(Not) The Worst Band In The World

An unusual impulse purchase made last week: 10cc In Concert from the King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents series. I've never heard of this series of live recordings before and the cover looked pretty tacky. Priced at less than eight bucks the CD looked suspiciously cheap also, but the damage to the pocket being limited even if it turned out to be a bit, or a lot, of a lemon made me think seriously of breaking open a fifty dollar note I happened to be carrying. I'd also spotted Neil Young's Prairie Wind (acoustic Neil and gorgeously accessible) going for sixteen dollars and it seemed somehow sensible to wind up with two CDs for essentially the price of one. A triumph of cheapskatery!

But the thing that was really driving me on was a sudden memory of just how good 10cc were in concert. I'm talking here about the original four man line-up: Stewart, Gouldman, Creme & Godley, the band featured on the disk. The recording was from 1975 and featured material from the first two albums. I saw the same line-up live in Sheffield in 1976, I think, just after the release of their fourth and final album in this incarnation How Dare You. They were sensationally good being accorded the kind of rapturous reception only given to the very best which, at that point, they seemed undoubtedly to be among. Somehow I'd managed to forget that they were one of the most heavily featured groups on our collective play-list as university students, rubbing shoulders with Genesis (the Peter Gabriel line-up) and Steely Dan. How had they come to drop so dramatically out of consciousness - mine and that of the world of popular music in general? They were in a position, with the release of How Dare You, to inherit the mantle of The Beatles. (That's over the top, sure, but really at the time I'm talking about it seemed they could do no wrong. Excellent players, singers and writers - all four!)

I suppose the answer lies in the punk revolution and also a sense in which we'd seen the full flowering of what they had to offer by 1976 (and heard I'm Not In Love on the radio way too many times even for a great song). Four excellent albums are four more than most manage, and there were still one or two diverting toe-tappers to come from the 5cc team of Stewart & Gouldman.

Anyway I've played the live CD a couple of times and not been disappointed. It's clear they really could play so my memory was not at fault. The encore version of Rubber Bullets makes me live again the rocking version I experienced back in '76. And I enjoy reconnecting with songs that had sort of slipped from memory yet came back immediately within a few bars in all their wit and wisdom.