Share10cc performing their Ultimate Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour at The Royal Concert Hall Nottingham on Monday 18th March 2024.
Images and Review by Kevin Cooper
10cc were back in Nottingham on Monday night where they sold out the Royal Concert Hall as part of their Ultimate Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour.
Originally a remarkable band for most of the 1970’s with their highly unusual pop, the band split in two in 1976 when Kevin Godley and Lol Creme left the group to form a duo, not liking the commercial direction in which 10cc were going following hits like I’m Not In Love.
With Eric Stewart leaving in 1995, Graham Gouldman is now the last man standing, fronting a band that includes veteran Paul Burgess, who has been the drummer for fifty years, guitarist Rick Fenn, who has clocked a forty-six year tenure in the touring band, Keith Hayman on piano, keys, guitar and percussion and relative newbie Ian Hornal who not only sings Stewarts songs sublimely but also adds guitar, keys and percussion.
Opening with The Second Sitting For The Last Supper, the crowd immediately recognised the bass riffs of the follow up, Art For Art’s Sake. There were wonderful tracks such as Life Is A Minestrone, Good Morning Judge, The Dean And I and The Wall Street Shuffle. There were two new songs, Gouldman’s Floating In Heaven, a bountiful track created with the universal guitar genius of Brian May, and Hornal’s Say The Word, which were very well received.
With a nineteen song set list that was peppered with hits, Gouldman also included songs that he did not actually write, including the somewhat bizarre Clockwork Creep. But it was the hits that had the crowd on their feet and singing along to the likes of The Things We Do For Love and I’m Mandy Fly Me, an elusive enigma of a love song.
They finished the main set with I’m Not In Love with their lush harmonised voices, before Dreadlock Holiday, the mock-reggae megahit thoroughly entertained. For the encore they delivered a stunning a capalla of the band’s first single, Donna before the show ended with a thumping Rubber Bullets.
The show that reached the Royal Concert Hall on Monday night was a morish oddity. The songs were gorgeous, the musicianship immaculate and the stage craft polished. They delivered a songbook full of fun, love and rage and which thankfully remain blessedly the same, but you can’t help but wonder if they have morphed into their own tribute band.
