10CC

I grabbed this album last weekend I think when Laura and I went to Goldmine in North Fitzroy - it's a blast. Of the records I bought that day, I would have to say this is the current favourite. I read a bit about 10CC and their precedents in Paul Hanley's book about ten Manchester songs,* and of course not having a strong Manchester connection of my own the finer points of it - the pride in it I guess - passed me by a bit but I found the story of 10CC as a supergroup pretty fascinating. This is actually the self-titled 10CC album but someone has decided to title it by the best-known song on it, but it's not the best song at all (I think that would probably be 'The Dean and I'.) But you know what really intrigues me about 10CC at this early (1973) stage is why they are so into doowop/50s (at a pinch early 60s maybe) American kitsch? So this is the same kind of thing that Ol' 55 (gosh, now I come to think of it if you half close your eyes and get a bit drunk and forget the difference between letters and numbers, Ol' 55 and 10CC are pretty similar names) were doing, it's also not a million miles removed from what Daddy Cool were doing a little earlier - like, the enthusiastic embrace of 50s pop but with a bit of extra greasy 'realism' on top of it, and then they will do more contemporary stuff on their albums - 'hey, we love the 50s and we can pastiche that shit till the cows come home, but we also play real music'. Ol' 55 had one main songwriter, so did Daddy Cool most of the time or at least in their heyday, but 10CC for some weird reason had four, like Queen, everyone was competing to bring songs. I wonder if they had fun together or they were all gritting their teeth 'four songs on the album is not fuckin' enough'. Anyway, it's a much better album than I expected and it also sounds pretty great, particularly the drums - I imagine, perhaps I read this, that a lot of the tracks were built up from drum sounds and beats, rather than some 'I have a riff, you play along' kind of thing. The fact that they owned their studio and spend a lot of time there obviously helped them. I mean that is partly what the Hanley book is about. 

*Leave the Capital (2017)