Lol Creme and Kevin Godley – L
My note for this one on Discogs reads “Weird pickup for nostalgic reasons.” Correct. Secondhand nostalgia, at that.
I’ve written before about the influence of Cocaine Kurtz on our secondhand listening habits back in our freshman year of college – his constant playing of The Cars’ eponymous first album meant that I never had any inclination to buy the record, having heard it over and over and over.
Across from Kurtz lived Pete Kates and his roommate Eric, whose last name is lost to time. It was Pete who introduced me to Eddie Cochran and an obscure indie called The First Things. At this remove, I can’t remember whether it was Pete or Eric who was obsessed with “L” by Creme and Godley, but one of them played it regularly, and our trips down the hall to the communal bathroom were frequently punctuated by the phrase “I could eat sandwiches of you” blaring out of their room. Like nearly all of America, I only knew of Creme and Godley as members of 10cc, and their duo efforts didn’t get much of a reception, but someone on the second floor of Day Hall in 1978 loved the heck out of this record.
(For 10cc, please enjoy Gary Frenay’s lovely appreciation of a recent live performance.)
I ran across it in Forever Changes earlier this year and did something I never do – picked up a record that I might not even be interested in, just because it had once been a very ancillary part of my life. I’ve been writing up a very personal history on my personal blog, and this came right at a time when all those feelings associated with that very specific place and time – Day Hall, Syracuse University, 1978 – were swirling around in my newly sensitive mind.
Listen, it’s art rock. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. It’s all weird. It’s fine. It’s not going to get played over and over, but it is going to take up physical space on the shelf, just as it has taken up mental space all these decades. (However, as I was listening to it today, my wife suggested the alternative that I get rid of it and never play it again.)
(How to alphabetize? Most media of the time referred to the duo as Godley and Creme. Discogs lists them as Lol Creme and Kevin Godley, at least for this record, which is how they appear on the spine of the record – so I’m filing under Creme.)
Probably not a surprise that I love this one . . . and I was a guy who was bothering roommates and neighbors by playing it and the album after it (“Freeze Frame”) too often and too loud during my own collegiate years. I also wore their later “History Mix” album flat out from repeated spins. Deeply fond of 10cc in its myriad incarnations and spinoffs, for sure.
I’m enjoying it when I play it – I’ll say that. But it’s not something I’d likely jump up and put on. Unfortunately, I have really no 10cc (other than 45s), which is something I may rectify if I find some in the bins. I used to judge a record store based on where it stocked “The Original Soundtrack,” and can report that the Schenectady Two Guys, which had a fabulous record selection, tragically did stock that under soundtracks.
Was that Two Guys kind of catty-corner from the downtown library near the intersection of Nott Terrace and Eastern Avenue/Liberty Street? If that was the one, that’s the building that was acquired by the Feds and turned into Navy acquisition offices . . . and where my very first office in the 518 was when we originally moved there. When I was working there, my go-to bulk record shop was out at Mohawk Mall . . . it was the overflow/surplus/junk/cut-out outlet for whatever the big locally-owned chain was (forgetting the name), lots of cheap gems to be pulled from boxes and poorly organized racks, hanging on as the mall died around it. There was also a more traditional alt/indie small shop on Jay Street for my weirder tastes.
Yep, that was the one. It really didn’t last too long in the scheme of things. The buildings are still there, repurposed, but it was THE department store as far as I was concerned in my teens. I think the bulk record store you’re thinking of was probably Media Play, which was just a hellscape as far as I was concerned.
Yes, Media Play, that was it! It got more and more surreal and hellscapy as the years went on, but still a good time-wasting place for a lunch break. Naval Reactors still has its contractor procurement offices in that old Two Guys building. I got there in 1993, soon after we had acquired and converted it, for reasons mysterious, as it was NOT well suited for its purposes.
That’s how government offices work. When I was a regional director for NYSDEC, the staff were fairly thrilled with their offices in the Rotterdam Naval Depot, built and intended as temporary war structures, in comparison to the years they had spent in a barely converted Loblaw’s grocery store.