Strange/Weird: Goodbye Stranger

purchase [ Goodbye Stranger]

The longer SMM continues, the harder it gets to be original. Be it chosing a theme or nailing a song (harder still ... a band) that hasn't been previously posted. SMM has done a couple of Supertramp's before, but it looks like this is the first appearance of this song here.

There isn't much that's weird about Supertramp (far as I know) except for a strange conspiracy theory espoused by a Daily Mirror contributor that links 1979's Breakfast in America to 9/11 (read all about it here). In general Supertramp didn't particularly aim for the weird - certainly not in their musical style: it ws mostly designed to "hit")

Along that path, <Goodbye Stranger> is straight down the third-base line: probable base-hit into the charts. The album contains a number of top hits that - at the time - cemented Supertramp's place in history: The Logical Song, Take the Long Way Home as well as this one and the title track. Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies wrote hit after hit throughout the 70s and 80s before disbanding.

In a way, 1979 seems like a strange dream now: Breakfast in America. What a difference 40 years makes.  Back then, breakfast in America was a popular destination. Strange how time and events change our values. For those of us outside the US, is a trip to the US such a major goal? For those of us inside, do we still want all those people coming to have breakfast with us?

Trick/Treat: A Trick of the Tail

Genesis: A Trick of The Tail
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So, my last post was about a band that started off very proggy, then gradually got poppier, before hitting it big. Why not follow that with a post about band that started off very proggy, then gradually got poppier, before hitting it big?

There are some differences, however. First, writing about Supertramp was a new experience for me, and to be fair, they were a band that I liked, but never really loved. Genesis, on the other hand, is a band that I have long loved, even after it was no longer remotely fashionable, and about which I have written a few times. Also, Supertramp’s early albums are pretty much forgotten, while Genesis’ (except their first), are still fondly remembered by those who enjoy the genre. And Supertramp essentially faded into oblivion after their major breakthrough, while Genesis continued to be successful, as they became more and more mainstream, to the point that even I gave up on them.

Many fans consider Genesis’ album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to be a creative peak, and in some ways, it was—complex, dark, and in many places, brilliant. On the other hand, its attempt at a story was pretty much incomprehensible and there are parts of the album that sort of work in the story, but you really don’t want to listen to more than once. As most Genesis-ophiles know, after The Lamb, singer and visual focus Peter Gabriel decided to stop being part of the scenery and left the band.

Despite what many people may believe, The Lamb was not only a Gabriel project—most of the music for that album was written by the other members of the band, with the lyrics being written by Gabriel—a departure from the band’s prior more collegial practices, which led to the tensions resulting in Gabriel’s quitting. Although the music press assumed that this would be the end of the band, the remaining members wanted to continue—and the fact that they did so successfully does put to lie the myth that Gabriel was the creative heart of Genesis.

Determined to create a great new album, the band wrote a bunch of songs that hearkened back to the album before The Lamb, Selling England By The Pound, with a more pastoral, more English, more fun sound, and also included some jazzier sections, influenced by Phil Collins’ work with Brand X. It is an oft-told story that they auditioned a number of singers, assisted by Collins, but none clicked. So, like many organizations, they decided to promote from within, and Collins seized the front-man role and ran with it, ultimately doing credible versions of many of the songs originally sung by Gabriel. No, he didn’t have Gabriel’s edginess or weirdness, but he had a nice voice, and a genial, amusing stage presence.

The album, A Trick of the Tail may well be the point where Genesis best balanced its prog-rock heritage and its newer pop sensibility. There are many songs on this album that I love as much as anything that preceded them, and the title track, while not my favorite, is still a fine song. Based loosely on one of William Golding’s not-Lord-of–the-Flies books, The Inheritors (remember, songwriter Tony Banks was a graduate of the Charterhouse School, one of the oldest “public” schools in England), it is about an alien character who leaves his own world for that of humans, where he is captured and displayed as a freak, before escaping back to his “city of gold,” evading the humans who sought to plunder it. It is a bouncy pop tune, with the playfulness of older songs such as, say, “Harold The Barrel,” or “I Know What I Like,” and while it has its more complex moments, it is definitely a move toward pop, but to me, not in a bad way.

It also was the first Genesis song to have a video, and it is truly appalling. I mean really, really bad. Which is remarkable, because it was directed by the same guy who did the great video for “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

So, check out both the album and song (but not the video, for god's sake), and you are in for a treat. (Sorry.)

Homecoming: Take The Long Way Home

Supertramp: Take The Long Way Home
[purchase]

What exactly was Supertramp, anyway? They started out as a prog band financed by a modern day Medici, Dutch millionaire Stanley August “Sam” Miesegaes, but only became successful when they lost their patron and, over the course of a few albums, gradually tempered their proggier influences with radio-friendly pop, only to lose a key member at the height of their long-sought popularity and drift into obscurity and irrelevance. In addition to the tension between longer, complex songs and catchy pop tunes, the band also had to deal with the fact that its two main songwriters, Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, had different personalities and different musical styles—one harder and jazzier and the other more folky and melodic—which ultimately led to the breakup. (If you are dying to know who wrote which Supertramp song, because most of the songs were credited to both Davies and Hodgson, look here.)

I became aware of Supertramp with their 1977 album, Even in the Quietest Moments… an album that, to my mind, is their most successful balancing of the various influences. It had a hit single, “Give a Little Bit,” but it also had an excellent ten and half minute song, “Fool’s Overture.”

My college radio career began during the early part of 1979, and in March of that year, Supertramp released Breakfast in America. It was, for the most part, a swing toward the pop side of their personality, and it was a huge hit—reaching number 1 on the Billboard pop album chart, and containing four hit singles, and a couple of other songs that might have been contenders. I remember playing it, but having the sense that Supertramp was really moving away from the kind of music that we were playing on the station in those days (and we still played a pretty good amount of prog rock). Although I think that we were less doctrinaire about shunning hits than many other college stations of the time, there definitely was the sense that Breakfast in America was maybe just too commercial. I did continue to play my favorites from Quietest Moments and took the opportunity to investigate their prior two albums, which had songs that I have to believe I heard on WNEW when I was in high school. For some reason, possibly bad reviews, I never spent any time with the band’s first two albums, which were unsuccessful full on prog records (which led to the loss of their benefactor). Although in preparing to write this, I discovered that the guitarist and lyricist on Supertramp’s self-titled debut album was Richard Palmer, who, as Richard Palmer-James later wrote the lyrics for three of King Crimson’s best albums—Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red, so maybe I’ll go back and check it out.

I think that “Take The Long Way Home” is my favorite of the hit singles from Breakfast, and I think that it holds up better than some of the others, maybe in part because the song uses what sounds like a real piano, and not the dated sounding electric one that many of the band’s songs relied on. (Although the title track also sounds good after having not listened to it for a while) And maybe it is because that while it is still a pop song it lopes along, taking, I guess, the long way home. Or maybe because of its ambivalent message. Hodgson, who wrote the song, has said that it is about

home on two levels. I mean, I'm talking about not wanting to go home to the wife, take the long way home to the wife because she treats you like part of the furniture, but there's a deeper level to the song, too. I really believe we all want to find our home, find that place in us where we feel at home, and to me, home is in the heart and that is really, when we are in touch with our heart and we're living our life from our heart, then we do feel like we found our home. 

After that blockbuster came a placeholding live album, and an even poppier studio followup, which while having a couple of hits, really was a pale imitation of Breakfast. At that point Hodgson left the band to record some mostly forgotten solo albums. Davies kept the band together, releasing some more experimental records that had some initial chart success, but not for long. Both Supertramp and Hodgson continued to record and tour occasionally (and separately), and no real reunion ever bore fruit. In 2015, Davies was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, forcing a tour cancellation, and the band’s website simply says “There are no upcoming tour dates scheduled currently.” Hodgson’s website, on the other hand, shows a vigorous touring schedule through the rest of 2018 and 2019.

Pour: Jose, Weather Girls & Supertramp

purchase [ Jose Feliciano ]
purchase [ Weather Girls ]
purchase [ Supertramp ]

The current theme [pour] came came to mind from a number of places: a theme that hasn't been done before... a theme that is somehow current ... a theme that might spark the disparate contributors and therefore interest the audience. Actually, it was raining cats and dogs as the theme idea was in gestation. Buckets.  But at the the same time, it occured to us that there are a number of things that pour: liquids .... yes; ... some solids as well (marbles and beads pour well), but also emotions. Emotions, as in what a vocalist or a piano player puts into his/her performance: they pour out their hearts, and it is that which makes one performance  different or better than another. It is songs where the artist pours out his/her heart that draw us in and that we love.

There is no small list of songs that include "pour" either in the title or the lyrics: poring rain, pouring out my heart, pouring  liquid or other.

Of course, as a child, you likely learned: It's raining, it's pouring ... the old man is snoring.
Jose Feliciano's Rain make the most of it.

But - keeping in mind that pouring has multiple connotations ... here's a couple more:
Weather Girls:

 

Supertramp:

it's the sax player that is pouring it out here ...

Teach and Learn: Supertramp

purchase Supertramp [The Logical Song]
purchase Supertramp  [School]

Ah! Supertramp!  One of my mainstay musics in the 80s and 90s. <Breakfast in America> and more. Co-founders Roger Hodgson and Richard Davies no longer collaborate, but in the prime of Supertramp, all their songs were marked Davies/Hodgson - much like Lennon/McCartney. They didnt see the need to differentiate. Today, it's rather different.

Seems that Hodgson was particularly affected by the trials of his education (sadly, more often than it should be, it is a travail that one has to survive). Perhaps that is why so many of the the lyrics/themes of Supertramp songs include references to schools (and our themes of learn and teach). Sadly, school is a process of learn and pass (or fail)- a path strewn with adverseties (tests to pass, schoolmates with agendas, teachers guided by who knows what all ...)

Hodgson was affected enough that he picked up the guitar and a certain amount of keyboard skills as well.  See below...

In examining the ills of educational systems, you can go back to the socio-political roots : a system that requires parents to work and are thus forced to send their kids somewhere during their working hours/ (ie: school) since they cannot care for them during those hours. You can look into the systems that describe the curriculum that your children are subjected to - from the spin on the history they learn to the scientific knowledge about global warming and evolution.  Without advances in these areas, as Hogsden says, it equates  to growing up just like the previous generation - a theme best put to word in The Logical Song (and apparently part of The Donald's platform: everything was better in the 50s).

 Most of us spend 12 of our first 20 years  in school - trying our best to learn. Outside school, we continue to do our best to learn from both our parents and society at large. Today's up-to-date educators espouse "life-long" learning as the successful path to a profitable future. Sadly - it's a fact - statistics show that all too few people read more than a book a year - and watching The Donald on TV doesnt count as education. no more than discounting global warnming or evolutionary theory - despite what your Texas textbook writes.