10CC

While this isn't the worst 10CC album, it is certainly the most disappointing. In 1977 Lol Creme and Kevin Godley left the band, to promote their invention the Gizmo (an electric device that imitated a violin bow effect on guitar strings). They recorded the exceptional (and critically panned) "Consequences", followed by "L". Then, like Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman in what was left of 10CC, their output began to run off of the interestingly creative track, and more toward the mundane AC pop. In 1992 Polydor announced that the band had reunited for the recording of "Meanwhile".

Reunited was a bit of false advertising. Godley & Creme are here, but as barely noticable supporting musicians. Both sing backup here and there, and Godley takes the lead on The Stars Didn't Show. But neither has any hand in the songwriting, nor do they play any instruments. Mac Rebenack (Dr. John) has more of a presence, playing piano on three tracks.

Musically, the songs are the same sort of MOR pop blandness that 10CC had been heading toward on their last few albums. There are a handful of decent pop tunes. Woman In Love has an okay melody, although the lyrics are trite. Wonderland is my favorite song on the album, and the one where Godley and Creme's background vocals are the most evident. Welcome To Paradise, the obligatory reggae track and Green Eyed Monster are the closest they get to the humor of the old 10CC, but not very close.

The original 8 song release of this album starts out with it's only high note. 24 Hours is a decent, but not great attempt by Eric Stewart (who seems to almost completely overshadow Graham Gouldman here) to recapture the magic of the earlt 10CC albums. This is a suite in their classic style, adeptly moving from one song style to another. It is by no means a masterpiece, but it is the only track worth owning on an otherwise completely forgettable album.

As you might guess by the comments above, the remainder of the original pressing fall into the cookie cutter style Stewart and Gouldman had been creating for the last few albums. Far too many reggae beats, gratuitous insertion of some of the old 10CC instument sounds, without the creativity and spontaneity that made those early albums a joy.

If you have the luck of owning the 2006 limited edition release, you get the addition of three radio edits of songs from the album. These are completely worthless, as they are castrated tracks, cut down for the short attention spans of the average listener. Also, there are the two live tracks, Dreadlock Holiday and I'm Not In Love, both decent but not outstanding.

Then there are the two tracks that were releases as B-sides to singles. She Gives Me Pain is an upbeat instrumental, alittle reminiscent of Speed Kills, from the debut album. Then there's Secret Life Of Henry. I'm curious as to why this was left off of the original album. It must have been a stupid record company executive (Isn't that term redundant?) decision. This track is easily the best on the album. In fact, it may be the best track 10CC recorded since Lol Creme and Kevin Godley left the band.

The original version gets 2 stars, the expanded version 2.75. Average that out...

This album is a step up from the dismal "Look Hear?". Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman have dumped their entire band, and have brought in only Andrew Gold on keyboard, percussion and some backing vocals. And the album is somewhat of a success.

The 10CC sound is back to a point. The guitar and keyboard sounds are very familiar, although I do get somewhat bored with the reliance on reggae rhythms (something they have used as a crutch since their success with the song Dreadlock Holiday).

Lyrically, the album is better than the previous one, as well. There are puns ("I got a message from my broker. he said he broker than me"), self depreciating humor ("I started with nothing, and worked my way down"), and even a steamy vignette (No tell Motel).

This album is by no means up to par with the records they made before the band split, but it shows that Stewart and Gouldman still had some life left.

This album is where I completely gave up caring about 10CC's new releases. There are some nice sounds. As usual, the production is exquisite, but the wry humor that made 10CC so enjoyable in the past was just about gone.

The album begins with One-Two-Five, a self-referental song that makes me long for the intelligence and quirkyness of The Worst Band In The World. This one is just too simplistic and strained. The next song starts out on a bright note: the intro to Welcome To The World is reminiscent of Gentle Giant's For Nobody. But once the first verse begins, the song descends into normalcy. After that, there is just maudlin tracks with strained efforts to reclaim the 10CC sound.

Here and there is a passage that might cause a fan to perk up and say "That sounds like...". But each moment is fleeting as the songs return to drivel.

It's also sad to not that the other half of the original 10CC, Godley and Creme, by this time were also nearly out of good ideas. It's a shame.

I have to give the band 3RDEGREE for send me their latest album, which reminded me why I liked 10CC back in the seventies. They had a combination of cleverness, crudeness and sophistication that has rarely been matched.

"Bloody Tourists" was the last 10CC album I purchased right when it was released (later albums I either bought used, or received promos). At the time, I listened to it a few times, and then filed it away. It really did nothing for me. A new round of listening now reveals that the album isn't the complete waste that I thought it was at the time.

When "Deceptive Bends", the band's previous album, was released, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman proved that they could carry on the group's tradition of humor and fun arrangements. The lyrical cleverness was there, even though there was a slight trend toward maudiln ballads. "Bloody Tourists" take another step away from the cleverness and fun.

Dreadlock Holiday is the most famous track on the album. It, for obvious reasons is a reggae laden pop song that displays the dark side of visiting the Carribbean island. It has some humor, excellent production, but it somehow lacks the allure of earlier songs. But the 10CC sound does appear throughout the album. The highly compressed guitar sound, the spacious harmonies, instruments and sound effects emphasizing lyrics. It just isn't consistent.

Shock On The Tube is a dream encounter with a girl on a subway. It has a similarities to I'm Mandy, Fly Me, but unfortunately give away the punch line at the beginning of the song. Anonymous Alcoholic is actually a very good portrait of an addicted drinker. Tokyo has some cool fretless bass, and a sort of proggy middle section. abd Everything You Wanted To Know About!! has a classic 10CC feel.

I certainly wouldn't recommend this to the 10CC newbie, but it does have merits. I rate this one just barely a 3.

I must admit, I was a huge 10CC fan for their first few albums. After kevin godley and Lol Creme left the band, I still gae them a chance. "Deceptive Bends" was actually a very good album. It managedto retain the cleverness and quirkyness that made 10CC the kings of art-pop. But soon after that, whatever made the group destinctive, both in lyrics and in songwriting, began to fade. I purchased "Look Hear?" at a used record store for fifty cents, and gave up on the band.

In 1995, while managing a record store, I received a promo of "Mirror Mirror", and gave it a listen. It confirmed my decision to not follow their releases up until that point (although revisiting them recently I found that they were bad, but not devoid of value, as this album is).

Musically and lyrically, the group had become at this point typical soft rock fodder. The words are schmaltzy and trite, and the arrangements are bland and boring. Many of the tracks seem to have completely uninspired sequencing, devoid of ay emotion.

The focal point of the album appears to be a remix of the band's classic hit I'm Not In Love. the remix to me is unnecessary, and was probably added as a way to get Godley and Creme in the credits. Later reissues have some single edits, and an acoustic version of I'm Not In Love. This version misses the best part of the song, the lush vocal overdubbed harmonies tha made up the backing track.

It is unfortunate that the band's recording career ended on such a low note, but it does appear tha Graham Goulding has been touring recently as the only original member under the band's nae.

— First review of this album —

The main reason to give value to this concert DVD is the fact that (as far as I and PA know) there simply aren't any 10cc DVD's featuring the band in its glory days. Filmed in 1993, this features only Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman from the classic line-up. Not that it should necessarily matter so much, but I felt this concert to be rather dull and lifeless, as if there wasn't a real 10cc on stage but just a tribute band led by Stewart who wears sun glasses and remains sort of distanced from the audience. Like the rest of the players, bass-playing Gouldman is almost out of the picture all the time, except when he sings (with audible uncertainty) the Beatles cover 'Across the Universe'. Both camera work and stage setting lack any inspiration. DVD doesn't include any extra material and even the concert representation gives an impression of low-budget release. If I remember right, there were some misspellings on track titles.

As the title suggests, this is mostly a cavalcade of their most accessible (and less artistic and original) stuff, hits like 'Things We Do for Love', reggaeish 'Dreadlock Holiday', sleek 'I'm Not in Love' and Slade-reminding 'Rubber Bullets'. I can't say to be an advanced 10cc connoisseur, but to me there weren't many highlights. Sadly the choise from my fave album How Dare You! is probably its dullest track 'Art for Art's Sake'. The playing is OK and maybe towards the end the contact with the audience gets a bit warmer, but frankly I got bored on the way there. Not recommended, listen to their classic albums instead.

Having more or less given up on the band since the two-way split, although the 10 CC name still managed a few good tracks and a major hit in Dreadlock Holiday, the post-split albums didn't quite reach the quality of the original foursome. The aptly-titled Deceptive Bends, the poor Bloody Tourists (saved by their last huge hit), and the miserable Are You Normal (of yes, you are), the remaining duo of Stewart and Gouldman pulled this one out of their bag in 83, but sadly it was clear by now that the band had over-stayed its welcome. Despite an impressive cast of guest proggy musicians (drummers Gadd, Phillips, saxman Collins, etc.), the album doesn't manage anything exciting or even enthralling, partly because of the AOR sound ala Toto or Don Fagen flattening this album's dynamic curves.

Indeed, out of the 8 tracks, none really manage to stand out from the almost-insipid pop, even the longer tracks not being really successful to arouse the progheads' interest. Despite that last remark, it is the two longer tracks that are slightly less soporific, but the 8- mins 24 Hours never allows for the pure pop brilliance of yesteryears to happen. Sappy and atrocious ballads like the 6-mins interminable Yes I Am (could be subtitled I Am Ready For Love) are abusing of your patience by being twice length it needed to. The worst part is that outside the Toto soundscapes, we get some pretty bad Foreigner vibes (circa the 4th album), but without the energy of Gramm's voice, even in faster tracks like City Lights. To keep the dancing thing going, the band plays out one or two reggaes (like Feel The Love, or Food For Thoughts) to emulate the success of Dreadlock Holidays, but sadly fails in doing so. Even worse, "Working Girls" emulates the horrible electro-pop new-wave ala 2Duran that had conquered the airwaves.

It's rather obvious that part of the failure of this album (still a tad better than its predecessor from what I recall) is its 80's AOR production (let alone a boring artwork on the cover), but at least we're not dealing (not that I know of, anyway) with cheap digital synths and rhythm boxes. Don't get me wrong, even insipid 10CC albums like this one are worth twice any Toto album of any era (and not just IMHO). Best avoided, just in case you hadn't understood yet.

"Bloody Tourists" is the 6th full-length studio album by UK pop/art rock act 10cc. The album was released through Mercury Records in September 1978. The album was commercially successful and spawned the hit single "Dreadlock Holiday" which reached No.1 in the UK in August 1978, prior to the album´s release in September.

"Bloody Tourists" is a continuation of the compositionally clever and lyrically "tongue in cheek" pop music that the band are known and loved for. It´s slightly less challenging than earlier releases or in other words more mainstream. One of the things that always stood out on earlier releases was the sound production and this time around it´s no different. These guys are just as accomplished producers as they are musicians. The trademark vocal harmonies and choirs are there in abundance too. The slightly silly Caribbean/reggae influenced "Dreadlock Holiday" is a track that is sometimes much criticised, but looked upon objectively it´s a damn catchy, memorable and very well produced pop song. The same can be said about the rest of the material. Some of the tracks are sometimes lacking the compositional depth and oddball attitude of earlier material, but there´s nothing offensively bad on "Bloody Tourists".

Overall it´s an enjoyable release that might not reach the hights of their best output, but certainly delivers entertainment on a satisfactory level. I´d say a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is deserved.

This is a nice live album/cd. They advertise this as the "original members of 10cc live" but on the first or second tune the lead singer says, "I want to introduce to you one of the greatest drummers in rock" Paul Burgess. He's also mentioned on "worst band in the world".

I think that this is good stuff but of course the thing thats missing is the inventive crazyness of the studio and the effects and tricks that made the songs delightful. So for myself i was a litle disappointed by this overall.

So its cool that this gets pretty high ratings on other sites and features the original members of 10cc but thats not quite right. Some of the vocals are a bit off here and there. Why extend "rubber bullets"? it was a nice hard hitting rocking little ditty and they drag it out for 12 minutes!

If you can't reproduce the music well from a studio setting then how do you present a live concert? Many bands have not done well in that regard Led Zeppelin being one, Although the Zep had to resort to long blues jams and questionable tightness and feel night after night. The focus changed from Zep layers of guitars tight arrangements in the studio to a whole different approach on stage. !0cc try this on the last track but overall again its not very good.

i think 10cc should have stuck to their songs strengths which is good quirky melodies and very good playing and good singing.