10cc - The Worst Band In The World

Band names can come from odd and interesting sources. Lynyrd Skynyrd took its name from a deliberate misspelling of the name Leonard Skinner, a somewhat notoriously strict gym teacher from the band's high school days in Jacksonville, FL. Duran Duran lifted its name from a character named Dr. Durand Durand in Roger Vadim's campy science fiction film "Barbarella," which starred his then-wife Jane Fonda. And as for Steely Dan? Us more hard-core fans know the story, but just in case, it's from the novel "Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs, and the item in question's full name was “Steely Dan III from Yokohama.” See listing number one here: "Five Unusually Disconcerting Things About Steely Dan."

10cc: Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme

But sometimes band names come from much more innocent origins than rumors would have us believe. Take 10cc, for example. A rumor has circulated for years (once in a while even repeated by band members) that the name comes from a particular measurement of a specific male bodily fluid. But Snopes.com says no. According to the site:

It's no secret that plenty of modern day rock bands have names with sexual connotations, but inventing similar explanations for the names of older bands has become a favorite pastime.

So it is with 10cc, who allegedly chose their name as a sly joke indicating that they were just a little bit better than the average guy (whose ejaculation supposedly contains 9cc of semen). Not so, says Jonathan King, who signed the group to UK Records and came up with their name:

"I had to give them a name . . . because I'd signed the record, and I went to sleep that night and had this dream that a band of mine on my label made number one on the album and singles charts simultaneously in America, and the band was 10cc. So I gave them that name the next morning. Everybody then decided that this was apparently meant to be the amount of an average male ejaculation. Which was absolutely far from the truth . . . There's a lot of apocryphal stories about names, and unfortunately, most of them are much more amusing than the ugly reality, which in this case is that the name came to me in a dream . . ."

Name notwithstanding, 10cc produced some absolutely glorious, smart and very well-produced pop music, especially with their original lineup of Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. They were a formidably talented collection of musicians: all of them were accomplished songwriters and multi-instrumentallists, all were excellent singers, and they all were fine producers who knew their way around a recording studio.

One of the band's biggest hits, the beautifully ethereal 1975 single "I'm Not in Love," (see the short "making of" documentary here for details on how this wonderful piece was painstakingly constructed) seems to overshadow much of the bands back catalog, save for the hit "The Things We Do For Love," from 1976. But I still have a special affection for the earlier songs that 10cc produced, especially the songs "Good Morning Judge" and today's featured track "The Worst Band in the World." Clever wordplay and great production are combined to great effect in both of these songs...they should have been much bigger hits.

It's always such a nice trip backward when the music is great.