Area - 'Crac!' (Cramps)

Is this actually a slight step backwards? I mean, it's awesome for sure, but a bit more restrained compared to the electronic mind-fuckery of it's precedent. The experimentation seems slightly more relegated to the details here; with headphones there's some insane dressing on these salads but not as much meat, y'know? Except for the last song, which is a goofy, lurching stop-start debacle, Crac! is very much a 'prog rock' album. I'm not complaining - I guess Area decided to make Crac! a more "guts" album, and as I listen I can't stop tapping my feet (in 27/9 time) and grooving on it anyway. Demetrio is in fine form, blasting away on the opening track and doing some weird American-accented vocalising on 'La Mela di Odessa (1920)' (which it fits the funk-horn stomp). Ares Tavolazzi's basso elettrico is not just played funkier than before, but it has that somewhat "boingy" quality that you expect from progressive rock. Some of these riffs are epic, and some of the melodies are actually catchy. In "Gioia e Rivoluzione" Area present an actual "pop" song - with acoustic guitar strum, bouncy bassline, and relatively accessibly singing, but I don't think they're selling out - just taking their message of revolution politicalVOCALmusic to a larger audience. So yeah, not my favorite, but bonus points because a 30-year old (perfectly preserved) sticker of the 4xegg cover image fell out of the jacket.

10cc - 'How Dare You' (Mercury)

Source: not sure, but I think I got this for trade at Jerry's on 23 Aug 2003.

It's a demo copy, not a promo, according to the embossed gold stamp on the back cover of this (fab) gatefold cover, the inner spread of which was photographed by Hieronymous Bosch in the mid 1970's through a bizarre artist-in-resurrection program that 10cc led. Because 10cc are not just genius musicians, they are inventors.

After all, these Brits were in Hotlegs, who put out the brilliant Thinks: School Stinks LP in 1970, a masterpiece if there ever was one. Six years later, here's a set of mostly sunshine and breezes, made years later after the sweet taste of success. But 10cc aren't just the sound of wind - they are masters of the 'creeping breeze', which you can hear in 'Lazy Ways', 'I'm Mandy Fly Me', etc. Plenty of gobstoppers have recorded gentle breezes, but only a true apostle can make it creep - with just the right chord change or delicate shift, that breeze is up in your grill before you can fight it away, clinging to that surprise diminished 7th. I could live without the parts that sound like the Teletubbies' discussing an all-night Pac-man tournament, but again, those breezes, those breezes! Divorce-rock at its finest. Godley and Creme split after this one and made a triple LP concept album with Peter Cook featuring some primitive e-bow they built, sadly not in my collection.