Vinyl log 27 - 23 January

Day	Month	Year	Artist	Title
23	January	1976	10cc	How dare you

Nothing in particular comes to mind when I see this date and record. I know that I saw 10cc live somewhere around this time, but I can't find the date and to be honest, I don't remember anything about the concert itself.

I was a big fan of 10cc, even though I didn't like about a third of their songs. This - their last album with the excellent Lol Creme and Kevin Godley - featured some of their best ever material ("Don't hang up", "Mandy", "Rock 'n' roll lullaby") but also had some rather dire songs ("I wanna (sic) rule the world", "Iceberg") and some which didn't have much of an impact ("Head room", "Art for art's sake"). 

I do remember them appearing on 'Top of the Pops',  supposedly playing "Art for art's sake". I watched this in the London commune with several co-habitators; the song had us bewildered - this is what get's released as a single? "I'm Mandy" (later on, one of my housemates was called Mandy) was a much better choice and apparently reached No. 6 in the charts.

Where was I in January 1976? I would have been working at Schweppes in Hendon as a food analyst during a six month engagement as part of my degree.  I wrote a little about my course here, but didn't really go into details. For me, Hendon was quite local: I just had to drive down the Hendon Way for a few miles on my newly purchased motorbike, turn off down a few local streets and then I was at the factory. I worked in a two story building in the grounds and had nothing to do with the factory itself. They were very good to me at Schweppes. 

Just to put things into perspective: my leaving present was an pocket calculator. At the time, it was very expensive (I seem to remember it cost about 15-20 GBP, when my pay was 40 GBP) and would become very useful for the rest of my early academic career.