Sunday, 10 August 2014

(Top 50 Countdown!!!) 45. 10cc - "I'm Mandy, Fly Me"



I don’t understand how this record works. I’ve never met anyone who could explain it to me. Somehow, there’s a peculiar kinda logic even to their “The Dean And I”, despite it seeming to have thrown half-a-dozen ideas into the air and just glued them together randomly, but with “I’m Mandy, Fly Me”… well, where to start? With the preposterous title? The sudden mania of totally unconnected acoustic-strumming instrumental sections which make even the ears-bleedingly-loud 12-string bit on “Band On The Run” seem subtle? The two psychotic guitar solos? Really, every time I listen to it it’s like David Copperfield levitating the pentagon, or whatever mind-boggling boggle he’s doing: none of this can be real. I don’t understand it. There are rules (I’ve seen them written down in a Pooh Sticks songwriting manual – Steve has terrible handwriting, by the way), but this record ignores every last one of them. Though maybe if you’re going to write a song involving daydreams, advertising posters and whistling, well, maybe it’s the only true way to go, right? It’s one of the few records that will always remain a total mystery, no matter how many decades we spend with it on repeat. I think that’s beautiful. We apparently used the ‘vibe’ of “I’m Mandy, Fly Me” for our “Song Cycle” on “Optimistic Fool”.

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