Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
To examine a line from a poem and believe that you can find a meaning to a full life can be misleading, it may offer insight to a moment, to an instant where the writer was overwhelmed by an emotion, but in regards to explaining an entire career, to sit there and insist that a single line can explain everything away, is best preserved in the role of academia and by those to whom can make a living from deciphering a message from a single line of text.
To appreciate the whole, or as possibly can be achieved without every solitary strand of D.N.A. to be placed before you as evidence or as a body of proof, then you must be prepared to at least once to sit and have the life consume your waking hours in one full sweep of breath. Whether it is in a series of novels by a writer of conviction, an artist or a sculptor whose entire ethic is captured in sequence and cuts to the soul, or via the medium of music with an astonishing number of albums that take up an entire, and fruitfully entertaining day.
To draw upon the whole as presented by 10cc is to understand that for more than 50 percent of the band’s existence as recording artists the whole is actually a half, that what the foursome reduce down to two core members with new support, and that in itself then presents a conundrum, a dedication to the cause of picking out what others suggest is the minutiae and knowing that is the sum of the experience.
In 10cc: 20 Years – 1972-1992 the mystery of expression unfolds; the sheer depth of producing albums and creatively impressive songs in a period of time where they honestly went against a grain and captured the imagination for their willingness to even be detrimental to those with axes to grind by describing in verse that they were the worst band in the world is to behold genius of four extraordinary men, song writers, producers; and in the new, almost definitive collection placed in their name, such is the beauty of completion that a day in the life, of immersing yourself from the beginning of the band’s name to the moment of near finality in the studios is a day to be blessed.
10cc: 20 Years – 1972-1992 is more than a box set, it is a vision, on par with recent releases such as the entire Stevie Nicks solo catalogue under one proverbial roof, or that in which the complexity and passion that captured Kirsty MacColl in her vibrancy and effervescent humanity, but one that does not shy away from examining the trials as well as the jubilation.
It is with utter respect to Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Crème, as well as the abundant names such as Rick Fenn, Andrew Gold, and Paul Burgess that followed, that the name of 100c, of the fathers of art rock, has endured and enjoyed for so long.
A tremendous presentation, art not just for art’s sake but for pleasure as well.
Ian D. Hall