Description
Label Review.
1977 debut album. Features Peter Cook, and Sarah Vaughan. CD 1-3: The original triple album. CD4: Musical Excerpts from Consequences which features the eight musical selections. CD5: Edited Highlights - originally issued as a promotional device at the time.
Our Overview.
Godley and Creme are/were half of 1970s hit makers 10cc who blended clever experimentalism with cunning tunes. By 1976 the pair had grown frustrated with being in 10cc with their partners Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart and matters came to a head during the making of their fourth album ‘How Dare You!’. The pair decided to split to concentrate on a new project that was already underway while they were still in the group but knew wouldn’t fit with 10cc.
The pair had invented an electric guitar effect in 1969 which they christened the ‘Gizmotron’ and had been used on 10cc’s records up to that point. It allowed a guitar to sound like other instruments which saved money on hiring musicians for orchestral overdubs. Their new album was intended to be a demonstration for their device and took some 18 months to make and featured narration by Peter Cook and singing from Sarah Vaughan.
The concept album revolved around a story peppered with actual songs. The plot as boiled down on wikipedia says: “the play takes place in the office of the increasingly drunken solicitor Mr. Haig; he is negotiating the divorce between Walter Stapleton and his French wife Lulu, represented by Mr. Pepperman. They are continually interrupted by Mr. Blint, an eccentric composer, who lives below; when the building was redeveloped he was the only tenant who refused to sell and a hole remains in Mr. Haig’s floor which is, technically, Blint’s attic; it is through this hole that Blint addresses them. The litigants are unaware that larger forces are at work; the world is being threatened by a meteorological disaster. Weather is possibly being used as a weapon in a global war, and eventually it dawns on them that only Mr. Blint can save them, with his arcane knowledge of pyramids, music and the number 17.”
Mercury Records, the duos label were hoping for another hit following the recent 10cc album from Gouldman and Stewart. However, mouths dropped at the playback of the album were label staff were left wondering how they were going to sell such an extravagant album. The record ultimately performed poorly in the marketplace and a shorter song based edition was released later. Although Godley and Creme went on to release more albums and score some hits, ‘Consequences’ has been neglected and was only issued on CD in limited numbers in the 90s and again in the 00s. This new edition is expanded to include the other edited editions of the album.