"Don't Hang Up" is a bittersweet listen. It's the last song from How Dare You!, which was their last album with the original quartet. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's the last song they recorded, but combined with the lyrics it does carry an air of finality. Of course it's a gorgeous song of course.
The video above is interesting. It came out years before the premiere of MTV, which popularized the idea of concept videos. And since there's no concept, the initial impression is that it's a real or "realistic" performance by the band. But it's not quite. For instance, no one is seen playing the drums. In reality Kevin Godley, the hirsute lead vocalist on most of the song, was also the band's drummer. Given their Beatlish approach he almost certainly didn't do both at the same time, but it's kind of eerie to have snare sounds coming out of nowhere.
Hats off to Lol Creme, who seems to have a different interpretation of "She's got a rocky terrain" than what I always thought it meant.
2 comments:
Thanks for this - it's still quite as wonderful to hear as it ever
was, plus I finally got to see them. Never had before. You're
right it's bittersweet.
The video itself is a bit like a cross between one of those tv
shows where the band was only able to lipsynch because
of audio restrictions and the later MTV extravaganzas
where the bands often spent more time posing in various
scenarios. I understand all of the original four guys were
multi-instrumentalists although it was mostly Godley
and Creme who wrote the songs.
Snare drums coming out of nowhere is a little bizarre
but the guys are so much fun to watch I might not have
noticed the drums had you not mentioned them.
I've never heard female curves described that way either.
One of the nice things about having the Internet around was finding out that they still had a dedicated fanbase. A cool surprise, since I'd remembered hearing them when I was a kid and then they sort of disappeared. The original lineup (which I'm primarily interested in) split in the 70s but Graham Gouldman still apparently keeps up the 10cc name.
Yeah, the way videos were made was in an early stage of development. I suspect they wouldn't have been interested in doing anything really elaborate , seeing it as an unhelpful use of time. The songwriting was pretty democratic as well. Eric Stewart had a good voice and kind of a McCartney look so was seen as the lead a lot.
It was just sort of a "hey, wait a minute" thing for me, with the drums.
Female curves are a rich subject of course. He looked sort of like he was playing an Italian sailor in a musical.
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