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10cc - Greatest Hits 1972- 1978 CD (album) cover

GREATEST HITS 1972- 1978

10cc

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Tony Fisher
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars How many bands produce a "Greatest Hits" package where you either think "who?" or where half the songs are ones that were either never released or you've never heard of?

Well not this one: it is exactly what it says on the sleeve. This is 10cc at their most commercial and arguably their best, though they did many other great tracks as well as these. All the songs are other albums and I have them all, but I still bought this for a reason I myself don't understand. The songs are witty, irreverent and played and sung brilliantly by 4 extremely talented performers. It's proof that prog can be commercial without selling out.

If you have all their other albums, don't bother buying it since there's nothing new. But if you haven't heard much of the band and want a place to start, this is an excellent compilation to introduce you to their work. I'll bet that it won't be the last thing of theirs that you buy!

5* for new introductions, 3* for established fans.

Report this review (#88036)
Posted Wednesday, August 23, 2006 | Review Permalink
ZowieZiggy
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars This offering is exactly what is said on the sleeve. A collection of 10CC hits between 1972 and 1978. It is a very good review of those memorable songs from this fabulous English quartet.

A pleasant album to play during a meeting with friends and re-discover all those jewels. Of course, if you would like to discover their less conventional side, nothing is better than getting "Sheet Music" (only featured with one song here : "Silly Love") and "The Original Soundtrack".

If their earliest repertoire is of interest to you (which is definitely worth checking out) I can recommend the very good compilation "Best Of - The Early Years". Extremely cheap, it is also a true best of from this era.

To come back to this one, none of their great hits are missing and to listen to all these great moments is a pure joy. Four stars. What you see is what get.

Report this review (#154327)
Posted Wednesday, December 5, 2007 | Review Permalink
ClemofNazareth
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Prog Folk Researcher
3 stars I purchased this album on vinyl back in high school when “The Things we do for Love” and “Dreadlock Holiday” were in pretty regular rotation on AM radio, and being familiar with the very popular teenage breakup soundtrack “I’m not in Love” (yes, I was one of the many fourteen year-old boys who presented the single to a girlfriend to inform her that she could prepend “ex-“ to her title). I don’t recall having ever heard any of the rest of the songs unless they happened to have been a b-side to one of the three mentioned above, and none of them were more than minor hits in my country.

I remember being a little annoyed that the liner notes were pretty sparse, particularly since the band wasn’t particularly well-known in the States. Each track had the composer and player credits and nothing more other than the meaningless monochrome and cartoon-like sketches on either side of the inner sleeve.

This is probably a good representation of the band’s early work, and in looking up the British chart positions of all the songs recently I would say it qualifies as a ‘Greatest Hits’ for that period. But I fail to see what makes this prog-related music. Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and especially Graham Gouldman had established themselves as jingle and bubble-gum pop ghost writers and session musicians long before the band started cranking out hits as 10cc. They four of them had recorded teeny-bopper music for a number of years under a whole slew of band names for entrepreneurs Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz. Pretty much all the tracks here reinforce their position as preeminent pop music composers.

For British fans all these tracks are familiar ones, and all of them except “Silly Love” were Top-10 singles there. But only The "Things we do for Love" and “I’m Not in Love” rose to that level in the States, and half the rest either never charted or weren’t even released here.

This is a tough album to rate, as are a lot of ‘Greatest Hits’ packages. There’s nothing new (hence the album title), so one either rates the album on the strength of the individual songs, or rates the collection on the strength of how accurately it represents the band’s actual best work. On the second point I’d say the label picked the right songs; on the first part I find most of them to be little more than well- produced pop. "The Things we do for Love" and “I’m Not in Love” have sentimental value for me and a lot of other people who went through puberty at that time and have fond memories of roller-skate parties where we listened to them while fantasizing about some comely young lass who didn’t know we existed. So in the end I’m going to mark this one down for three stars for the simple appeal of the songs and the memories they evoke, but if I were rating it as anything resembling or related to progressive music it would get a much lower mark.

peace

Report this review (#172112)
Posted Saturday, May 24, 2008 | Review Permalink
3 stars My 2nd 10cc purchase... Not bad but not totally Prog... But only because Prog is another music!

I have the doubt that who lived the 70's have reason when spits the sentence that 10cc are not a Prog band. But is undoubtfoul that for today Prog quotient 10cc is a Prog band... Oh... That confusion (common also of other cases!).

This compilation confirm what I said but the doubt that both currents of thought are right becomes real. Also because the songs not help to dispel my doubts. This song selection is good and the spirit of 10cc is all here. But in general not conquest me as I hoped.

In every case 10cc is a good band at the border between POP and Prog. And certainly not easy to classify.

Report this review (#222834)
Posted Wednesday, June 24, 2009 | Review Permalink
Evolver
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Crossover & JR/F/Canterbury Teams
3 stars If you were not familiar with 10CC, and wanted to find out what they were about, this would not be a bad place to start. This collection covers the essential portion of the band's career, from the debut album (the Hotlegs album doesn't count), through their last hit, Dreadlock Holiday, which came from the second album after Lol Creme and Kevin Godley left the band. and from what I've heard of the subsequent albums, we are not missing much.

The collection, while not containing some of the group's most progressive material, does feature the innovative arrangements and sly humor that they were known for.

Since the collection contains no unreleased material, and Art For Arts Sake and I'm Mandy, Fly Me both have their intros chopped off, the best I can rate this is three stars.

Report this review (#509121)
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2011 | Review Permalink

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