Monday, 7 August 2017

10cc: Solo/Compilation/Live/Wax Albums Part One: 1971-1986



You can now buy 'Memories - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of 10cc' in e-book form by clicking here!
Hotlegs "Song"

(Phillips, '1971')

Today/Um Wah Um Woh/Run Baby Run/How Many Times?/The Loser//Take Me Back/Fly Away/All God's Children/Suite F.A.

"It's not so easy to explain away, it takes a foolish man to try, I knew as soon as I put pen to paper"

A fairly straightforward re-issue of the one and only 'Hotlegs' album with a slightly skewed track listing, a more commercial front cover (well, just - a cartoon of a man and a guitar that plays hearts) and a far better title. The track that's gone awol is 'Lady Sadie' which is no great loss really, although the adrenalin-charged  'Um Wah Um Woh' seems wrong coming as track two after the lush balladry of 'Today'. All the fans who stayed away from the record the last time around...stayed away again, but Phillips will be back to try and cash in on the 10cc name in 1976 with a third go at plugging the album, when it's so vastly more successful that it almost charts, which will give you some idea of how few copies this version of the record sold. 

"100cc: The Greatest Hits Of 10cc"

(UK Records, '1975')

Rubber Bullets/Donna/The Dean And I/The Wall Street Shuffle/SSSSSSSSilly Love//Waterfall/4% Of Something/Gismo My Way/Hot Sun Rock/Bee In My Bonnet/18 Carat Man Of Means

"I got a bee in my bonnet, got a chip on my shoulder!"

The UK label tries to cash in on the mega-huge success of 'I'm Not In Love' after the band's departure for the Mercury label with a tatty compilation that was released far too early before the band had a chance to rack up the hits. There are only two albums and eight singles to choose from anyway but even some of those are missing such as the flops 'Johnny Don't Do It' 'Headline Hustler' and 'The Worst Band In The World'. Unusually this compilation splits the set between A-sides and B-sides, making this a useful compilation for fans to track down in the era of vinyl when these flipsides were rare. Sadly most of them aren't much cop (with the exception of 'Waterfall', which deserved to be a hit even more than 'Donna' did), which makes for very uneven listening compared to the gems on side one. Un-needed in the digital world this compilation has yet to be released on CD: a good thing too as there are better and far longer and far nicer packaged sets than this one (the cover is just the album title on a black background, which seems such a waste given what a colourful band 10cc always were). A shame the full set of eight A/B sides aren't here too given what a short running time this compilation has.

The King Biscuit Flower Hour"

 (King Biscuit Flower Hour Records, Recorded November 1975, Released November 1995)

Intro/SSSSSSSSilly Love/Baron Samedi/Old Wild Men/The Sacro-Iliac/Somewhere In Hollywood/Donna/Ships Don't Just Disappear In The Night (Do They?!?!?)/The Worst Band In The World/The Wall Street Shuffle/Rubber Bullets

"It irrigates my heart with greed to know that you adore me!"

Recorded at the same time as the 'BBC In Concert' set that's always doing the rounds on the BBC4 channel, this is 10cc at their ferocious live peak, heavy on the 'Sheet Music' period. The band are way more primitive than on the records and rawer than the later Eric/Graham and others incarnation of 'Live and Let Live', but that's the whole point: the songs have all been extended and given new arrangements to that they rock out in ways that they never did on record. Sometimes this works, with a particularly funky 'Baron Samedi' going on forever, a gorgeous 'Somewhere In Hollywood' which is fragile and haunting compared to the tougher, more confident version on 'Sheet Music' and a rocking finale of 'Rubber Bullets'. Alas the experiments just as often go wrong, with a scrappy 'Ships Don't Disappear In The Night', an unlistenable 'Old Wild Men' and an even more up-itself 'Worst Band In The World' reduced to funny accents and in-jokes. The best thing about this may be Kevin Godley's zany introduction (sadly not on the BBC show) where he starts by quoting from The Bible and announces himself as 'an omnipotent, omnipresent and abdominal God, here to bring you the fabulous far-out funky freaky hippie happy zippy zany wicky wacky 10cc!' Well you can't get a bigger opening act can you? I bet his fee was pretty high though. Good fun and though it's as unlike the clever technical overdub-filled albums as you can get this is still well worth hearing. Odd that there are no songs from the just released 'Original Soundtrack' album though - not even 'I'm Not In Love' or 'Life Is a Minestrone', which makes me wonder if the date given in the sleevenotes is out by a few months or even a year (November 1974 makes much more sense compared to the set-lists we have for other gigs). 

Hotlegs "You Didn't Like It Because You Didn't Think Of It!"

(Phillips, '1976')

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/Suite F.A.

"You can't leave a good band down!"

Now that 10cc are big stars, it made perfect commercial success for Phillips to release their as-near-enough-dammit 10cc debut. However the record label has no access to the band's new name and so can only advertise the fact by use of a striking colour drawing of Eric, Kevin and Lol (there is no Graham of course as he hadn't formally joined the band yet, although he does guest on some of the better tunes). Other than the cover and the confusing new name, though, there are no differences here with the record put back the way it was when first released as 'Thinks...School Stinks' in 1971. 

"Live and Let Live"

(Mercury, October 1977)

The Second Sitting For The Last Supper/You've Got A Cold/Honeymoon With B Troop/Art For Art's Sake/People In Love//The Wall Street Shuffle/Ships Don't Just Disappear In The Night (Do They?!?!?)/I'm Mandy Fly Me/Marriage Bureau Rendezvous//Good Morning Judge/Feel The Benefit/The Things We Do For Love//Waterfall/I'm Not In Love/Modern Man Blues

"Sittin' with a tentpole what a bloody jamboree, listen to our motto - be prepared for ecstasy!"

You know the awful moment when you have to put down the dog you've loved for so many years and you get a new puppy to replace it and you don't feel like you can ever have the same connection with it and yet it tries so hard to please you and lick your face? Listening to 'Live and Let Live' is rather like that. The old 10cc are dead and you never mourn them more than here because, far more than the studio records, 'Live and Let Live' is a 'band' album and half the band aren't here. This live record - the first officially released concert set in the 10cc discography and compared to, say, The Rolling Stones there really haven't been many - never quite recovers from that loss. Eric and Graham ignore every song from their past that Kevin or Lol wrote or sang on (the only credit they get the whole album is Godley's co-write on 'I'm Mandy, Fly Me' the song that all but split them up), even when that means some of their biggest hits are missing such as 'Rubber Bullets' or 'The Dean and I'. With so much space to fill, they get rather desperate in the material they lean to pad out this album with practically the whole of recently released album 'Deceptive Bends' here as a sort of defensive 'well, it's all 10cc!' gesture that rather undermines the album around the point when you realise you're three minutes into a thirteen minute version of 'Feel The Benefit' that's near enough identical and you're wondering why they bothered. All of this is combined with the fact that 10cc are a band more built for the studio than the road in any incarnation, with their songs sounding scruffy and raw and sometimes unrecognisable compared to their polished masterpieces.

Even so, it's hard not to like this album which has such a tough job to overcome and tries so, so hard all the way through. Eric and Graham pour their heart and soul into the performances, especially the former with some killer guitar solos and a much grittier form of singing we haven't heard on record since The Mindbenders days. The four new boys in the band do a great job of sounding just enough like the old records while adding their own sound, which is impressive given that only Paul Burgess ever played on any of the records (and then only 'Bends'). All too often 'Live and Let Live' is content to simply give the audience what they want, even when they can't do it that well, with perfunctory readings of 'Good Morning Judge' and 'The Wall Street Shuffle' that don't rock anywhere near as hard as the hit records while none of the 'Bends' material comes close to matching the LPs. I'm not sure handing 'Art For Art's Sake', a track Eric sang so well, over to the very different vocal sound of keyboard player Tony O'Malley in the name of unity was such a great idea either, even if he does give it his all. But sometimes this record has some very very good ideas that even the 'old' 10cc would never have thought of. A wild thrash through 'Second Sitting For The Last Supper' is played fast and furious and pushes all the band to their limits from the get-go, so different from the controlled cool of the record. 'Ships Don't Just Disappear In The Night', which used to sound such a mess in the old Godley-Creme days, is transformed into a carefully controlled little rocker which loves throwing you off the scent every time you think you've pinned it down. 'Waterfall', already a stunning studio B-side, gets a delightful makeover that adds layers of 'I'm Not In Love' style harmonies that makes a beautiful song even more beautiful. And talking of which this version of 'Love' is beautiful, slow and reflective with Eric pouring heart and soul into the vocal while the band somehow find a way of recycling their massed 'aaahs' in live concert without skipping a beat. A sprightly 'The Things We Do For Love' is pretty darn impressive too and impressively light on its feet.

As you'd expect from 10cc, this is also a very funny gig and thankfully all the witty repartee is kept on for atmosphere - unlike many a live record. We can't quite hear what the heckler in the front row is saying but Eric has every put-down ready. 'I love you all' he claims before 10cc leave the stage for a possible encore, 'Even you with the big mouth!'  After a fierce jamming session falls apart but in a very graceful and exotic way Graham dead-pans 'That's definitely going on the record' - thankfully it does! A finale sees Eric declare 'I think the roof just came off - yes, I can see the stars!' The audience are certainly enjoying it, making an awful lot of noise and re-acting with a lot of emotion for people who have come out to see a supposedly 'intellectual' band play. Yes we should have had a live album from the Godley-Creme era (the tour supporting 'The Original Soundtrack' was particularly electric) and this double set could have been a single album without taking anything good away easily. But this is also a record that tries hard and really thinks about what's good for the band, the audience and the legacy. Yes it's far from perfect and no new puppy will ever replace the old dog of your dreams, but there's easily a place for this much maligned work in our 10cc collections and we can perhaps live and let live over its controversial Godley/Creme-ignoring presence in the band's canon. 

"Greatest Hits 1972-1978"

(Mercury, '1979')

Rubber Bullets/Donna/Silly Love/The Dean And I/Life Is A Ministrone/The Wall Street Shuffle//Art For Art's Sake/I'm Mandy Fly Me/Good Morning Judge/The Things We Do For Love/Dreadlock Holiday/I'm Not In Love

"Like a gourmet in a skid-row diner, a fitting menu for a dilettante"

 ‘Greatest Hits’ is the epitome of a perfectly timed compilation. At the time it was just a filler, released to capitalise on the recent #1 of ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ and to fill a gap between the ‘Bloody Tourists’ and ‘Look, Hear, Are You Normal?’ LPs. It was a rather necessary release as well, filling in for the hole where a normal 10cc LP would have been and giving Eric Stewart more time to recover from a nasty car accident that nearly killed him. But as it happened that gap rather killed the band off as well and ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ - the most recent song here - was the last hit the band had anyway and so you get pretty much the perfect summary of the band at a time when the record company hadn’t yet written them off and was still giving them proper attention (the cover of this album is excellent and very 10cc – they feature a series of ‘greatest hits’ ranging from the iceberg hitting the Titanic to the cricket ball that killed a passing sparrow at Lords cricket ground) but wasn’t released too early to miss out on some of the bigger hits. In fact Mercury have gone to some length to secure most of the 'UK label' hits such as 'Rubber Bullets' 'Donna' 'SSSSSilly Love' and 'The Dean and I', making this set the first time that a mixture of the UK and Mercury tracks had appeared in the same place. If only this album had come out on CD we might have been spared the horrors of the more recent compilations. Odd that the songs are ever so nearly in order but not quite, however ('The Wall Street Shuffle' is between 'Minestrone' and 'Art's Sake' when it should be next to 'SSSSSSilly Love' and 'The Dean and I'). Perhaps strangely, this much-loved compilation hasn't appeared on CD even though many of the digital era sets are clearly based on this one.
                                        
"Tropical and Love Songs"

(Mercury, '1979')

Dreadlock Holiday/The Things We Do For Love/Channel Swimmer/Rock 'n' Roll Lullaby/Life Is A Minestrone/People In Love//I'm Not In Love/Don't Hang Up/The Second Sitting For The Last Supper/Get It While You Can/For You And I

"Everybody's having fun so why be the one left out in the cold?"

With typical bad timing, Eric Stewart's car crash came at just the point when 'Dreadlock Holiday' was opening new doors for the band. Especially in Japan, where 10cc had just become the next big thing. While the rest of the word got the comprehensive 'Greatest Hits' released instead of a new album, Japan chose to deliver a slightly quirkier compilation that had less hits but arguably more of the 10cc character about it. With a name exploiting the band's newfound Caribbean sound (even though the second track is set in the heart of winter, but never mind), this compilation took off big-time and even made it to a few other shores on import, even though all of the songs on it were available on other releases. It's still a popular compilation with many and for good reason, mixing the obvious and the unknown to great effect. 

Graham Gouldman "Animalympics"

 (Mercury/A&M, '1980')

Go For It/Underwater Fantasy/Away From It All/Born To Lose/Kit Mambo//Z.O.O./Love's Not For Me (Rene's Song)/With You I Can Run Forever/Bionic Boar/We've Made It To The Top

"Hey, boy, what you gonna do when there ain't no future here for you?"

Considering that 10cc were one of the most visual bands of the 1970s in terms of their songs (their third LP wasn't called 'The Original Soundtrack' for nothing!) it seems strange to say that by 1980 the closest the band had ever come to becoming involved in a film was Eric Stewart and the other Mindbenders trying their hardest to look like teenagers behind Lulu in 'To Sir With Love' and the odd music video (and even those didn't start in earnest until 'Good Morning Judge' in 1977 - and yes Eric and Graham got there before their more famous fellow directors Kevin and Lol). This all changes in 1980: Eric's car crash in January 1979 means that the rest of 10cc have time on their hands but don't want to make another full 10cc album yet until they're up to speed. Eric is still having trouble even listening to music after all, as the crash damaged his hearing.  With time on his hands, Graham takes up a commission to record the music to much-loved children's animation film with the rest of the band's help, while later in the year Eric tentatively tries the same with the much more 'adult' comedy 'Girls'. Clearly the two musicians are heading in two very different worlds by this stage with some of the most juvenile and mature releases in the 10cc discography - though not the way round you might suppose...

Animalympics was a rather good animated children’s film involving animals performing at the Olympic games and features some typically optimistic, overcome-obstacles-and go-for-it children’s fare sung by, err, rhinos, fish and lionesses; very off-the-wall, very early 10CC in fact. However Graham approached the project much like the later 10cc albums and seems to use this project as an early version of the 1981 band album 'Ten Out Of Ten', pouring out his heart on a series of songs that are about love, loss, hard work and ambition - they just happen to be sung through the eyes of two long distance runners who happen to be an Ibex and a tigress, that's all! In a way 'Animalympics' is the final, largely-Graham-less 10cc project 'Windows In The Jungle's kid sister, tackling the same themes of scratching below the surface and working out what life's really about (though the characters in the film train hard they pretty much all realise that there is more to life than being the fastest, strongest or jumping the longest - it's the proving yourself to yourself and forming a family that are the salvation of almost all these animal athletes). The two albums even feature the same 'jungle' sound effect, heard at the beginning and end of 'Windows' and here as a loop on the instrumental 'Kit Mambo'.

'Animalympics'  is also far more of a 'band' album than either of the last two 10cc albums and despite the billing Graham is often subservient to Rick, Paul, Stuart and especially Duncan who comes into his own on this album. 'Bionic Bear' is by far the most experimental and technologically progressive track in the 10cc canon and even became a minor hit in the 1990s disco scene with dancers convinced it was a new work by some hip with-it teenage something rather than off a children's soundtrack album a decade old! The throbbing 'Kit Mambo' and the cheery station ID of 'Z.O.O.' are also far superior to any of the previous 10cc instrumental B-sides, tightly played and distinctive. However it's Graham's lyrics that stand out the most across this album and all of them cut far far deeper than by rights they need to. The upbeat 'Go For It' is about so much more than winning a race; it's about refusing to be beaten or to give in to the voices in your heard telling you you can't do something. 'Away From It All' is dreamy escapism and an Eric Stewart-style look at how love is more important than winning any day. 'Born To Lose' looks at what it really takes to become an olympic-level athlete: hard work and dedication of course, but also all the things you miss out on, like living 'real' life alongside everybody else. The French-style 'Love's Not For Me' is a tigress' emotional outpouring that she runs to run away from other things in her life, including love. You wonder how many of our athletic stars became olympians after first hearing this album in their tender years - and offering this album up to future would-be athletes with its theme of deprivation and competition seems a good idea too. Even the songs that are just silly pop songs are well handled too, especially the singalong 'Underwater Fantasy' which features the single best 10cc guitar riff since 'Rubber Bullets'. Is it as good as the 10cc albums around it? Well, perhaps not given that 'Bloody Tourists' 'Ten Out Of Ten' and 'Windows In The Jungle' all have such a lot to offer all the way through (and there are, perhaps, three filler songs across what is a rather short album). But this quirky, thoughtful, well arranged and produced album has much more of a 10cc feel than the 'Look Hear' album released hot on its heels (the soundtrack album was delayed a few months to coincide with the release of the film - really belongs in the 1979 list as that's when it was made) and it is one hell of a lot better than by rights it should be. Would that all children's soundtracks were made with this much love, care, attention and depth.

Perhaps missing the 'togetherness' message of the film, the original idea of showing this film on TV in the run-up to the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 never quite happened. This was, you might remember, the year that America decided to boycott the games (in protest at a Russian invasion of Afghanistan) and where most of the coverage of them was swept under the carpet, so this American-made film became a much bigger hit in Europe than it ever did in the States (we got it in the cinema instead).  America finally showed it in 1984 as part of their coverage of their 'home' games in California instead. As for the soundtrack album, it desperately deserves a re-release on CD, although funnily enough it is available on iTunes at the time of writing.

'Go For It' flies with the funk 10cc tried to pull off on parts of 'Bloody Tourists' like 'The Anonymous Alcoholic' and 'Exclamation Marks!!!' but they actually pull it off here. Rick Fenn's guitar and Duncan's synth bass hit a neat groove while Graham tells us all about the sacrifices you have to make to become the best at anything in life - like ignoring your friends when they call round. 'It's really your decision' shrugs Graham, 'You can boogie all night and sleep all day!' It's probably best not to remind him of how little training the likes of Usian Bolt and Michael Phelps tend to do before their olympic games...

'Underwater Fantasy' would have been a big hit for 10cc with different lyrics and features one of the best 'band recordings' by the six-piece 10cc. Rick's double-tracked guitars (there's even a backwards guitar loop!), Graham's bass and the two drummers cook up a storm and the effects are pretty spectacular by 1980. Yes the lyrics are silly, describing what it would be like to live underwater, but other novelty songs on similar themes like 'Octopuses' Garden' frankly didn't rock this hard or this well.

'Away From It All' is a sleepy ballad, actually heard at the end of the film despite being so early on in the course of the soundtrack album. Kit Mambo the tigress from Africa has fallen for her biggest rival in the marathon running Rene Fromage, an Ibex from France (apparently both sexes run in the same event in the animal kingdom) and it's suddenly put her career into perspective: she took up running to avoid falling in love and yet here she is, wishing she wasn't running and was with her new handsome bloke with the big antlers; secretly he's wishing it too. on second thoughts don't play this to future potential Olympians, they'll all be busy falling in love instead...

'Born To Lose' is Rene's story and it's one Godley-Creme have put into song a few times: bullied and ridiculed, Rene was told he would never amount to anything. But he took that fire and used it positively, making himself tougher, training every day and turning into his continent's leading runner. It's a life-changing moment as he realises he has the power and he isn't born to lose at all - and neither, by association, are you the listener. A percussion-heavy backing track keeps the song relentlessly running on but the tune is perhaps a shade less memorable than on the rest of this record.

'Kit Mambo' is a four minute instrumental-with-African-chants that makes amends for the rather stereotypical 'Oh! Effendi' from 'Sheet Music'. The band really nail the African leanings here with Burgess and Tosh's groove meshing well with Graham's Ladysmith Black Mambazo style chanting and Rick Fenn's terrific and rather Eric Stewartish crystal-clear guitar. The sound effects are so good it was inevitable they'd be re-used in 'Windows In The Jungle'. Sadly this song is only heard in a few second extracts across the film - it really needs to be heard in full to be enjoyed.

Side two starts with another song only heard in part form, the stirring 'Z.O.O.' (the acronym for the television network that 'screens' the 'Animalympics' though who knows what it stands for - Zooligical Ornotholigist Olympians perhaps?) This is a big production number which grows bigger with every cycle of the main riff, with horns and strings and a Hawaiian steel guitar part from Rick. It's very catchy  but, like a lot of instrumentals, perhaps a little too long on album.

 'Love's Not For Me' is Rene's sad song of why he began running - for all the wrong reasons it seems. A French Rivera feel adds a nice feeling of melancholy to this song which Graham invests with a surprising amount of emotion and warmth. You sense that he identifies strongly with Rene, in as much as any bass player with a hit pop group can ever identify with an animated French Ibex.

'With You I Can Run Forever' isn't quite up to the rest of the album despite featuring a very lovely riff that sounds like a missing hit from the summer of love you didn't quite get round to hearing. Heard in the film at the point where Kit and Mambo fall in love (and carry on running past the finish line of their race - which is a draw if you were wondering - to be together and be free), it's pretty but also pretty inconsequential.

'Bionic Boar', meanwhile, is the opposite. Way ahead of its time, this is Duncan Mackay's masterpiece with a fleet of synths all meshing to provide a soundtrack somewhere between a war film and a horror movie. I never knew 1980s synthesisers could sound this good, while the song even incorporates an opening burst of 'Old McDonald Had A Farm'. The idea of the competing pig being bionic (ie part robotic) also sounds awfully like the 'drug cheating' scandal that came just before the last olympics in Brazil in 2016. Highly impressive.

Alas the last song 'We've Made It To The Top' is exactly the sort of cheesy children's pop song you may have been expecting for the past half hour. Celebrating the end of the Olympics and all the hard work spent, it vows 'we ain't never gonna stop', perhaps missing the point that olympics only turn up every four years. The line 'we've made some friends along the way and we made some people happy when we came in at number one' might well have you reaching for the sick bag too.

Overall, though, 'Animalympics' is a good sport: it doesn't cheat or stint on hard work or assume that because this is a children's film that Graham and co can cut corners. Instead this is 10cc at their united best (minus Eric), setting fans curious enough to buy this LP up nicely for the more emotional and heartfelt songs both Graham and Eric will write during their last few years together. It certainly gets a gold medal from us and makes tackling the 'missing year' in this book (given that this is really a 1979 project, not a 1980 one) that much easier.

Eric Stewart "Girls"

(Polydor, 1980)

Opening Music/Girls/Disco Grindin'-Switch La Bitch/Disco Bumpin'/Aural Exciter/Warm Warm Warm/Tonight/Snatch The Gas/Your Touch Is Soft/Trouble Shared/Discollapse

"You've got the world in the palm of your hand - don't ever throw it away!"

Eric, meanwhile, wasn't quite so lucky with his choice of film. After his car-crash Eric became ridiculously prolific, as if making up for lost time. This film soundtrack, however, isn't one of his better ideas: most of the songs are full of the sort of soft 'lift music' instrumentals every film from the 1980s seems to be full of and there are only four actual 'songs'. To be fair, these aren't bad: despite the generic titles 'Warm Warm Warm' 'Tonight' and the title track 'Girls' are real character songs, Stewart doing well to get into the mindset of an ambitious female blocked not by talent but by sexism (it may be that the 1983 10cc song 'Working Girls' started life here too - the date seems wrong but it sounds like a good fit at least). Wanting to take 10cc into a raunchier phase, more in keeping with some of the tracks off the last two albums 'Deceptive Bends' and 'Bloody Tourists', he agreed to write the score for a film about three high school leavers who get up to mischief with various boyfriends. Of course they all fall pregnant (or at least think they are) and suddenly their exam results don't actually make that much difference. Like the film, Eric's soundtrack album isn't quite as groundbreaking or as controversial as it wants to be and mainly consists of fluff and filler, with lengthy instrumentals taking up most of the playing time. On the plus side this is, like 'Animalympics', pretty much a band project and indeed Eric shares co-writes on every song with Duncan Mackay with his synths again the dominant force (albeit in a bluesier, less mainstream way than 'Animalympics' - if anyone ever wondered exactly what Eric and Graham brought to those 10cc albums each the differences between these two albums will tell you a lot more than I ever could). Sadly Eric's clearly not up to full health yet and his occasional vocals and - sadly - even more occasional guitar solos are tentative and clumsy compared to the days of old (or indeed the days still to come). Much of this album sounds busked in the studio, in contrast to the painstaking attention to detail of 'Animalympics', and is often aimless and noodling, wandering around waiting for inspiration to hit.

Rightly seen as the nadir of Eric's catalogue, it does however have a few standout moments, most of them the passages that are songs: the title track (complete with compulsory 'Hmmm-mmm' after every title repeat) is an OK-ish 1980s pop song that sounds like a more hyperactive twin of Barry Manilow's 'Could It Be Magic?', especially when heard in instrumental form; 'Tonight' is a funky take on Eric's usual hapless narrators turning the tables by being the chaser rather than the chasee; 'Warm Warm Warm' is a sweet minor gem of a ballad that repeats the refrain of 'Tokyo' against some vaguely romantic words about the human need to be close to somebody (anybody!) that rather drives the whole film. Anyone who goes weak at the knees when Eric puts his romantic voice on will enjoy this one, even if it isn't quite as 'special' as some of the others in his catalogue. Set against this, however, 'Disco Grindin' however is awful, Eric's misogynistic lyric of 'Switch The Bitch' and ogling over sixteen year olds set against his cod-heavy metal solo-ing perhaps the single worst moment in this book, while the six - six! - instrumentals are a lazy way to pad out an LP, even on a film soundtrack where you half expect that sort of thing. Thankfully things are going to be better on from here on in, with this project one that Eric kind of had to make to bring himself back to full musical health and he won't make any of the same mistakes again on the last pair of original and rather gorgeous 10cc albums that are as full and thoughtful as this album is silly and flimsy. 

"In Concert"
(Contour, '1982')
The Second Sitting For The Last Supper/You've Got A Cold/The Things We Do For Love/Art For Art's Sake/People In Love/The Wall Street Shuffle/I'm Mandy, Fly Me/Marriage Bureau Rendezvous/Good Morning Judge/Honeymoon With B Troop/Waterfall/I'm Not In Love
"Don't give a damn, don't give a hoot, just got to keep making the loot, chauffeur driven!"
Just as 10cc were beginning to disintegrate, with Eric and Graham off making different projects, the public got a reminder of just how unified they'd seemed just four years earlier with this record released to fill the gap where a 1982 album would normally have been. 'In Concert' isn't a new album, just a 12 song single LP reduction of the original 15 song 'Live and Let Live' double. Of course, wouldn't you know it, the three songs missing are some of the best: 'Ships Don't Just Disappear' the lengthy 'Feel The Benefit' and the encore 'Modern Man Blues'. The album got a new, rather more boring name and a new, rather more boring cover with all six members of the 1978 period 10cc staring straight at the camera looking bored. A nice cheap way of getting what used to be a rather expensive double album in 1982 is now, ironically, a rather expensive means of getting that last album for your 10cc collection in this day and age while 'Live and Let Live' is comparatively cheap. Such is life.

Eric Stewart "Frooty Rooties"

(**, **1982)

The Ritual (Part One/Progress De La Rake Part Two/Euphoria Part Three/Dog With Four Trees)/Make The Pieces Fit/Never Say I Told You So/Night and Day/All My Loving Following You/Rockin' My Troubles Away/Doris The Florist/Guitaaaaaaaarhghs/Strictly Business/Night and Day (Reprise)

"Stop your dreaming - your ship  could be sinking, better start moving - you can't sit there thinking!"

The only 10cc non-soundtrack solo album released while the band were still 'together', 'Frooty Rooties' was something of a poor seller and has been rather forgotten by 10cc fans today. Eric clearly had a lot on his mind in this period, still suffering from the after-effects of his near-fatal car crash in 1979 and in a deeper mind-set than most of his earlier work. In many ways a solo album seems a natural thing to do - Eric's material isn't quite as obviously made for 10cc as before and had he released all of this material as well as the songs that made the last two 10cc albums (recorded either side of this album) he would certainly have swamped Graham. However it's odd what Eric chose to keep for himself and what he gave to the band. While some of these songs (most notably ten minute suite 'The Ritual') sound like a 'practice' for the deeper, what's-the-point-of-it-all sighing of the two songs that bookend 'Windows In The Jungle', this is arguably the most '10cc' of the three records, what with song titles like 'Doris The Florist' and 'Guitaaaaarghs' (although even these aren't out-and-out comedy moments).

To be honest I was expecting more from this album, which is clearly a labour of love and had much time and care lavished on it. Eric ought to sound as inspired and troubled as he does on both 'Ten Out Of Ten' and 'Windows In The Jungle', both albums that I adore, with the same feeling of urgency and sudden insight that can only come from someone whose stared death in the face and lived to see the other side. Instead it's a rather sleepy affair, not just low on laughs but also the seriousness of those late-period 10cc classics. Too often the album takes the easy way out, burying interesting ideas underneath  silly retro-rock riffs which were always Eric's less appealing side: 'Night and Day' (senselessly heard twice across the album) sounding like that annoying pub singer who played at your last Christmas party and wouldn't move off the stage; similarly had 'Rockin' My Troubles Away' been delivered by an Elvis impersonator you'd have asked for your money back, never mind when it's a song made by one of the 1970s' greatest ever bands.  'Strictly Business' tries to have fun with a 50s style song about what rip-off managers were really up to - which sounds like a good idea but manages to reduce a whole genre down to point-scoring and nasty jibes (10cc were never good at 'angry' or 'bitter', as a good deal of reunion album '...Meanwhile' attests). 'Guitaaarghs' is an overlong, underwhelming instrumental.  Even the title and front cover - a very retro shot of Eric sitting with guitar, legs akimbo - aren't half as clever or ironic as they think they're being, a poor man's 10cc album title and sleeve (it would have made more sense if Eric had harnessed the similarly word mangling power of Little Richard on this record, but no - he's a wannabe Elvis). While the ballads are better even these tend to come in less 'finished' form than usual: I can have one of Eric's band ballads (not just 'I'm Not In Love' but 'Memories' and 'Don't Turn Me Away' for example) happily going round my head for weeks; by contrast I've just been playing 'Make The Pieces Fit' constantly and I still can't remember it. Given that - 'Windows' aside - Eric's next album won't be until 2003 it seems an awful shame that such a great talent is being frivolously wasted on such undeserving material.

That said, even a great artist on a bad day can come up with something. Opening song 'The Ritual' is no '24 Hours' or 'Taxi! Taxi!' but is a neat and clever look at the sheer amount of made-up rituals the average human goes through during an average day. While Eric never quite comes out and laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, that's clearly the idea: 'I nearly died' the subplot of the song states, 'and you still want me to go through all these polite gestures if I want to get a record out?' 'Doris The Florist' is a fun 10cc-ish story that doesn't go where you think it does that's funnier than most of 'Look Hear' to boot. 'All My Loving Following You' could have been a cute hit pop song had the 10cc name been on it, a lovely chirpy piece of fluff that really swings. In contrast to that cover with Eric's guitar proudly on display, Stewart rarely unleashes his guitar here but when he does the sound is a delight: 'Never Say I Told You So' features one of his greatest solos; full of ringing clarity and scatterbrained precision, the very musical equivalent of an 'I told you so' in fact. Had the album been full of more moments like these then 'Frooty Rooties' would seem a lot more substantial. As it stands it's a shame those four songs have been forgotten, part of a 'nothing' album that even most fans don't seem to know very well.

As we've seen, 'The Ritual' is arguably the best and certainly the deepest song here. The track takes the theme of '24 Hours' and the sound of 'Feel The Benefit' for a ten minute song about the narrator's pointless preening, 'all a game and just a bluff', as the narrator walks away from a night with several pretty ladies but unable to remember anything about them when he gets home. A 'middle eight' (in as much as a ten minute song built up out of bits stuck together can have a 'middle eight') features a whole load of awful chat-up lines before a sudden 'dance' instrumental. Eric's narrator finally meets his dream girl and tries to stop her going ('There's so much I want to say'), but now that 'the ritual' of asking girls out has become more serious he's tongue-tied and lost for words. Eric is then in denial, 'I'm Not In Love' style ('I can't believe that I'm in love again!')before  it all goes wrong and he finds himself back at the beginning, 'wandering in a state of confusion, looking for a new illusion'. The second half of the song is less interesting than the first (it could have ended quite happily at the five minute mark) but there are some very good lines, like the wannabe lothario after his prey and 'smiling like a politician' and when it all goes wrong 'drowning in a sea of silence'. '24 Hours' does a better job of similar ground, though, and it's rather a shame when after ten minutes the song fades rather givers the conclusion we long for; the way out of this vicious cycle of love and loss.

'Make The Pieces Fit' is pretty but pretty boring, with a simple 'Hotlegs' style guitar riff backing a song that's once again about going on a date, 'syncopated ad libs'. However two similarly-minded souls can talk together 'like harmony' and sound as if they're 'meant' to go together. 10cc would have made something of this ballad, but this is a song that gives muted a bad name.

'Never Say I Told You So' at least sounds good: there's some great guitar work in Eric's characteristic on-the-edge-but-in-control style, but the song itself is uncomfortably close to The Beatles' 'Come Together' with the same macho posturing and silly sentences. A chanted chorus of 'let it go let it go let it go' is one of its authors less inspired moments, but the song clearly means something to Eric, with a great vocal similar in style to his guitar-work.

'Night and Day' is horrendous, the sort of twee Tin Pan Alley-style song the 1960s were invented to destroy forever. A strong candidate for Eric's worst song during his entire career, this song's only redeeming feature is that at 2:26 it's so short. 

Unbelievably this least-deserving of songs gets a reprise at the end of the album!
All My Loving Following You' is better, equally derivative but with a real spark of life to it and a fun bouncy riff that's easily the catchiest Stewart song from this album and the two 10cc records either side of it. It's a throwback to the 'Sheet Music' days when quirky songs like this were the norm, although the usual 'I'm in love with you' style lyrics aren't as quirky. Another fine guitar solo, sadly replaced almost straight away by a very 1980s sax part, makes this another of the album's better songs.

Rockin' My Troubles Away' is a grooving 1950s style song that suffers from too many cliches and is one of those silly little songs that sound like more fun to play than to listen to. Eric is no Elvis, for which I'm usually deeply thankful, but here a little more charisma and a little less impersonation would have been good.

'Doris The Florist' is a lovely story-song, with a delightful chorus of such longing and yearning that I'm surprised the middle of the record doesn't melt. Doris is one of life's reliable types whose dreams never quite come true, her lonely life above the shop where she 'pulls the shutters down' every night has become such a way of life that she's scared of meeting anyone new (she even politely turns the narrator down), ending a 'blossoming' romance. This would have made a lovely 10cc song.

'Guitaaaaaaarghs' is actually less about the guitar and more about the funky rhythm section, a near-instrumental with Eric throwing out some lyrics rap-style which really doesn't work even as parody. Only a brief retro guitar solo makes this song in any way listenable.

'Strictly Business' is one last horrendous return to the 1950s, better than the previous two but still a long way from inspired. Returning to the theme of 'Art For Art's Sake' a musician's releases are only considered 'good' if they 'sell a million' - because that way the business can 'rob you blind'. Once again a strong guitar solo is the best thing here on a track that really doesn't suit Eric.

The album then plays out with a reprise of 'Night and Day'. Of all the songs I never wanted to hear again...it's as if Eric is testing our patience to see if we really will sit through anything; against all the odds this song is actually worse than I'd remembered. Thank goodness it's only short.

Overall, then, 'Frooty Rooties' is a 'lost' record that's been lost for some very good reasons. Eric can usually write better than this in his sleep - so what was this record all about? As proof that he can operate without the rest of the band it's only half-successful, as a strong album in its own right ditto. Nobody was forcing Eric to make this record and what with 10cc's busy itinerary he clearly didn't need to make it: so why is it here? 'The Ritual' and 'Doris The Florist' seem like clues, returning to the 1980s 10cc theme of making the most of your life before it's too late. But if so then why aren't these songs on 'Windows In The Jungle' where a fab album might have been made even 'fabber'? 'Frooty Rooties' is a frustrated lost opportunity to prove how great Eric can be - and he won't get another chance all to himself for another 21 years...

Wax "Magnetic Heaven"

 (RCA, '1986')

Right Between The Eyes/Hear No Evil/Shadows Of Love/Marie Claire/Ball and Chain//Systematic/Breakout/Only A Visitor/Rise Up/Magnetic Heaven

"We'll be together now, find our way out somehow, your secret's safe with me I swear!"

The Gouldman-Gold partnership in 10cc in 1981 across a couple of singles and a slightly tweaked version of the 'Ten Out Of Ten' album had split fans almost down the middle. For some the injection of Andrew Gold's grasp of contemporary pop and his whizzkid way with synthesisers was a natural extension of what the original 10cc had once been all about and which they had gradually broken away from as passing years, wisdom, maturity, car crashes and falling record sales changed their natural style; it was all a bit less 'safe', as if Godley and Creme were back in the band again, albeit a very different band to the one they'd left in 1976. Graham, especially, seems to have loved this brief period of 10cc history and would no doubt have adopted the style for good had Andrew not had to reluctantly go back to his career on his manager's instructions and had Eric Stewart - who was on the songwriting role of his life - not been in something of a serious life-changing mood.  For others Gold's style wasn't so much Godley as Godforsaken: 10cc were such a 1970s band and had never had to chase the pop markets quite so desperately before, why try and force them into a more contemporary style? Wasn't being 10cc enough and since when did this band care about record sales anyway?

At first Andrew was just helping out on a Graham Gouldman project as Graham realised in a panic, at the end of 10cc in 1983, that he hadn't written any songs alone for over a decade. Andrew, whose career has all but dried up since his big hit 'Lonely Boy' in 1979, was only to eager to re-connect with his old friend and flew over from America to stay in Stockport (which must have been a culture shock!) The former pop boy wonder was only meant to stay on Graham's sofa for seven days; the pair found writing together so natural that he ended up staying for seven months. The pair planned to call themselves 'World In Action' and anxiously waited to see if their first single 'Don't Break My Heart' would be as big a hit as 10cc; the answer was not even close. Remembering their early days as Hotlegs, Graham tried again with a new band name 'Common Knowledge' and a second single 'Victoria' - this one did so badly that an almost-completed album was shelved (until 1998 when the album appeared named after the band but with the band name given as 'Wax', just to add to the confusion of the 10cc collector!) In truth you can see why: the ideas are there, but nothing quite comes together and it's not as memorable as the later albums (we've reviewed it out of order later in the book). The pair decided to have one more go and picked 'Wax' as a suitably catchy wacky name - their main point of existence, after all, was to glue themselves to people's ears. Third single 'Ball and Chain' did ok, enough to get them a deal for a full album anyway and 'Magnetic Heaven' was the result, a much tougher, more memorable album than its predecessor.

In truth the new poppier direction was both good and bad for first 1981 period Gold-produced 10cc and then Wax, the three albums that Gold and Gouldman made together sharing the same strengths and weaknesses as their work for 10cc in 1981. On the plus side Wax allows Graham the chance to return to his earliest days as a craftsmanlike pop writer, rather than being the unsung bassist in a band that already had three front-men and - thanks mainly to Gold  - the band have as much of a finger on the pulse of the markets of the day as Gouldman did in the 1960s; arguably more than 10cc ever had in the 1970s (they were a law unto themselves and ignored trends for the most part). It's good to hear Graham getting back to his pop roots again as well, writing simple catchy songs about nothing much in particular but which still came with killer hooks and great choruses; if you've heard Graham's work in order (either at the time or just now working through this book) then 'Magnetic Heaven' actually comes as a bit of a nice change from sensitive ballads and earnest confessionals. However this is not really a career, well not a long-lasting one anyway and even by the second released/third made Wax album 'American English' you can tell the duo are running out of ideas while trying to do similar things all the time. Sadly the depth that Graham had learnt during his time with 10cc is thrown out with the sad songs and the poor-selling un-commercial singles, while the repetitive 1980s backing - which sounded cutting edge at the time - now sounds far more dated than anything 10cc were up to ten years earlier. The trouble is everything turns to Gold on this album - no not that sort of gold I'm afraid, it's just that if you buy this album to hear Graham alone you'll be disappointed. Little here sounds like pure Gouldman, with Graham getting just one and a half lead vocal on this album to his name (the album highlight 'Marie Claire' plus a bit of 'Only A Visitor') - pretty much the same as he was in late period 10cc. Instead Andrew sings lead on nine tracks and Graham is having a lot more fun writing in his new partner's style than Andrew is writing in Graham's softer, less aggressive style. In short, this is a band you're only really going to love if you also love 1980s pop music and try your best to forget the brilliance Graham was up to before - and yet on this album 'Magnetic Heaven' especially this is superior 1980s pop from two men who at least know what they're doing. This is a band you tend to either love or hate in fandom; as usual in these circumstances I'm on the fence and can see the points of both sides - Wax is a comedown from 10cc certainly, but then which band wouldn't be? By the same token it's also one up from Graham's own solo work and you can tell just how much he's enjoying this collaboration - on the few times you hear him, anyway.

As an album 'Magnetic Heaven' is like one of those people you meet who seem oddly assertive and aggressive at first but once you get to know them they're really quite sweet. Hyperactive in the extreme and using nothing less than seven synthesisers where one would probably do, 'Magnetic Heaven' is loud and proud of it, bursting with every 80s pop cliché from the sample ('b..b...breakout!'), those synth-drums (every collector of bands who passed through the mid-1980s will know what I'm talking about) and a writing style that means practically every line gets punctuated by something, usually a peal of synth notes that come with the fuzzy brightness of a doorbell on a quiz show. If that sounds unappetising then yes, much of it is - and yet both Gold and Gouldman clearly know what they're doing underneath all this surface appeal. Many of these songs are actually quite thoughtful when you study them rather than 'hear' them if that makes sense - yes tracks like 'See No Evil' and 'Systematic' sound like one power-pop chorus but underneath all that they're actually pretty intelligent tracks about not trusting what you hear and obsessing so badly about something you're not going to say no. 'Marie Claire', the one song here Graham gets to sing, is as great a love song as any in his canon, sung with one last hopeful glance backwards before the narrator sadly takes a final 'no' for an answer and wanders off (it's 'I'm Not In Love' in reverse, with Marie Claire in denial perhaps). Also, not one song on this album is truly bad - a few songs are particularly bland like 'Breakout' (Wham meets Take That, yeesh!) and 'Rise Up!' (Boy George meets Bob Marley), but none are all bad. And there are even quite a few 10cc albums you can't say that about.

Wax is an interesting band and this is their most interesting record, because they're the only example I can think of where writers who started with pop records grew, learnt a great deal, matured in style and came out the other side - and then put everything they'd learnt back into making pop records. It's as if Lennon and McCartney had returned to write a sequel to 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' having already written 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'In My Life' or Simon and Garfunkel writing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and surrounding it with their early period woo-bop-a-loo-chi-bahs. Heaven? Hardly, at times this album is so 1980s it sounds like synth-hell, while the curious abstract watercolour painting of the pair on the front cover demonstrates the exact same problem with the album: all abstract noise, no detail and colour. However, magnetic? Yes - there's something about this record that finds me coming back to it over and over again. 'Magnetic Heaven' is a mature album in a popstar's clothing and if you can get through the first feeling of 'yuck' when you play it then it will suck you in.

'Right Between The Eyes' is a slightly misleading start, if only because it features guitars and hardly any of the other tracks here do. The chord progression is almost 1960s in its sweetness and restlessness too, though the sound is very much 1980. Andrew's narrator sings about falling in love when he least expected it - and out of love the same. Yeah sure we've heard it all before, to quote an earlier Gouldman-Gold song, but this song sounds more 'real' and believable than many others on a similar theme.

'Hear No Evil' is an early appearance by a regular Wax theme: outrage over injustice. This isn't really a theme either man had covered much on their earlier work and this isn't one of the better examples, but for once the song's pop assertion sounds just right on a song about fighting back against rumours. A great snazzy chorus rather underlines the serious point but is good for singing along to as Gold urges us to be nice to everyone or they might not be so nice to us one day.

'Shadows Of Love' is another pretty chorus in search of a song that desperately needs an 'unplugged' style remix one day so we can hear how beautiful the song really is - and Andrew's gutsy vocal too. A poignant lyric about two lost and lonely souls coming together and  finding out what real love, as opposed to 'shadow' love one-night stands, this is one of the nicer songs on the album.

'Marie Claire' is stunning, a Gouldman tour de force in which he uses his rarely heard 'angry' vocal to good effect, especially when it's heard in tandem with Gold's more hopeful vocal in the chorus. The narrator and Marie Claire used to be close, he promised to be with her forever 'even between the devil and deep blue sea' - and now that's where she wants him, as she dithers and delays their romance. The verse, an angry snappy minor key verse suddenly falls into a major key chorus that features such an outpouring of love and affection it takes a brave girl to say no. The hint, too, is that the narrator has just got his timings wrong; she's in trouble, asking him to cover up for her (which he does, of course, he's in love) and she's clearly 'wrong' - and yet for the narrator 'you're the one thing that's right in my life'. Beautiful. If only Graham had written this song for 10cc's similarly poignant final album 'Windows In The Jungle' it would have been perfect.

Side one ends with the semi-flop single 'Ball and Chain'. The first song recorded under the 'Wax' name, it's interesting how confident and contemporary the Wax pair suddenly sound after messing around with their 'World In Action' and 'Common Knowledge' styles. Another song of obsession, it makes good use of a pulsating synth riff that just won't let go and a snarling Gold lead that may well be one of his best (especially the spoken word part, 'Day after day and week after week they knock you down till you're dead on your feet and what you got? Huh, nothing!' which is usually a big no-no in songs like these).

'Systematic' sounds more like Gouldman's work, based around an inventive bass riff and featuring many of the 'off-beat' rhythms he tended to use mostly when working when Kevin Godley. This unusual, eccentric melody is matched by unusual quirky words that again focus on obsession with Andrew's narrator refusing to take 'no' for an answer and systematically breaking down his wannabe lover's defences. Something tells me that with a riff like that he's likely to win.

'B-r-r-r-r-r-r-reakout' (as it's pronounced, if not written) is, though, just an empty song and amongst the weakest tracks here. She's finally said 'yes' after a romantic dinner and Andrew's narrator is hallucinating and dreaming of 'setting your inhibitions free'. Sadly that seems to involve break dancing as a metaphor for him finally having got past his girl's reserve, but then it was 1985 - break dancing was still (just about) cool then.

'Only A Visitor' slows down the pace a touch and is the only time in wax history Gold and Gouldman trade lines on a duet - it sounds so good you wonder why they didn't do it more often. Graham takes the verses, Andrew the chorus and both sing the middle eight, Graham the lengthy parts and Andrew the short. A song about feeling out of place, it could be about either Graham entering the pop market, Andrew living in Britain, a person on the run or aliens. Maybe all four: maybe Graham is an alien on the run?

The synth-heavy 'Rise Up!' starts with what sounds like a coffee blender clearing it's throat before settling down into one of those 1980s songs that manages to combine lyrics about being hopeful about the modern era and that things are going change with a 1980s sound that just makes you feel depressed. Like many of the songs here, a remix of the song would reveal an actually sweet and detailed song which urges us to 'retaliate' against injustices of the world, because they have no place in the 'modern' world.

The album then closes with the moodiest, least poppy song  - title track 'Magnetic Heaven'. A sampled choir sings some 'I'm Not In Love' style 'aaaahs' and a small child asks 'Daddy?' but otherwise this is Wax's only instrumental and that's odd because this song sounds as if it 'needs' words perhaps more than the rest on the album, with a dangling synth riff that almost does seem to be singing to us. The 1980s effects are wretched though, here even more than normal.

Overall, then, 'Magnetic Heaven' is an album that somehow manages to mix the sort of off-putting production sound that means you'll never play this album again with a set of songs that actually grow on you and are a cut above your average synth-filled 1980s pop album. While I wouldn't say Wax ever quite settle down and find their style, for a sort-of 'debut' (in real teams, of course, a surprisingly un-difficult second album) this is surprisingly full of style and character - a character quite unlike Gold and Gouldman's work separately. My guess is that, after losing their way a little on 'American English', Wax could yet have bounced back and become a superb band rather than a promising one, but sadly it was not to be. Just as candlewax doesn't burn forever, this was a band that always felt like it was going to have a limited life and so it proved - which is a shame, if only because a more retro 1990s production (closer to both men's natural tastes) might have revealed a far better band than Wax are ever given credit for being. Are we waxing lyrical about Wax's first record? No, but it's close...

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






'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
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