Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art/Pop Rock's Finest Moment, April 19, 2004
I'm almost 50 and I still haven't heard many albums better than this one. 10cc in their heyday were unsurpassed in creative, experimental rock songwriting. The beauty of their vocals, the skill of their musicianship, the wry of their wit, the edge of their rock, the sadness of their melancholy, the adventure of their extended theatrical pieces, all add up to some pure creative musical genius. And The Original Sountrack exemplifies this more than anything else they've done. I really can't even consider 10cc the same band after Lol Creme and Kevin Godley left, when they devolved into a "clever" Top 40 pop band. One listen to L or Freeze Frame and you'll see what I'm talking about. Those two put the art into art rock. Gouldman and Stewart were both talented songwriters in their own right, but Godley/Creme made 10cc the unique band that they were. How Dare You is a fine follow-up to this CD, but I always felt it a bit too slick, not as daring or unpredictable, and not even close to approaching the seering rock of "Second Sitting for the Last Supper" or the brash whimsy of "Une Nuit a Paris." Sadly, no one has supplanted 10cc in the past 20 years. I still go back to The Original Soundtrack when I want to hear something original, and it still gets my blood pumping, after all these years.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Original Soundtrack, March 25, 2002
If you have to start somewhere with 10cc, start with SHEET MUSIC (1974). This is arguably one of the best albums of the 70's, and certainly was a major influence on things to come in the 80's. Why SHEET MUSIC has never been elevated to the status it should have been is not a mystery. Sometimes bands are too good for their own good. Me? I think this is inspirational and would be a damn far sight better than most of the stuff you've listened to over and over again, and told is "classic". 10cc innovated, renovated and elevated pop rock music to new standards, and were definitely the most influential British band of the 7o's.Your second stop on the 10cc highway/motorway should be this album, The Original Soundtrack. Some argue it's better than SHEET MUSIC, some say it's not. Either and or, you get incredibly well written songs, emmaculate production, two of the best singers Britain has had to offer, and a band that was in complete control of their musical output. You get songs about French prostitutes, Drug dealers, Blackmailers, Minestrone, Messiahs, and so much more. These 4 guys (Eric Stewart, Lol Creme, Kevin Godley and Graham Gouldman) had wit, smarts, talent and the ability to pull it all off. Every track is different from the last and you will not be bored. They beat Queen to the opera, and like it's been said previously, with alot more humour and fun, but with technical brilliance. There are moments on this album that are musically beautiful, like the introduction of "Brand New Day", or "Flying Junk".
And even though it's been played to death, "I'm Not In Love" was truly a one of a kind song. No one up until 1975 had ever heard anything like that, and no one had employed such techniques to record anything like it. Now you can do it with synthesizers, but it's the sound of it that inspired so many Emulators and Synclaviers in the 80's to achieve it's etherealness. And that the message of the song is one of total denial of being in love at all, sarcasm bared, not many people got the joke. Like The Police's "Every Breath You Take", it's not really a love song. It's about someone who has some "funny" ideas in their head that they think is love.
The Original Soundtrack, your second stop on the 10cc road.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Undoubtedly an ESSENTIAL 70s album..., April 23, 2003
I don't say this about too many records (albums, whatever), all the way back from the early 70s to now, but this is undoubtedly a seminal work by ons of the best groups from the 70's. This was recorded at the writing/songwriting peak of the team of British duo Godley and Creme. Why buy this, you say? The answer is the MUSIC, of course! This was their best work, hands down, before their well-documented sad self-implosion after the release of their next album a year later, "How Dare You."
Now for the music:
"One Nuit In Paris," is as strange as it is brilliant. I am DREAMING of the day when someone makes a "long-form" music video out of this one day. The entire story is told in three very unusual vignettes, but you think you'd been there all night yourself.
"I'm Not In Love" is as bittersweet and beautiful as any song's potential can get to evoke those memories best left in the attic of one's broken heart. With this one song they captured the quiet confusion, frustration and anger of being alone.
"Blackmail," is a brilliant example of how fame, sex and especially the delicately balanced trust of others who hold your fame in their hands can be tipped over for greed.
"The Second Sitting For The Last Supper" is a cool rocker that inflicts both guilt and freedom at the same time.
"Brand New Day" slows the album down a bit, and is the most 70's sounding song, but it works - it's the most Queen-sounding for it's time, but then again, maybe Queen "borrowed" that 3 part harmony in "Bohemian Rhapsody" from 10CC? Listen for yourself.
"Flying Junk" is a short song that leaps right out of the box swinging, and reminds you that the bad men still exist, and apparently live pretty well!
"Life Is A Minestrone" is so full of wonderful nonsense that it makes you wish it was you sipping tea with Minnie Mouse at the Taj Mahal by the end of it.
The last song, "The Film Of My Love," is a bit sappy and a little goofy, but it reminds me so much of what Monty Python might have been if they wrote music at the time - it's absurdist, sincere in it's fantasy, and this could have been played over the ending of one of their movies.
(For the remaster, they have included two "bonus tracks" - "Chanel Swimmer," an odd almost Beatle-like ditty that was the B-side single to "I'm Not In Love," and the last song is "Good News," another B-side, which is very very odd, and light and airy.
NOW PLEASE NOTE: There are several versions of 10CC:TOS out there, BEWARE of BOTH of the early Mercury versions of this album on CD, they are mixed WRONG! Luckily for me I own the 1998 MFSL Gold disc, and together with the remaster you will have a lot of original cover art, additional info + lyrics and the additional tracks.
In summation, you can apply any of these songs to anything, and it pretty much works. 10cc was a legendary band of the early 70's, and this album cements it - this is their cornerstone work. I have loved this album since I first heard it on a scratchy 33 1/3 record back in the late 1979, and have never stopped listening to it since. As a whole it inspires, makes me reminisce, and most of all I can toe-tap along to their dry wit, their humor, and their style.
Yes, this album has STYLE!
Thanks for reading.
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