10cc & Robin Taylor Zander – Keswick Theatre – Glenside, PA – July 26, 2024
The last time that 10cc toured the United States was in 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president, Muhammad Ali was the heavyweight champion of the world, the Jonestown Massacre was just about to happen, and Grease was cleaning up at the box office. It’s been even longer since they stopped by the Philadelphia area, with their last local gig at the old Tower Theater back in 1975.
Of course, the band has changed a lot over the years, breaking up and getting back together in different iterations over the years. However, of the original four 10cc leaders, only singer/songwriter Graham Gouldman is still playing with the band. Early members Kevin Godley and Lol Creme left the group in 1976 to work on other projects (they had a fluke 1985 hit with “Cry”) and to become pioneers in a pre-MTV music video world. Eric Stewart left the band in 1995.
Which is not to say that the new touring 10cc is just made up of Gouldman and a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies. Drummer Paul Burgess has been with 10cc since 1973, and guitarist Rick Fenn has been a member since 1976. The new guys are keyboardist Keith Hayman, who has been around since 2006, and singer/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Park.
However, the real Johnny-come-lately was the opening act. Robin Taylor Zander – the 23-year-old son of Cheap Trick singer Robin Zander – has been juggling a gig with the Trick and a solo career for the past several years. His set was an interesting mix of his own music, a few Cheap Trick cuts and a random cover. He opened with acoustic rethinkings of two less-familiar Cheap Trick songs, “If You Want My Love” and “I Can’t Take It.”
He did four of his original songs – including two (“In Front of Me” and “All She Wrote”) which have not been released yet but are due to be on an EP scheduled to be released in the fall. Then he closed out strong with an unplugged version of his father’s “I Want You To Want Me” and a cover of a song he called one of his favorite songs, and his dad’s favorite artist, the sweet and wistful Neil Young song “Harvest Moon.”
After about a forty-minute break between acts, 10cc finally took the stage. A band revered for its pop sensibility, artistic performances, and (as Gouldman acknowledged good-naturedly onstage) sometimes wacky lyrics, they opened with the wonderfully eccentric rocker “The Second Sitting for the Last Supper.” This was followed up by some early favorites, the extremely cynical pop deconstruction “Art For Art’s Sake,” the goofy-but-undeniably catchy “Life is a Minestrone” and the wonderfully anarchic story-song “Good Morning Judge.”
Despite the surprisingly catchy backing chorus “humdrum days and humdrum ways,” the definitely not humdrum “The Dean and I” also skipped along on an undeniable melody. The next song up was the elegiac “Old Wild Men,” which Fenn acknowledged that they wrote in their 20s to imagine what they would be like… umm, now… Also, the hard-hitting social satire of “The Wall Street Shuffle” is even more relevant now than it was when it was originally released.
While 10cc was always a well-respected band – particularly in their native Europe (where this iteration of the band has been touring on and off for decades) – they surprisingly only had two really big hits on the US charts. (Although they did have multiple other songs which charted lower.)
Therefore it was met with a huge response when they opened the last leg of the set with the wonderfully catchy “The Things We Do For Love.” That led into the totally off-the-wall “Silly Love” and the gorgeous if slightly surreal “I’m Mandy Fly Me.”
Then came their biggest smash, the wonderfully lush and nuanced anti-romance song “I’m Not In Love.” The band was able to do a surprisingly excellent job of capturing the infamously layered vocals in the background. And to this day, although the song is not obviously supposed to be one of their funny songs, its lyrics are extremely ironic. The singer, no matter how much he may be trying to convince his woman that he isn’t in love with her – and to convince himself of that fact as well – is quite obviously head over heels for her.
The main set ended up on the band’s surprisingly realistic reggae pastiche “Dreadlock Holiday” -- which Gouldman acknowledged was a huge hit everywhere in the world except for the United States. Telling the (based on a true) story of a slightly obtuse British tourist who runs afoul of some sketchy natives while visiting Jamaica, the song still has a good-natured bounce and respect for the musical style, even if some of the native characters may seem a little broadly drawn at this point in history. However, you can’t really hold 70s songwriting to modern sensibilities, see also: “Brown Sugar,” “Island Girl,” “The No No Song,” etc.
The encore was made up of the a capella doo-wop pastiche “Donna” and “Rubber Bullets,” the undeniably wacky story of a party at the local county jail which goes wildly awry.
Seeing 10cc live was a bucket list experience which was worth the wait. Let’s just hope they don’t take another 46 years to come back.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 28, 2024.
Photos by Jay S. Jacobs © 2024. All rights reserved.
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