashion has been connected to a piano to
sound like a hybrid instrument (a pianar or a guitano?) What isn’t very 10cc is
that after a verse and a middle eight the song basically comes to a complete
halt for not just one but two instrumental breaks that take the song through to
an unlikely end. The first is more what you’d expect and is genuinely thrilling,
when a bunch of strings sweep in from nowhere and start noodling around the
song’s central riff, as if they’re busy knocking down the same doors as the
narrator. A less likely moody second section then mixes a country hoedown with
some starkly played bluesy guitar riffs as if the song has just switched over
from rock fm to country mid-song only to find the same track playing. Across
this confusing finale the song wanders further and further away from its
original template, leaving the questions largely unanswered and unanswerable.
[9] ‘Desperate Dan’ tries
hard to be a fun novelty number in a very 1970s way (‘Oh My! I eats cow pie! It
makes me high!), but the problem is that these jokes don’t come from the band
but from the long-lasting Dandy comic where the Wild West strongman appeared in
every issue every week between 1937 and 2013 (minus the odd issue scrapped
because of World War II). To be honest it makes perfect sense that not only
would 10cc know this comic they would also prefer it to its more famous
companion comic The Beano (made by the same publishers D CD Thomson): it tended
to be broader, wackier and naughtier with larger-than-life characters who all
sound as if they have just walked in from a 10cc album. It is a surprise,
actually, that the band never tried a similar thing again (‘Bananaman’, a
hapless super hero who is really a schoolboy trying to avoid his homework and
who has a most unusual allergic reaction to eating bananas, sounds like an
outtake from ‘Sheet Music’). However it all sounds a bit, well, weird – and not
in a good way. Remember that this song about a comic book hero designed for the
nation’s eight-year-olds is being sold on the back of a song about Neanderthals
making love and that to anyone who doesn’t know who these characters are it
comes off as gibberish (for instance cow pie is, for those who don’t know, the
way Desperate Dan keeps his strength up and are cooked whole with their tails
sticking out of the pie dish). What’s more the narrator isn’t Desperate Dan but
someone who feels desperate, which is weird in itself because – despite the
name – Dan is nearly always fully in charge (if oblivious to the chaos his
strong-arm antics create in the town of Gulchville). Later 10cc songs would
tell us exactly why this character feels desperate but no, yet again this
repetitive song tells us nothing much at all (except a previously unknown
hallucinogenic side-effect of eating too many cow-pies). A fun rumble around Godley
sounding drunk, a country tonk piano, a rough sounding saxophone, a guitar solo
by Eric that sounds like a dress rehearsal for the rockabilly of his solo set
‘Frooty Rooties’ and a chance for 10cc to go even more outré in the vocals is
sadly not enough of a reason for Hotlegs to inflict this song on us. Even the
applause at the end following a particularly dumb and unnecessary false-ending seems
subdued and ends suddenly, almost as if they realised what they were really up
to and got embarrassed.
[10] ‘Take Me Back’ is at least a much more
substantial song, full of the worry that would be a fine song in its own right
but it’s the third – count them – third song on a single album to repeat the
trick of having Kevin Godley sing a fragile sounding song to a simple guitar
accompaniment (and some low-mixed organ) on what sounds like the exact same
tune as ‘Today’ but sung in a sadder frame of mind. This is the start of a run
of songs about feeling depressed about a love life which seem an odd response
to getting a hit song with a tale of Neanderthal lust, but that’s romantic
singer-songwriters for you. Kevin is beginning to have second thoughts about
being tied down for the rest of his life, his art school instructions coming to
the fore as he vows to leave – only for him to change his mind and ask to be
taken back as ‘I was never meant to be a pilgrim’. What’s interesting on this
surely unique 10cc song about wanting to stay where it’s safe and cosy is how
successfully Hotlegs convey that feeling in music, with Kevin’s honey-dripping
falsetto accompanied by just the right folky balance of acoustic guitar,
strings and a subtle organ part that ebbs and flows across the song. At least
until the final minute which out of nowhere throws this song into turmoil with
another snarling Eric Stewart guitar part that suggests that just maybe the
narrator is changing his mind again and is doomed to an endless cycle of
feeling hemmed in then breaking free. The string solo in the middle is nice,
adding depth to this song’s already plentiful atmosphere, but there’s only so
many times we can hear Godley’s narrators moaning about things going wrong and
yearning for the past that we can take on one record. The lyrics on this song
also vary wildly – ‘put your hand in my pocket and dance’ is a line I never
thought I’d get to hear from a band as clever as 10cc. The result is a song
that would have worked well on a less soggy album and without the exact same
tune as ‘Today’ but here just feels like one piece of repetition too far.
[11] ‘Lady Sadie’ is an odd song. Yeah, I know,
I’ve said that a lot in this review so far and its always been true, but this
song is really really odd. Four minutes
of chugging pop-blues of a sort that only ever seemed to be around in the early
1970s (it sounds identical to Crazy Horse song ‘Dirty Dirty’ for one), this is
10cc trying to work out why ‘neandertgal Man’ was so successful and figuring,
wrongly, that they can do ‘raunchy’. Lady Sadie, you see, is either a
prostitute or a girl who is close enough to make no difference and aint’ really
a lady at all. Kevin gets hot under the collar just thinking about her and her
daughter in a threesome (!) and looks forward to some slap and tickle on the
single most ‘Carry On’ style 10cc song of them all (just beating [423] ‘Un Nuit
En Paris’ in a heated final). The backing is quite impressive in a ‘gee,
they’ll never sound like this again!’ kind of a way with a blaring horn section
now to go alongside the strings. It’s typical for this topsy-turvy album though
that its this insubstantial track, even more than ‘Desperate Dan’, which is
dressed up to the nines and turned into an epic when it is a minor B-side at
best. Some bands made whole careers out of single-riff jams turned into songs
like this one; thankfully ‘Lady Sadie’ is the first and last such song in the
10cc canon.
Blooming heck, I’d forgotten about [12] ‘All God’s
Children’, the – gulp – fourth song on the album built around the
melancholic fragile riff for ‘Today’. Sure it’s a nice riff and 10cc does the
pretty ballad card better than most, but this sense of déjà vu across the
record is getting silly. Godley is in good form – again, the guitar playing’s
nice – again, but this time around even the harmonies are pretty ropey and the
tempo is even slower than before. The chorus line - and I mean line, it’s a single sentence –
is the song’s only real saving grace, sounding like a missing section of Brian
Wilson’s ‘Smile’ with the descending minor key line passage accompanied by the
words ‘look while they play’. We even get a mention of ‘California’ in the next
line, just to acknowledge where the ideas are coming from. Godley was, if you
were wondering, a pretty big Beach Boys fan (naming ‘God Only Knows’ as one of
his favourite songs by anybody in a 2016 interview) and this is about the
closest he comes to aping his heroes’ late 1960s period (i.e. after they hung
up their surfboards). Brian Wilson would, though, make rather more of a basic
idea than this somehow with nothing much to add except the hippie idea that all
children are blessed (what, even the ones suffering unprecedented poverty under
the Conservative party?) Fascinating evidence of 10cc role-playing then
(they’re singing about how pretty their hometown of California is but the most
exotic town any of them came from was Manchester), but it’s too slow, too dull
and too much like what we’ve had already.
The closing [13] 'Suite F.A.' tries
hard to be the mammoth album closer this record needs – in fact, it tries so
hard the record ends on a perfectly suitable note at least four times before
starting back up again. What’s odd is that none of these sections feel at all
as if they belong in an epic song being more of Godley’s panic and worry over
his love-life and they have very little to do with the other sections too
except a general feeling of restlessness. There’s not much focus here, just a
jumble of sections stuck together a la ‘Abbey Road’ (that album has an awful
lot to answer for...the first section of this track even sounds like a sped up
version of that album’s ‘Sun King’). Across the song Godley pleads with his
beloved that he will have to leave soon if things don’t change and the next
thirteen minutes are basically him stalling, hoping that she will invite him
back again. Though it starts off as laidback as Kevin’s other contributions to
the album the stinging instrumental section, with Eric and Lol’s guitars
screaming in each other’s faces, hints at what a life-changing situation this
is for the narrator and it’s almost a shame when we get the first of our false
starts and Godley walks back in for another laidback encore. ‘I’ve got a lot to
lose’ he urges his lover before deciding that ‘love is blind’. Next Kevin gets
nasty with a sudden switch to what in 1970 was as close as any white musician
got to a reggae lilt as he asks why his love is holding out for someone better.
‘Don’t ypou know you’re getting older|? Don’t look back across your shoulder,
the wind is growing bolder and it might just knock you over!’ is surely the
best couplet on this album by the future masters of the genre but it feels out
of place somehow alongside an ‘I don’t care, woah!’ chorus that kicks in just
when it’s clear the narrator plainly does (nobody writes thirteen minute suites
about love if they don’t care). Just as this passage is out-staying its welcome
in comes some Lol barrelhouse piano and we think we’re giving up for a rocky
fade. Only Kevin can’t bring himself to leave things there and instead we get a
new walking-pace tempo part with Eric and Lol now audible in the vocals for the
first time. Unfortunately this soon decelerates into a long list of rhyming
words ending in ‘-ation’ rather than being a proper ending (‘celebration’ ‘invitation’).
This is perhaps the weakest section of the song and ill-fitting for the finale
of such a lengthy piece as after thirteen minutes we’re no closer to an end to
the story, with Kevin still asking to ‘get back home’. Throughout this lengthy
piece seems as if it is about to settle down and do something really good but
it never quite arrives at the familiar melody you feel the song is just about
to segue into and each section is perhaps a little long for it’s own good.
Still, it is nothing if not ambitious and about as far removed from playing it
safe as a follow-up to ‘Neanderthal Man’ as the band could possibly get.
Perhaps the best thing about it is the title, a very 10cc style joke that it
all means ‘sweet fuck all’ but even better than that is the fact the band get
to credit to a children’s choir for on the sleeve (there is no children’s choir
you see, so they get credited for doing, well, f all).
Overall, then, it’s a complete hodge-podge this
album, with many of the things that 10cc will later build on for huge success
later in the decade along with many things that we’re rather glad that they
dropped. Still, as embarrassments go, this album is a rewarding one and this
lengthy LP is stuffed with so many discarded ideas and sketchy thoughts that
most bands fail to match it throughout their whole careers, never mind a first
go. So how about a CD release guys? (Even the limited edition is missing a good
third of the tracks and yes, typically, the ones missing are the ones most
worth hearing). If nothing else this
album is great to hear as a sort of alternate universe LP where 10cc were
Godley’s band rather than a democracy and where they spent their time recording
emotional ballads rather than intellectual quests. Even with limited horsepower
and a couple of engine mis-fires 10cc can still set a mighty high standard and
while I wouldn’t swap it for even a drop of that style to come Hotlegs are
genuinely entertaining in their own right away from just being 10cc back in the
days before they were prime numbers. A patchy and confusing but fascinating and
under-rated LP.
A NOW COMPLETE LIST OF 10cc ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM
ARCHIVES:
'How Dare You!' (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/10cc-how-dare-you-1976.html
'Deceptive Bends'
(1977) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/10cc-deceptive-bends-1977.html
'Meanwhile' (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/10cc-meanwhile-1992.html
'Mirror Mirror' (1995) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/09/10cc-mirror-mirror-1995.html
Pre-10cc: 1965-1973, A Guide to Mindbenders, Mockingbirds and Frabjoy and
Runciple Spoon!
Non-Album Songs Part One
1972-1980 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/10cc-non-album-songs-part-one-1972-1980.html
Non-Album Songs Part Two
1981-2006 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/10cc-non-album-songs-part-two-1981-2006.html
Surviving TV Clips, Music Videos and Unreleased Recordings https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/10cc-and-godley-creme-surviving-tv.html
Solo/Wax/Live/Compilation
Albums Part One 1971-1986
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/10cc-solocompilationlivewax-albums-part.html
Solo/Wax/Live/Compilation Albums Part Two 1987-2014 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/10cc-sololivecompilationwax-albums-part.html
10cc Essay: Not-So-Rubber
Bullets http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/10cc-essay-not-so-rubber-bullets.html