Nov 22, 2017

RhoDeo 1747 Aetix

Hello,

Today's artists are British vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Kevin Godley and Lol Crème they have one of the most eclectic resumés in rock & roll. They were session musicians when they joined 10cc in 1970. Originally called Hotlegs, 10cc were an art pop group that frequently appeared on the U.K. charts in the early '70s, eventually hitting number two in the U.S. with "I'm Not in Love." The two departed from 10cc a year later so they could experiment with the Gizmo, a gadget that enabled the guitar to create sounds with symphonic textures. .....N'Joy

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Kevin Godley and Lol Creme met in the late 1950s and for a brief time were in a band together. Through the 1960s they played in different bands, with Godley briefly in The Mockingbirds with Graham Gouldman, who would later work with Godley and Creme in 10cc. After recording a one-off single under the name of 'Yellow Bellow Room Boom' for UK CBS in 1967 ("Seeing Things Green" b/w "Still Life"), the pair began their professional music career together in 1969, performing pop music in Strawberry Studios at Stockport near Manchester with Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman (often mistakenly referred to as being "Bubblegum Music", perhaps because they were contracted by Kasenetz & Katz, who produced bubblegum sub-teen pop in the US on the Buddah label). Their first chart success (Neanderthal Man) was as members of the short-lived Hotlegs, which evolved into 10cc in 1972. 10cc enjoyed chart success, most notably with their 1975 single "I'm Not in Love", a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

After the recording of 10cc's fourth LP, How Dare You! (1976), Godley and Creme left the band to perfect a device they dubbed "The Gizmo" (Gizmotron), a module which attached to the bridge of an electric guitar. The Gizmo used small motor-driven rotating wheels which were pressed into contact with the strings, thus creating a continuous, violin-like "bowing" effect on all or any combination of strings, generating infinite sustain in voicings ranging from a single note to a full chord. The device was originally conceived as a cost-saving measure for 10cc. The group already owned and operated their own studio, and all four were talented singers and multi-instrumentalists who could also produce and engineer their own records, so their plan was that by using Gizmo-fitted electric guitars, with additional studio processing and overdubbing, they could create an almost infinite variety of sonic effects and orchestral textures "in-house", saving them the considerable expense of hiring session players to add these textures using traditional instruments.

After recording a demonstration single using the Gizmo, their label (Mercury Records) allowed them to continue the project, and over the next year it expanded into a sprawling 3-LP concept album Consequences (1977) with an environmental theme. It contained vocals by Sarah Vaughan and an extended comedy performance by Peter Cook, and was issued in a lavish boxed set package with an accompanying booklet. According to the album's liner notes, the duo's original plan was to hire an all-star cast of comedians (including Peter Ustinov) to perform the album's spoken-word components, but this was soon abandoned, partly due to the cost and logistical difficulty, but also because they quickly realised after meeting Peter Cook that he was able to perform all of the major roles himself. Unfortunately, by the time Consequences was finally released in late 1977, punk was in full swing, and the album was savaged by critics.

Unfortunately, the band wasn't democratic or smart enough at that time to allow us the freedom to go ahead and do this project and we were placed in the unfortunate position of having to leave to do it. Looking back, it was a very northern work ethic being applied to the group, all for one and one for all. If we'd been a little more free in our thinking with regard to our work practices, the band as a corporate and creative entity could have realised that it could have been useful rather than detrimental for two members to spend some time developing and then bring whatever they'd learned back to the corporate party. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be. The duo gradually regained critical favour with a trio of innovative albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s – L (1978), Freeze Frame (1979) and Ismism (1981, released as Snack Attack in the United States).

Freeze Frame (1979) included several songs that gained airplay on alternative radio in many countries, notably "I Pity Inanimate Objects" and "An Englishman in New York", which was accompanied by an innovative music video. Several notable guest performers contributed to the album: Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera played guitar on and co-produced the album tracks "Random Brainwave" and "Clues", Paul McCartney contributed backing vocals to the song "Get Well Soon" and Roxy Music saxophonist Andy Mackay played saxophone on the single-only track "Wide Boy" and also appeared in the song's innovative promotional video. Alongside the album tracks released as singles, the duo also released two singles (both of which failed to chart) that contained tracks not included on the LP - "Wide Boy" b/w "I Pity Inanimate Objects" (March 1980) and the instrumental single "Submarine" b/w "Marciano" (September 1980).

They made the UK Top Ten with the singles "Under Your Thumb" (a song about the ghost of a suicidal woman who returns to haunt a rail commuter) and "Wedding Bells" in 1981, both from Ismism (1981). The single "Snack Attack" was also a minor hit.

In 1983, they released Birds of Prey which took their music in a more electronic direction, using electronic drum machines for the entire album. Their 1984 single "Golden Boy" was included on 1985's The History Mix Volume 1 album which celebrated 25 years of recording together. The album, co-produced by J. J. Jeczalik of Art of Noise, remixed samples of their previous recordings to a disco beat. This album also contained the single "Cry" which, helped in part by the video, became their biggest US hit, reaching No. 16. The song reached No. 19 in Britain. A video cassette was also released with visual imagery to complement the music.

Godley & Creme released their final album, Goodbye Blue Sky, in 1988. This album abandoned electronic instruments and used harmonicas, organs, and guitars to tell the story of the earth on the brink of nuclear war. The pair ended their working relationship soon after the release of the album, and reformed 10cc three years later. In a 1997 interview, Creme explained: In '89, certainly in '88, maybe before, Kevin changed, I think his priorities in life changed. He'd had enough, he'd simply had enough of me and the way we worked, the things we did, the priorities we had. It was time for a shift in all that and he was obviously right.

Godley and Creme achieved their greatest success as the innovative directors of more than fifty music videos in the early 1980s. They created memorable videos for The Police ("Every Breath You Take", "Synchronicity II", "Wrapped Around Your Finger"), Culture Club ("Victims"), Duran Duran ("Girls on Film", "A View to a Kill"), Herbie Hancock ("Rockit"), Go West ("We Close Our Eyes"), Frankie Goes to Hollywood ("Two Tribes", "The Power of Love"), Sting ("If You Love Somebody Set Them Free", "Fields of Gold"), Toyah ("Thunder in the Mountains"), Visage ("Fade to Grey"), George Harrison ("When We Was Fab"), Wang Chung ("Everybody Have Fun Tonight"), and Yes ("Leave It"), among many others, up to Godley's video for The Beatles' 1996 single, "Real Love", from the Beatles Anthology.

The pair's innovation extended to their videos for their own songs, notably "Wide Boy" and "Cry". The latter's 1985 video consisted of faces blending into one other using analog cross-fading, anticipating the digital effect of morphing, later used in a similar way in Michael Jackson's 1991 video, "Black or White". This has often been seen as "groundbreaking", though the promotional video accompanying King Crimson's single "Heartbeat" had used a similar effect two years earlier.

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Unlike their previous 2 albums which depended on music quirks, here the emphasis is on lyrical quirks.  Each track tells some kind of story or conveys a scene in which something weird is happening.  Consequently (if I dare use that word in reference to these guys) the music is mostly oddly constructed grooves that do their best to stay in the background while the words twist your brain with that peculiar brand of insanity that is Godley & Crème.This apparently made them more accessible, as they had 3 singles off this album The mix puts their voices higher than usual, highlighting some truly bent tales of munchy madness, desert skullduggery, and JFK assassins. For contrast, there's the gorgeous "Wedding Bells," a rare AM hit for the former 10cc mates. Throughout all of this, you get the nagging feeling this pair was capable of so much more.



 Godley and Creme - Ismism   (flac  422mb)

01 Snack Attack 7:15
02 Under Your Thumb 4:47
03 Joey's Camel 5:29
04 The Problem 4:06
05 Ready For Ralph 2:24
06 Wedding Bells 3:26
07 Lonnie 4:51
08 Sale Of The Century 4:28
09 The Party 8:11
Bonus
10 Power Behind The Thrown 3:41
11 Babies 4:43
12 Snack Attack (Extended Version) 6:48

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The least successful inclusion in the Godley & Creme catalog, Birds of Prey finds the duo stripping back the crazier idiosyncrasies that made its earlier albums so intriguing, and working more in the realm of melody and, dare one say it, easy listening. Lyrically they remain as offbeat as ever, and an evening with the Birds of Prey lyric sheet will send you scrabbling to hear the music. Bad move. "Save Me a Mountain," the album's almost-hit single, is a saccharin lament that might be directly descended from 10cc's "Brand New Day" and "Don't Hang Up," but lacks both the melodic and the emotional punch that made those earlier ballads work so well, while "Samson," "My Body the Car," and "Madame Guillotine" simply sound as though they were recorded the moment the ideas first stumbled into view, as opposed to waiting around to make sure the songs were even worth pursuing. So a major disappointment from a duo that was traditionally so reliable and, if you do buy the album today, it'll be for the bonus tracks -- no, not the dance mix of "Samson," but for the sheer madness of "Welcome to Breakfast Television," a topical B-side at the time of its release, and a self-fulfilling prophecy that could not have been proved more accurate.



Godley and Creme - Birds Of Prey (flac 402mb)

01 My Body The Car 2:24
02 Worm And The Rattlesnake 3:24
03 Cats Eyes 3:43
04 Samson 5:29
05 Save A Mountain For Me 3:34
06 Madame Guillotine 5:02
07 Woodwork 4:38
08 Twisted Nerve 4:03
09 Out In The Cold 4:51
Bonus
10 Welcome To Breakfast Television 2:31
11 Samson (Dance Mix) 5:52
12 Golden Boy 3:49
13 Samson (UK 7" Promo Single Edit) 3:56
14 Golden Boy (Long Version) 5:48

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A decade after Kevin Godley and Lol Creme walked out on 10cc and took half of that band's magic with them, the pair convened a reunion of sorts with The History Mix, Vol. 1, the ultimate ideal of all that the then-infant industry of remixing had to offer. The utterly gorgeous (and surprisingly successful) "Cry" notwithstanding, the basic premise of the album was to assemble a batch of the duo's past triumphs -- 11 in all, with only four pre- or postdating the 10cc era -- and then recycle them into five separate cuts that fall somewhere between Frank Zappa and a deranged interpretation of an early Residents album. All of which makes for a collection that is alternately infuriating (ten minutes of the hook line from "Business Is Business" spliced with the "humdrum" intro from "The Dean and I"), intriguing (the combination of key elements from "How Dare You" and "Neanderthal Man"), and plain compulsive (the gentle drift from "I'm Not in Love"'s whispered "big boys don't cry" into "Cry" itself is a masterpiece in its own right). With producer Trevor Horn at the helm, the overall sound of the album is very much a child of its age -- however, the only moment that has truly dated is the insertion of a reference to Hill Street Blues into a fragmented "Rubber Bullets." Nevertheless, it's an album that is best recommended only to fans who actually know the original songs, and who'll appreciate the fresh landscapes into which they've been spliced -- one reason, presumably, for the CD reissue of the album adding in a handful of other, more conventional Godley & Creme concoctions. They, at least, give the impression of a commercially valid experience. In its natural state, it's simply the sound of invigorating sonic madness.



 Godley and Creme - History Mix (Vol. 1)   (flac 545mb)

01 Wet Rubber Soup medley 18:56
   ~Rubber Bullets~Minestrone~I'm Not In Love
02 Expanding The Business 17:05
03 Light Me Up 4:32
04 An Englishman In New York 5:54
05 Save A Mountain For Me 3:37
06 Golden Boy 5:49
07 Cry (Extended Remix) 7:27
08 Snack Attack (Extended Remix) 9:48

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In their final major-label release before heading for a video-making career, these two veteran English music-makers tackle environmental degradation and nuclear annihilation. After earlier releases full of detached sarcasm and sardonic wit, it's refreshing to hear the pair actually care about something, although they sometimes hector. Musically, the songs are linked by the use of harmonicas on every track. This is one of their stronger albums because of thematic consistency and typically terrific production, including the usual gorgeous, multi-tracked harmonies. In spite of the gloomy subject matter, the album-closing "Desperate Times" ends on an optimistic note.



Godley and Creme - Goodbye Blue Sky (flac  483mb)
 
01 H.E.A.V.E.N./A Little Piece Of Heaven 5:03
02 Don't Set Fire (To The One I Love) 3:25
03 Golden Rings 4:17
04 Crime & Punishment 7:23
05 The Big Bang 2:30
06 10.000 Angels 5:15
07 Sweet Memory 4:48
08 Air Force One 3:38
09 The Last Page Of History 4:00
10 Desperate Times 3:40
Bonus
11 A Little Piece Of Heaven (Extended Mix) 6:06
12 Bits Of Blue Sky 5:45
13 Hidden Heartbeat 4:31
14 Rhino Rhino 3:19
15 Can't Sleep 2:08

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

FLAC link for Goodbye Blue Sky not working. :(

Anonymous said...

Thanks for Ismism. I had lost all hopes!
I've been looking for it for ages.
This turns out to be a great day, thanks to you.

Anonymous said...

Please reupload The History Mix Vol 1 FLAC sometime if possible. Merci!

quantize said...

Please a reup, esp birds of prey!