10cc - Civic Center, Santa Monica, CA, 11-26-1975

A few days ago, I posted a live acoustic album by Graham Gouldman, who in my opinion is one of the best songwriters ever. I highly recommend that album. Putting that together got me in a 10cc mood, since Gouldman has been a key member of that band since its founding in the early 1970s. It dawned on me that I didn't have any live 10cc album. Long story short, I looked around and decided that this is the best live 10cc album out there, even though it's a bootleg.

10cc in its prime was a collaboration between four talented songwriters: Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. Needless to say, it's highly unusual to have four talented songwriters in one band. Even the Beatles only managed three (since Ringo Starr only dabbles in writing songs). The problem is, songwriters generally want to do their own things with their own songs. Sure enough, 10cc proved to be unstable. The line-up with all four songwriters only lasted four years, from 1972 to 1976. At that point, Godley and Creme left to form a duo, logically named "Godley and Creme." 

I wanted a live album from the time all four songwriters were in the band, preferrably near the end of that time, so that most of their best songs as a foursome could be included. It turns out there are very few good bootlegs from that era, and no official live albums. Luckily, there's one that stands far above the rest, and that's this one. (The band's first live album, "Live and Let Live," comes from 1977 concerts, so it doesn't feature Godley and Creme or feature their songs.)

This bootleg was in very good shape. It obviously comes from a soundboard source. I didn't have to do any tinkering, except to break up the banter between songs into their own tracks. In my opinion, it sounds as good as their official 1977 album. There was only one album with all four songwriters released after this, "How Dare You!" in 1976. The best known song from that album is "Art for Art's Sake." Happily, that played that song here. Thus, all the best known songs from that era are included, with the exception of "I'm Mandy Fly Me," also from the "How Dare You!" album.

By the way, in 1971, the group "Hotlegs" had a huge hit with the song "Neanderthal Man." In actuality, that group really was 10cc, before they settled on that band name. During this concert, someone in the audience knew Hotlegs and 10cc was one and the same and loudly shouted out for "Neanderthal Man." The band seemed amused and obligingly played it, but only for less than a minute, since it was a silly novelty hit that they probably weren't that fond of.

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Introduction (10cc)
02 Silly Love (10cc)
03 Flying Junk (10cc)
04 talk (10cc)
05 Baron Samedi (10cc)
06 Old Wild Men (10cc)
07 talk (10cc)
08 The Sacro-Iliac (10cc)
09 talk (10cc)
10 Somewhere in Hollywood (10cc)
11 talk (10cc)
12 Donna (10cc)
13 talk (10cc)
14 Ships Don't Disappear in the Night [Do They] (10cc)
15 talk (10cc)
16 I'm Not In Love (10cc)
17 talk (10cc)
18 The Film of My Love (10cc)
19 talk (10cc)
20 Art for Art's Sake (10cc)
21 talk (10cc)
22 The Worst Band in the World (10cc)
23 talk (10cc)
24 Neanderthal Man (10cc)
25 talk (10cc)
26 The Wall Street Shuffle (10cc)
27 talk (10cc)
28 Rubber Bullets (10cc)
29 talk (10cc)
30 Une Nuit a Paris (10cc)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eoaYa

I wanted to use a photo of the band in 1975, showing all four members. I couldn't find a really good one though. But I found a good one from 1974, from them doing an appearance on the "Top of the Pops" TV show.