My Amazon Reviews: 10cc "How Dare You!"

Dare Accepted
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Not quite as good as "The Original Soundtrack," but hitting many of the same high points, 10cc parlayed the success of "I'm Not In Love" to an album that tinkered with pop conventions and progressive rock with "How Dare You!" It's also the band's last proper album as a four piece; by the next album Kevin Godley and Lol Creme would depart to focus their attentions on artier rock and their guitar invention, the Gizmotron, which is used to good effect on the album's title track. (It used a set of small wheels against the guitar strings that allowed you to almost infinitely sustain guitar notes.)

"How Dare You!" also grapples with the art-rock sensibilities of Godley and Creme vieing with the more conventional pop and rock aspirations of Graham Gouldman and Eris Stewart. I've previously postulated that 10cc was the kind of rock band Monty Python would have dreamed up if not The Rutles, which again finds the band wrestling over their direction. The still funny "I Want to Rule The World" is narrated by an angry baby who's had it up to here and wants to be the world's youngest tyrant (shades of Stewie from "Family Guy," anyone?). On the opposite end, you have "I'm Mandy, Fly Me," which opens with a snippet of "Clockwork Creep," then goes on to narrate the tale of a plane crash survivor who dreams of his rescue by the stewardess on the travel brochure. All of this is going about through some radical tempo shifts and a meaty guitar solo. It ranks among the band's best compositions. Then comes that dichotomy again; the uncomfortable tale of the stalker in "Iceberg."

That back and forth is what holds "How Dare You!" from achieving the full heights of "The Original Soundtrack," probably adding to or abetted by the creative schisms in the band itself. "Art For Art's Sake" seemingly confronts this dilemma head on. It might be the most straightforward song the band ever wrote, highlighting the differences between creativity and commercial production. It's kind of like "The Worst Band In The World," except that band has grown up and is lost in a quandary of their success.

"Money talks so listen to it,
Money talks to me.
Anyone can understand it
Money can't be beat."

If there was any note to go out on, "Art For Art's Sake" summed it up pretty well. While Gouldman and Stewart would retain a level of success under the 10cc banner on "Deceptive Bends," the push and pull of the two factions of the group are what made 10cc (and by extension, "How Dare You") such a fascinating band.

     

My Amazon Reviews: 10cc "Sheet Music"

Bedside Manner
4 Out Of 5 Stars

That 10cc started out as a houseband for a bubblegum production studio was obvious on their debut album, where each song was a parodic tribute to a style of pop that was produced so accurately that the thin line between satire and the real thing was all but invisible. By the time they got to their second album, 1974's "Sheet Music," they'd jumped the parody shark and landed on an entirely different animal. They weren't quite progressive rock, they weren't quite poptunes, and they still hadn't got the Monty Python out of their system. In other words, 10cc was a quintessentially British band with a wicked sense of humor mining their often brilliant songs.

Case in point are the album's opening salvos. "Wall Street Shuffle" came off as an album oriented rock song with a killer hook, big guitar riff and semi-serious lyric about the money hustling big shots. It's then followed by "The Worst Band In The World," which takes said band looking at itself from outside the fishbowl and unable to believe that they've conned the world into buying "a little piece of plastic with a whole." Or the faux reggae on "Hotel" that serves up an All-American Menu filled with "all American Men." Or the terrorist arms dealer at the end of the album during "Oh Effendi," who suddenly finds himself on the run when the goodies run out. As "Sheet Music" plays on, it's hard to decipher when the band is playing it straight or jamming their tongue into the collective cheek.

That's what makes 10cc so hard to pigeonhole here. Just when you start to tire of the jokes, you get struck by the beautiful "Old Wild Men" or the plane's-eye-view of an upcoming crash on "Clockwork Creep." (Which eventually grew up to become "I'm Mandy Fly Me" on "How Dare You.") Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were still working as a unit (they would ultimately break into factions of Stewart/Gouldman and Godley/Creme), and they were willing to leave no stone unturned when it came to pop styles. "Sheet Music" may not be 10cc's best album, but it is far and away their most adventurous.

     

My Amazon Reviews: 10cc "The Original Soundtrack"

A True Original
5 Out Of 5 Stars

10cc, prior to "The Original Soundtrack," were something of a novelty act. They came up with arty songs with humorous twists, like "Donna," "The Dean and I," and (their biggest US single before this album) "Rubber Bullets." The album before "Soundtrack," "Sheet Music," hinted that the band had some great things potentially in store with songs like "Clockwork Creep" and "Old Wild Men." It was also beginning to show that Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme were becoming formidable songwriters.

"The Original Soundtrack" blew all their previous efforts out of the water. Opening with a cinematic suite titled "Une Nuit In Paris," it was eight minutes of mini-opera complete with Gendarmes and ladies of the evening. It took all the smart-arse confections of the past and turned it into artiness, a couple years before Queen would do roughly the same thing with "Bohemian Rhapsody." Then came knockout punch number two, "I'm Not In Love." Richly multi-tracked vocals buoy the lamenting singer's defense of a break-up, all while being utterly unconvincing about his non-nonchalance. It was simple but extremely effective, and hit number 2 on the US Pop Charts.

Nothing else here matches the brilliance of those opening tracks, but 10cc sure did try. The satirical quirks return on "Blackmail" and "Life is a Minestrone," while "The Film of My Love" ended the album with another nod to the cinema. The topical "Second Sitting For The Last Supper" is notable for its questioning of religion ("2,000 years and he ain't come yet, we've kept his seat warm and a table set...") These were salad days for 10cc, as the band worked in two halves. Gouldman and Stewart were more conventional, Godley and Creme the artier. While it all worked on this album and the follow-up ("How Dare You"), upcoming frictions would make 10cc's albums lesser efforts. "The Original Soundtrack" was the highpoint.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Donald Fagen "Sunken Condos"

It's All About The Groove
4 Out Of 5 Stars

"Sunken Condos" is Donald Fagen's look at getting older. He slyly refers to himself as a "burned out hippie clown" and as being "ready for Jurassic Park." If The Nightfly was his look at a nostalgic past, "Sunken Condos" is a look at how a grown-up loses the starry eyes and gets trapped in the "Memorabilia," calling them all "souvenirs of a perfect doom." If you think that the music should match all this, you'd be fooled, because like "The Nightfly," Fagen is at a relaxed and jazz-funk mood. For the 64 year old Fagen, this is a spry and loose album, filled with impeccable playing yet accessible songs.

Given my thoughts that "Morph The Cat" was inaccessibly complex for a pop-music album, the "Slinky Thing" that is this album is a delight. Fagen and his cohorts (special honors to guitarists Jon Herington and Kurt Rosenwinkle) lay down a funk groove like the best of Steely Dan's memorable songs, all while acknowledging that real musicians are playing these riffs and not some kid on a laptop (who seems to be the antagonist of "The New Breed," where Fagen loses the girl to a techno-whiz. Or he backtracks to the days of Prohibition as he becomes a mob-runner for "Good Stuff," making up people and places that harken back to the days of "Dr Wu" or "Gaucho."

Through it all, "Sunken Condos" doesn't lose the sly nods to his audience and old fans. This is most obvious on the odd cover of Isaac Hayes' "Out Of The Ghetto." Turning a piece of super-funk into the kind of mysterio-sheen that Becker and Fagen always did best, even it's got to be one of the oddest choices for a cover he could have made. Contrast it to "The Nightfly's" rework of Dion's "Ruby Baby" for the effect of being transported out of one zone and into Fagen's world. It's a world that can't be held into the compression of MP3's or pre-processed expectations. "Sunken Condos" is a return to form for Donald Fagen and is sure a welcome pool in a desert of whiz-kids and sine-waves passing for sophisticated music.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Talking Heads "Fear Of Music"

What Are You Afraid Of,
5 Out Of 5 Stars

Kicking off with the celebratory "I Zimbra" and closing with the haunting spaciness of "Drugs," "Fear Of Music" was the first album where Talking Heads managed to mix all their influences for the first time as a whole. The funkiness that seemed buried under the surface of the previous two albums comes to fruition on the classic "Life During Wartime," and the experiments that just seemed like art-school JO came into musical fullness. This was the Talking Heads' ode to New York City, and it still holds as one of their finest albums.

There's a lot of rumbling claustrophobia ("Cities") wonder at the outside world ("Animals") and general anxiety ("Memories Can't Wait," "Heaven.") I always thought that this was the album where David Byrne stopped thinking about inner city paranoia and actually statrted seeing bodies dangling from hooks on the walls; hence his fear of "Air" and dread of "Life During Wartime." Even with Byrne's more pointed mindset, this would be for nothing if the rest of the band wasn't pulling their weight. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz score points for their rhythm chops. It is their propulsion that takes "Wartime" and "I Zimbra" into dance turf, and Jerry Harrison's guitar and keyboards add the the enigmatic swirl.

This is obviously a bridge album given how the danceable throb of muscle that was "Fear Of Music" would ultimately give way the the polyrhythms of "Remain In Light" (and the Byrne/Eno project "My Life In The Bush of Ghosts"). But for this moment, the Talking Heads took their NYC Arthouse Groove and served it up to a mainstream audience in the quirkiest form of anxiety ridden pop. Next to the friendly accessibility of "Little Creatures," my favorite Talking Heads album.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Paul Simon "So Beautiful or So What"

Ain't No Song like and Old Song, Charlie
3 Out Of 5 Stars  

Paul Simon himself has expressed his belief that "So Beautiful or So What" is his best album in 20 years (although with "You're The One" and "Capeman" in that stretch, not exactly much to brag about). Elvis Costello hypes the work in the CD's liner notes. Critics in the major rags are comparing it to "Graceland." Me? Too much hype for what is, basically, an old songwriter taking the time to explore his relationship with God and a Guitar.

Granted, the songs on "So Beautiful" feel more lyrical than anything since "Graceland," but that doesn't make it a classic. Simon is again exploring the tricky interchange between rhythms and melody, which does merit the "Graceland" comparisons. Only on the song "Dazzling Blue" do all the separate parts fully integrate, more often than not, they merely grate. The novelty of working a sermon from 1941 into the opening song "Waiting for Christmas Day" wears out its welcome pretty fast. Frankly, there are way too many "God and his only son," heaven, afterlife and the glory of creation songs here for my tastes. If I really wanted a gospel album, I'd have gone searching for one. A fine line exists between the Spiritual and the Religious, and "So Beautiful" crosses it far too often.

Where Simon excels, as usual, are on the ballads. "Dazzling Blue" and "Questions for The Angels" are worth the cost of the CD, and the second half of "Love and Hard Times" is beautiful. Simon also shows his sense of humor/irony on "Rewrite," where a lost soul tries to redeem himself, and on "The Afterlife," where, no matter how good or noteworthy your life has been, you still have to do the paperwork. The title song, finally, may sum up why the album is garnering the hype it has. Simon has spent much of his career trying to string a tightwire between the glorious and the horrific, and at his best ("American Tune," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "My Little Town") he has created songs worthy of the great American songbook. The song "So Beautiful or So What" aims for that pantheon, and comes pretty darn close to making the mark. That makes four really good songs surrounded by five others that reflect past glories.

As Paul Simon begins encroaching into an advanced age (he recently hit 69,) there's nothing wrong with writing good songs that recall the greatness of your past. Like the Elton John/Leon Russell album "The Union," there's nothing wrong with making albums that are thoughtful and strongly made. It's just not fair to be calling "So Beautiful or So What" an instant classic. It's certainly not a "So What," but it's also no "Still Crazy After All These Years."