HISTORY MIX VOL. 1

This is very odd and perhaps an experiment more than an actual album with two mammoth and rather tedious epic tracks that are really only a mash up of well known 10CC and Godley and Creme songs blended together like a DJ got hold of them and butchered them for an album. Yet there are some moments of true innovation such as "Big Boys don't cry" meshed with the 'Humdrum Boys', but you have to search hard to find them. The medleys hold some interest but the length is criminal at over 17 minutes each and with horrible synth drum electro rhythms.

Being a compilation of sorts it features some of the great Godley and Creme songs such as the masterpiece 'An Englishman In New York' which is a song I have never forgotten ever since I saw the bizarre streamlined film clip in the 80s. I even tried to write out the lyrics that were indecipherable to a teenager of the 80s but still had fun elements with ideas such as 'demented new york athletes staggering around the block... devotion to Bloomingdales gift wrapped in red in the land of blue rinse... happy to see you, Avon crawling!" The sheer cynical sardonic edge is irrisistible, even when he sings "Hitler is king of the jews." It makes a lot of statements about the human condition "strange apparatus, you've never seen", our waste of resources and our rubbber knecking at what others should or should not be purchasing in a consumer society; "I've got to be the first on our block, no way street, happy to see you, have a nice day". And it was the first time I came across the word "Anglophile" and found out what it meant. The song holds power even today and really it is the pinnacle of brilliance as far as I am concrned. Nothing else the band did came close or moved in the same way.

'Light Me Up' is interesting with female vox and a poppy 80s aroma, but forgettable. 'Save a Mountain for Me' drags interminably until I have had enough of its mediocrity. 'Golden Boy' is okay at first with the deep bass synths but goes on too long with the repetition of "golden boy" grating on the nerves.

Overall this is a poor compilation and if bought just for 'An Englishman In New York' you might be well advised to get hold of "Freeze Frame" instead, that at least had prog songs scattered thereabouts.