I remember as the original 45s came out, always being really excited to hear the b-sides... for a while there, 10cc were probably THE most consistent b-side band around. Just one disappointment... the "Silly Love" single, with another LP track on the b-side. Things started going awry around the time of Original Soundtrack - "Channel Swimmer" was another classic b, but "Good News" just felt weary, and after that b-sides became as hit-and-miss as the albums. But I'm getting ahead of things again....
10CC was plenty irreverent and at times dirty with the lyrics, but in sort of a friendlier way than Zappa, who had a way of seeming to be sneering at everyone including his audience.
The album opens with Johnny Don't Do It, and we covered that as the second single, so today we move onto track 2 Sand In My Face I reckon this is a great song. It has a great little opening guitar riff, with a sound effect that sounds like a squeaky shoe, and I am not sure if it is a percussion instrument or a synth sound, but it is pretty cool. This is a song that is based around the old ads for the gym where the 40 pound weakling gets sand kicked in his face at the beach and then does the whole muscle building regime to redeem himself. This is not in anyway a fifties pastiche, but it does keep it's feet firmly in the parody/jokey area, and I don't personally think that detracts from the song at all. For the type of song it is, it is incredibly well written. There are some great little runs and fills. At about 1:15 we have a really cool change up, and 1:37 another change. All these changes are nice and smooth and flow beautifully.
"Headline Hustler" has long been my favorite song on the first album and I don't think they even made a great b side until "Good News". Now, if you dislike "The Sacro-Iliac" we can remain consistent here, as that's probably my favorite song on their second album.
Or Iceberg on the same album, which does seem to treat rape as a joke (albeit a dark joke). Not sure what their intentions were there, but that kind of humor seems a bit out of their wheelhouse. One woman I played it for was really offended and I think she had a point.
"You better not annoy me or I'll do something that you won't forget in a hurry, and I might be back for some sloppy seconds..." Really a long way from the friendly nudge-nudge tone of most of 10cc's sexual jokes.
The melody of the verse vocal/guitar of "Headline Hustler" is probably the closest example to what McCartney and Harrison would have sounded like had they worked together in the (early) 70s, IMHO.
That's fair, well get there in three or four albums... I never take one line to decide a context though.
“Sand In My Face” I agree, great song. Just seems so “them”. Love how it seamlessly flows into that Beach Boys-style section. A pinch of nice guitar in there. And the squeaky shoe... they messed around in the studio so much. So many little details to wonder about.
Wow. I also never heard it that way. I just looked up the lyrics so I could read them apart from the music and I can see how that interpretation could be valid. But I still lean toward the Sand In My Face, I Wanna Rule The World thing of the "nine stone weakling" with delusions of power. I never considered it an actual threat - but now..... Also, it's only at the bridge of the song that it becomes threatening. Up until then its kind of jaunty and playful in its lyrical content. But I do concede that the whole "sloppy seconds" thing is unnerving. Crazy that, after all of these years, I now have a very different take on a very familiar song.
Didn't mean to ruin the song for you! But to me it's about a dangerous guy going out on a spree, which is a pretty difficult topic to do in a lighthearted way. (It CAN be done though, and I'd offer Richard Thompson's "I Feel So Good" as an example).
Sand In My Face - This jaunty, playful, yet menacing avant-garde comedy pop track could very easily fall over into its own self satisfied in-joke as it is a tricky thing to pull off, but it really works as a rather fine track. This is like a hybrid of the Beach Boys, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band & Frank Zappa. 3.5/5
Used to love that stuff when I was 16. Now, not so much; some of it I find a little embarrassing to be honest.
re earlier 10cc and Godley and Creme - the dark rather weird humour with black comedic overtones were deemed to be rather 'cutting edge' and 'pushing the envelope' back in the seventies hence 'Iceberg' or 'tic-ka tic-ka time bomb' and 'Oh Effendi' etc later Godley and Creme (inaccurately) observing; 'going down like United in the Munich air crash...' and their Bad Samaritans talking you into jumping...! plus 'two miniture Romans running on rails appear every hour and bang in the nails...' what was seen as pure black comedy and 'cutting edge' back then...TIME has vengefully made often look just in downright poor taste or in some cases goddam sick now ! listening now I find you can get a 'smart ass art students trying to score points' feel in your mind as over the years you have matured a lot and what back then cracked you up laughing...now can seem to be just immature and 'trying to shock' ! I find things that were more imaginative in their music and the more serious yet timeless reflective numbers like; 'Fresh Air For My Mama', 'Old Wild Men', 'Don't Hang Up', 'Feel The Benefit', 'Tokyo', 'Art School Canteen', 'I Hate To Eat Alone', 'Lying Here With You' etc for me stand up stronger than the dark humour tracks that to me sound from a long bygone era when crashing out at someone's birthday party was the norm... it's not I dislike those 'witty' songs rather they just sound so very dated now
I am certainly not censoring anyone in any way, and am loving the fact that we have interest in these guys. I'm not bothered whether folks have positive or negative attitudes toward the songs or albums, but I would actually like us to be where we are at. We are talking about the first album, and we are on the second song, and all the speculation about later songs and albums will get plenty of time to be aired.. I'm not trying to be a kill joy, but if we can stay somewhat on topic, it would be cool Cheers Mark
Mark, I have noticed that trying to get people to act in concert on the internet is like trying to herd cats.
The third track on the album is of course Donna, and again we covered that as a single so in order to hopefully start some interest in the album we are doing here, we move onto The Dean And I Single by 10cc from the album 10cc B-side "Bee in My Bonnet" Released 25 August 1973 Format 7" vinyl Genre Art rock, glam rock Length 2:46 (single version) 3:03 (album version) Label Mercury Songwriter(s) Kevin Godley Lol Creme Producer(s) 10cc Starting off with a little chant of "humdrum days and a humdrum ways" the song moves into a somewhat Beach Boys style song, but there is much more to it than that. We move into the vocal telling the kids how he met their ma. There is a really nice harmony guitar riff thrown in at the end of each line and it really adds some colour to the song. We then move into a somewhat mellow section, that really uses some nice harmony arrangements and slides very smoothly back into a rocky feel. This comes with an overlap of the "Humdrum Days..." section. This moves into a some what Zappaesque section that works as a bridge between parts. This song is really well written and again we have a lot of parts sewn together seamlessly to create another great song that got to 10 on the UK charts and top spot in Ireland. I was surprised how very successful the bands singles were in Ireland. this is the album version
I know. I'm not really messed up about it. It just seems we're talking about stuff we aren't up to, and ignoring this stuff lol When we get to How Dare You! will we be talking about the debut lol
Bee In My Bonnet This is a cool song that rocks along nicely. The multiple vocals layered together give it an interesting sound. This was the b-side of The Dean And I. Listening to some of this stuff a little more closely points to Stewart being a better guitarist than I had initially thought really. He really seems to be switched on to good riffs at this stage.
