Customer Reviews

Sheet Music

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a pop classic that many critics have hailed as one of the best releases of the 7o's, that not alot of people know about. Its not 10cc's fault. Their popularity at the time was still growing after the colossal success of their first album (1973's 10CC). When I say colossal I mean this. In 10cc's career from 1973 - 1976, they were rarely out of the Top 10 charts in Europe, with quite a few No. 1's. By 1975 that success repeated in the States. They were virtually the most successful of the 1970's British 'pop' groups. And practically no one knows.

I first picked up SHEET MUSIC on a whim in 2001. Being familiar only with their songs 'The Wall Street Shuffle', Í'm Not In Love',and 'The Things We Do For Love' I was not sure what 10cc's other material sounded like based from these 3 selections from different albums & years. By the time I heard the third track from SHEET MUSIC 'Hotel' I couldn't believe I was listening to an album that had sounds of the 80's in 1974. These musicians in the studio were years ahead of their time, and certainly influenced what came out of Europe and later America with the 4 albums they released with the band line-up of Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. That Stewart & Gouldman later went on to write one of the most played songs in the world Í'm Not In Love', and Creme & Godley later went on to direct some of the most familiar and groundbreaking Videos of the 80's should tell you that there was an incredible amount of talent & vision in this band.

That they were one of the few bands, if not only, to run their own studio, and have complete control over their recorded output says something else. Everything they did was ín-house'and performed,produced,engineered & mixed by 10cc from the debut album onwards. SHEET MUSIC is the high watermark of this collaboration between four musicians when songwriting partnerships hadn't quite been cemented, and wider success was around the corner.

Think of the writing teams in that old cliche style --- Stewart & Gouldman were the McCartney, Godley & Creme were the Lennon. I hate having to use expressions like these, but it generalises and gives you, as someone not familiar with the music, an idea of the difference. The Wall Street Shuffle by Gouldman & Stewart is pure pop, and a top 10 single in Britain and still gets circulated around today for Stock market reports on TV. Gouldman & Creme's The Worst Band In The World is a witty and very ahead of its time indictment of pop ego and the music business. Musically it sounds very little like 1974. It sounds ahead. Hotel is one of the most unique songs I have ever heard. Blending a very 80's sounding introduction with island Calypso, Hollywood 1930's backing vocals, and a twisted tale told with alot of humour, Hotel is an undeniable classic written by Godley & Creme. Again, it sounds nothing like what was going on in 1974 or before. I heard just about every 80's synth pop band in the introduction of Hotel. Old Wild Men is a beautifully played and sung homage to the ageing rocker and marks the debut of the Godley/Creme invented ínstrument enhancer'The Gizmo' which could be placed on the bridge of a guitar to make it sound like a multitude of instruments, primarily strings (violin, cello etc.) . This Godley & Creme composition is further enhanced by the dual vocal team of Godley & Stewart, in my mind, two of the best singers Britain has produced. Clockwork Creep also by Godley & Creme is a tour de force of effects, tempo changes, inventiveness all behind the story told by a bomb. Stewart, Godley & Creme play different roles in this all too brief saga. Stewart as the Passenger, Godley as The Plane, and Creme as The Bomb.

(?) Side two kicks off with Stewart & Creme's 'Silly Love'. Sheet Music is the start of identifying songwriting partnerships in 10cc. Stewart & Gouldman paired off, as did Godley & Creme, but success was also had by pairing Godley & Gouldman, and Silly Love became a hit song with the Stewart & Creme combination. Silly Love is a rocker like other rockers but with a twist. Imploring that those Valentine's consumers opt for their OWN way of saying I love you rather than seek out tired old cliche's, Silly Love is original, funny and it jams. Godley & Creme's Somewhere In Hollywood follows. This is where the inventiveness of this writing team shows itself fully, but also shows the talent all 4 possessed in contributing to a song. Godley & Creme's explorations and obvious eccentricities were harnessed in and made clarified by Stewart & Gouldman's pop sensibilities. It really was a near perfect marriage of two different visions.
Stewart & Gouldman's 'Baron Samedi' has a Santana/afrocuban backing but with (again) ahead of its time recording and quality. Godley & Gouldman''s 'The Sacro-Iliac' should have been a single, it is that catchy. Telling the tale of a dance that everyone can do if you can't dance. And the final song Oh Effendi by Stewart & Godley tells the tale of very current events (USA/French/Middle East relations) in a no holds barred humourous way, giving a little diplomatic relations history as it does.

Sheet Music should be regarded as one of the best albums released in the 7o's. It may not suit everyone's tastes, but this albums influence on musicians, fans,and critics alike is undeniable. Sheet Music was the 8o's before the '8o's arrived.
On their next 2 albums together, the original lineup of 10cc innovated pop music, in recording and writing to a degree that I find them as influential as any other group you hear too much about.

10cc was a band that got better with every album, up until How Dare You! any ways: I've only heard Deceptive Bends and Bloody Tourists after this (though Look Hear and Ten out of Ten are in the mail) so I can't really judge those albums. But while the first album was a perfect mix of goofy jokes, innovative song writing and playing, and great satire, this album not only one ups that album musically, but ten ups it! sorry, bad pun.

The music gets much more complex on this album: the strange styles have amagalized into a style of complex genre changes, complex chord changes and harmonies, multiple parts, and on somewhere in hollywood, a sweeping, dramatic feel.

The lyrics are good too: funny, catchy, very great word play. Not my main focus in the band: gotta love those songs!

Pick up the Double Disc Uk Records Collection. It has this album, plus the first, all their b-sides from the two albums, and the single versions of the singles, plus some cool liner notes. It's easy to find if you live in america, and a steal!

Further to the other reviews, which I agree with, I bought this CD version of Sheet Music for the bonus b-side tracks "18 Carat Man Of Means" and "Gizmo My Way".

18 Carat Man Of Means is as good as anything on the album...it starts off like a basic 12 bar blues/rock song, then morphs into a heartbreaking multi-harmonied classic.

Gizmo My Way is merely a hawaiian sounding instrumental, and not entirely essential but still pleasant.

Anyone who likes the spontaneous nature of this album should check out the album simply titled "L" by Godley&Creme from 1981 and prepare to be blown away with it's weirdness.

(it is also interesting to note the major similarities between "Somewhere In Hollywood" and Queen's subsequent mega-hit "Bohemian Rhapsody" released the following year. Freddie and Co. must have been studying it, surely).

In 1974 - at the impressionable age of 14, while most of my peers were steeped in bands like Led Zep, Floyd, Sabbath, & Yes (not that there's anything wrong with that), I was fine-tuning my teenage outsider status with 10cc's "Sheet Music", perhaps one of the best tongue-in-cheek, topically demented power-pop LP's of all time! This record is probably one of my all-time top 10 - and I still play it constantly - it has never sounded dated - it is simply brilliant - lyrically (perhaps one of the greatest lyrics ever, from "Worst Band In The World": "Up yours, up mine, but up everybody's that takes time"), musically ("Wall Street Shuffle") & technically ("Hotel", to name but a few). If you enjoy great rock & roll, served-up with a skewered sense of humour and melodies & harmonies as wonderful as anything rock has to offer, check out this LP - simply a masterpiece, and a major reason why I am still as "off-center" today as I was when I was a young punk, not that any of you should care!

Amazon readers will know that I don't award 5 stars easily, but this is, in my view, 10cc's finest album by a long distance.

10cc, like Steely Dan, was a name chosen for its penile association. The band began as a backing group for Neil Sedaka, although in 1970, minus Graham Gouldman, the other three (as Hotlegs) had a hit single in the form of 'Neanderthal Man'.

The first eponymous album contains the single 'Donna', a parody of 50s doo-wop (apparently), but sounding very similar to a Beatles song. In fact, 10cc of this period played very much in the same musical space as the Beatles, and all four members had strong backgrounds in the Manchester beat scene of the 60s, and one wonders why 10cc didn't make it bigger. Were they just not photogenic enough? Too individualistic to be persuaded into identical suits? Or just five years too late?

But 1974's 'Sheet Music' is their classic. Foot-tapping rockers 'Wall Street Shuffle' and 'Silly Love' opened sides one and two of the original LP. 'Clockwork Creep' features the dark humour that makes all air travellers feel uncomfortable -- it's about a bomb waiting to go off, but it's a catchy tune. But the pure-gold classic track on this album is 'Somewhere in Hollywood', which was too complex ever to be an A-side single. No compilation of intelligent 70s popular music should be without this.

The British rock band 10cc was comprised of four exceedingly clever musicians and songwriters, all of whom brought considerable gifts to the table. They'd all been working in various capacities since the mid-60's - most notably Graham Gouldman (who had written hits for the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, and the Mindbenders), and Eric Stewart (who was a member of the latter group). These two were the pop oriented half of the band, while Kevin Godley and Lol Creme contributed the more experimental, offbeat flourishes and compositions. All four sang and were multi-instrumentalists.

Their terrific debut album "10cc" got them off to a roaring start in their homeland. Two singles from it - "Donna" and "The Dean And I" - made the U.K. Top Ten, and "Rubber Bullets" hit number one. "Rubber Bullets" was a regional hit in parts of America, and gained them their first exposure here. It was about a prison riot, and sounded like the Beach Boys parodying Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock". Other tracks also had a comical slant, sometimes sung 1950's doo-wop style. Even some of the song topics were 50's-centric. The title character in "Johnny Don't Do It" became a teen angel in a motorcycle crash - "Sand In My Face" is about being picked on by a bully and invokes the Charles Atlas ads found in comic books of the era. As a whole, the album portended great things to come.

That would happen with the release of "Sheet Music" (1974). I love their first 3 albums equally, but I'm spotlighting this one because I think it's the most neglected and forgotten. "Wall Street Shuffle" was the British top-tenner off this one, while "Silly Love" only cracked the top 30. In America some of these songs received FM airplay, but none were hit singles.

10cc came into their own and found their voice on "Sheet Music". It wasn't just parodies of 50's song styles and subject matter. The humor continued unabated, but was in the service of their own concepts (less obvious and more original). It rocked harder than the previous album, and featured heavier guitars and instrumentation. "Somewhere In Hollywood" was their first Queen-esque mini-opera, a "trial run" they would build upon on later efforts. The whole album is perfect.

Same goes for their highly acclaimed third album "The Original Soundtrack". It's widely acknowledged as a masterpiece, and deservedly so. "I'm Not In Love" was surely the most fussed-over song since Brian Wilson obsessed with "Good Vibrations". Stories of the band layering the vocal chorale in the studio are legendary, and it was a worldwide smash. The "One Night In Paris" suite was their second encroachment on Queen territory, and exquisitely well done.

After their rather lackluster fourth album "How Dare You", Godley and Creme left the band. Gouldman and Stewart would carry on as 10cc with new members, and issued the wonderful "Deceptive Bends" album. "The Things We Do For Love" was a big hit, and "Feel The Benefit" was another exemplary song suite. It was the last great 10cc album. While "How Dare You" and later albums contained some good hit singles, they no longer cohered as well as earlier work, and featured too much mediocre material.

If you want to collect their best, buy "10cc", "Sheet Music" (these 2 are available singly, or together on a two-fer CD), "The Original Soundtrack", and "Deceptive Bends". To get significant singles like "Art For Art's Sake", "I'm Mandy Fly Me", and "Dreadlock Holiday" - just invest in one of the many greatest hits collections.

One of the greatest things about 10cc and specifically Sheet Music is that, despite their oddly quirky songwriting talents, they actually find a way to make it *work* so their style of writing pop songs is quite listenable for just about anyone.

This album has PLENTY of oddly written vocal melodies, and plus a creative touch for experimenting with different genres, such as tropical themes and other weird ideas that can only be considered either the craziest experiments known to man, or just a really far-out head trip. One song even reminds me of a really drunk Paul McCartney ("The Sacro-Iliac" I believe).

I swear the verse melody to "Silly Love" sounds like Deep Purple's "Highway Star", and not to mention one song features some whistling tha reminds me of Yoko Ono on the Double Fantasy album. The two songs share a similar whistling technique. Furthermore, "We're the Worst Band in the World" has a heavy guitar trick that reminds me of the middle section of Black Sabbath's "Symptom of the Universe". Highly unusual stuff.

In the end though, this is one very talented band that was capable of writing some of the most unpredictable pop songs ever made, and even to this day there's not many bands like these guys (except Of Montreal- check out that band).

This album made a really horrible summer over into a great one for me in 1974. Fresh out of hospital, supposedly dying from pulmonary emboli in both lungs, new apartment, beautiful summer evening, a young girl, and a tab of something strawberry...Totally unlike me, NOW, but THEN, I dug this album the most since chicks seemed to dig it. Rolling stone dug it. Clapton's release from Miami sucked, period. These guys were like evil twin genius Lennon-McCartney clones gone horribly wrong and kind of glam, corny, and gay all at the same time, an arrow shot straight into the heart of where rocknroll was headed. Springsteen was the other dude who was gonna rock the cradle a bit. But do not forget! No! Not once, ever! To facetiously quote a lamented recently impeached president--these guys were Cambridge and Oxford material who happened to dig music too. So, panegyric re the music business, natch, forthright economically sound "Shufflin" on "Wall Street", some what politically incorrect "Oh Effendi" and "Hotel" and perhaps "Baron Samedi" as well, but these guys were Brits, a mad, Monty Pythonesque, pop sensibility twisted like Terry Gilliam's, predicting disco and ridiculous dance crazes("Sacro-Iliac") forecasting the Western World's Waterloo in the Middle East, all over that black gold ("Oh Effendi") and even using the Republican's war words "liberate the region" some thirty years in advance...breathless as I am, so is the music. It just never stops. The "Silly Love" song, pre-Sir Paul, and much better, thank you, because it really is silly, and monstrously guitarish at the same time, will play in your head for days. "Samedi" and "Hotel" are a hoot, listened to uncritically, like on the beach, smearig the lotion on yr sunglasses...that kind of music. Have a beer. "Clockwork Creep" is a tense little totally pop masterpiece dialog betwixt a plane and a bomb. Did I say prescient? Well, I suppose if one were only smart enough, we woulod have seen all this coming, but... These guys were very intelligent, very musical, I suspect they had read Kenneth Anger and Robin Wood, and out popped "Somewhere in Hollywood" which would absolutely outdo any other genre mashup, satirical piece ever written before or since. Brian WIlson got in here as well,in "Wild Old Men", as someone else mentioned, but these guys were simply encyclopedic in their musical knowledge, both pop and theoretical, and not too proud to show it. Every single beat of every song has been absolutely marbleized by tiny little fingers. Whew. Frank Zappa finally took a bath.

I have an earlier CD of this album, a double with "10cc" fronting "Sheet Music". I bought *this* version because the sound was simply awful on that older Sheet Music, with atrocious drop out on my two favorite tracks, "Old Wild Men" and "Somewhere in Hollywood", bad enough to make the album unbearable. It sounded to my uneducated ear like the master tape had a fold or two in it (because I've had RTR tape wind into the space between the tape and spool edges when I wound/rewound too fast, and when rescued this is what it sounds like).

If that is true there is a strong possibility that nothing can be done, though it is truly amazing what was done on "Casino Royale" in the same circumstances (the Woody Allen movie soundtrack, long a benchmark in the hi-fi world for reasons that are too arcane to describe suffered a master tape wreck that was fixed quite well on a digitally remastered-from-the-master process).

The good news is that most (but not all) of those drop-outs are gone from this version of Sheet Music. The bad news is that some are still there, and in the quietest places where the voices are low to start with. Grrr.

But another annoyance on the older CD was an inexplicable mix on the drums on "Silly Love" in which it sounds like someone who is having trouble keeping the beat is pounding on one of those big plastic tubs you put the beer in when you don't have enough coolers. I don't know whether it is a low tom-tom, the bass drum in overdub or a drunk on Plastic Tub. My experience of drumming isn't good enough to tell.

Whatever it is, it is alive and well on this version too and it makes "Silly Love" a horrible, horrible experience, and that could have been sorted out in the mix so easily it beggars the mind as to why it wasn't.

Which is a shame since I reckon this is the most accessible album tune-wise, and the cleverest one lyrics-wise that the band ever made. The high spot of the three classics (Sheet Music, Original Soundtrack and How Dare You), and under other circumstances I would recommend anyone give it several tries with headphones. As it stands I couldn't give it even one.

Oh well. I've still got my vinyl copy.

Sheet Music is a lot more diverse than I anticipated. I know "I'm Not In Love," and "The Things We Do For Love," but it is only now I've gotten a chance to explore more 10cc.

This album covers a lot of ground: heavy rock, folk, big progressive slices. Many sources at work in 1970s music. The tracks spill satirically over the top. This Sheet Music is the size of the whole stage.

All this can be a lot to absorb, but this big fat album will grow on you with repeated listening.