The light is changing.<\/p>\n
I’ve come to detest the summer.\u00c2\u00a0 But when the days start to get shorter and the sun’s shine is not quite so bright, I yearn to swim in a lake, roast marshmallows, do all those summer things from the Beach Boys albums.<\/p>\n
I can’t tell you what an impression the band from Hawthorne had on me.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the beauty of the sounds.\u00c2\u00a0 The lush orchestrations, the strings…hell, remember the harp in "Catch A Wave"?<\/p>\n
Which is probably why I like 10cc so much.<\/p>\n
Known for two hits in the U.S., "I’m Not In Love" and "The Things We Do For Love", 10cc was an instant success in the U.K., and reading about it in the music press, I immediately went out and bought the album.<\/p>\n
The hit was "Rubber Bullets".\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I ever heard it on the radio in the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 It sounded like a cross between those early Beach Boys hits and the track "Student Demonstration Time" off "Surf’s Up".\u00c2\u00a0 It was tongue-in-cheek, yet laden with hooks.\u00c2\u00a0 You couldn’t help but play it again and again.\u00c2\u00a0 Smiling and singing along.<\/p>\n
All the songs had this weird twist of craftsmanship and humor.\u00c2\u00a0 If you took the album straight, without a grain of salt, it seemed sophomoric.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you were in on the joke, it was incredibly funny and satisfying.<\/p>\n
The record began with "Johnny Don’t Do It", a parody of the death songs so popular in the early sixties, down to the spoken break a la "Dead Man’s Curve".<\/p>\n
"Sand In My Face" was a riff, about those ads in the back of comic books, that promised muscles for weaklings.\u00c2\u00a0 And when they sang "200 pounds of surfboard Hercules", you got that Southern California richness from these boys from dreary Manchester.<\/p>\n
Then came "Donna", which would have fit perfectly on Zappa’s "Ruben and the Jets", but the vocals were better, the song was hookier.<\/p>\n
And the fourth cut on the first side was "The Dean And I": Well, that’s the story.\u00c2\u00a0 But the magic comes after:<\/p>\n They were dating in the park<\/span> It was a strange combination, a concoction of Broadway and Beach Boys.\u00c2\u00a0 You could envision the protagonist on one knee, and the angelic chorus gives Brian Wilson a run for his money.<\/p>\n I drove cross-country playing this album over and over again.<\/p>\n I’d graduated from college the previous spring.\u00c2\u00a0 This was in the days before satellite radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Close to a metropolis you could get an FM signal, but out on the highway you were subjected to the AM inanity so contrary to the pulse of a music scene that drove the culture.<\/p>\n I know every lick of that album.\u00c2\u00a0 And I just heard "The Dean And I" on Sirius XM.\u00c2\u00a0 Never before had it come out of the speakers except when I dialed it up.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact the deejay played it made me feel connected.\u00c2\u00a0 On a continuum where the mainstream may have been clueless, but we insiders were members of an exalted club.<\/p>\n On that same Maxell cassette was a modicum of tracks from the band’s even stiffer in America second album, "Sheet Music". There was the killer opener with a heavy riff that could give any metal band a run for its money.\u00c2\u00a0 "Wall Street Shuffle" got a bit of airplay, it’s as applicable today as it was then, but the even sillier than the first album songs that followed it truly enraptured me. Like "The Sacro-Iliac", a new dance craze…assuming you were listening to a soft incisive song in your bedroom and the dance was in your head.\u00c2\u00a0 But the piece de resistance is "Somewhere In Hollywood".\u00c2\u00a0 A dog up in Beverly Hills?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s CRAZY!<\/p>\n Yes, "Somewhere In Hollywood" was a musical version of "A Star Is Born" and "Sunset Boulevard".\u00c2\u00a0 From the casting couch to reminiscence after the fact.\u00c2\u00a0 You can hear Fred Astaire’s footsteps dancing…\u00c2\u00a0 "Somewhere In Hollywood" is better than the movies they make today, and it’s a record!<\/p>\n But that’s how it was.\u00c2\u00a0 Life emanated from your tape deck.\u00c2\u00a0 The movies were in your mind.\u00c2\u00a0 Craft and wordplay were king.\u00c2\u00a0 The audience was sophisticated.\u00c2\u00a0 If you had fans, they’d follow you irrelevant of whether anybody else did, irrelevant of whether the mainstream gave you its imprimatur.<\/p>\n Actually, that’s kind of how it is today.\u00c2\u00a0 But like Jackson Pollock who could draw but chose not to, 10cc knew how to play, too many of today’s acts lack the skills, the voices, they haven’t practiced enough.<\/p>\n Yes, I’m getting nostalgic.<\/p>\n You only get to graduate from college once.\u00c2\u00a0 You step forward clueless even though you think you know everything.\u00c2\u00a0 And all that happened then is emblazoned upon your brain like it took place yesterday, one song can bring you right back.<\/p>\n
Hey sis, one kiss, and I was heaven bound<\/span>
Now who would have guessed Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ could be found<\/span>
But in the eyes of the dean, his daughter<\/span>
Was doin’ what she shouldn’a oughta<\/span>
But a man’s gotta do<\/span>
What a man’s gotta do<\/span>
The consequence should be<\/span>
Church bells, three swells<\/span>
The dean, his daughter and me<\/span><\/p>\n
They were smooching in the dark<\/span>
Of a doorway for two<\/span>
She whispered I love you<\/span>
Ooh, you know I never felt this way before<\/span>
Ooh, you know the elevator in my heart<\/span>
Has gone AWOL, AWOL, AWOL, AWOL<\/span>
And then I kissed her<\/span>
And when I kissed her<\/span>
It’s a wonderful world<\/span>
When you’re rolling in kisses<\/span><\/p>\n\n