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Supertramp - Inside Supertramp 1974-1978 CD (album) cover

INSIDE SUPERTRAMP 1974-1978

Supertramp

Crossover Prog


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erik neuteboom
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars This is one of the most interesting DVD's in the "Inside"-serie, the 'critical team' succeeds to review the three albums Crime Of The Century (1974), Crisis? What Crisis? (1975) and Even In The Quietest Moments ... (1977) in strong descriptive words with a warm and enthousiastic touch!

Half of the running hour is dedicated to their 'magnum opus' Crime Of The Century and this DVD starts with their first and biggest hit Dreamer, "It represented all the elements of the Supertramp sound", "a jazz vibe in a pop setting" and "it has the unique combination of a falsetto voice and a quite unusal electric piano". About the song School: "Never a dull moment" and "Because of the time changes they really let you know to have progrock roots!". About Bloody Well Right "A heavy Supertramp with cleverness" and we can enjoy funny live footage with John Halliwell using a huge megaphone to communicate with the crowd. About the song Rudy: "Technical complicance but subtle with agression and grandeur". The awarded reviewer Bob Carruthers explains in a perfect way how the key changes work, good to see his both his great knowledge as his warm enthousisasm! And about the titletrack: "One of the most haunting fade ends". The band had only a few months to make the successor Crisis? What Crisis? but they did well and "discovered a formula for themselves". There is special attention for the distinctive Supertramp vocals: "a heavy, grungy bluesy sound by Rick Davies and mellow and passionated by Roger Hodgson". The album Even In The Quietest Moments ... showcases "a very subtle and stylish Supertramp" in the huge hit Give A Little Bit ("a plea for mutal respect and affection") and the final 'epic composition' Fool's Overture is called "a classic progressive rock piece". This DVD (with exciting live footage) ends with the words that "the success of Supertramp was based upon a team effort".They had two excellent tune-smiths but the other three kept the whole thing running.

I started to check out my Supertramp albums directly after watching this DVD, especially Crime Of The Century, in fact wonderful symphonic progressive rock!

Report this review (#88132)
Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006 | Review Permalink
Easy Livin
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
3 stars Mostly superfluous

The "Inside" series of DVDs may be rather dubious when it comes to the publishers right to use the material, but the fact is that they can be a goldmine for otherwise unavailable footage of major prog bands from their heyday. The publishers seek to avoid accusations of using unauthorised music and film by maintaining that the projects "require totally independent editorial control". What this means is that archive footage is intermingled with the thoughts of random hangers on, and presented as a documentary style examination of the music.

Sometimes this works well, and those chosen to provide input are relevant and well informed. Band members, producers, road crew, etc., can all be called upon along with the ubiquitous array of journalists and experts. Unfortunately, this DVD does not feature any of the current or former band members, or indeed anyone who has been directly associated with the band in any way. What we are left with then is the aforementioned clever Dickies, plus rather bizarrely and for no apparent reason, several members of the band Mostly Autumn. This leads to a curious mix of superficial fawning and trainspottingly tedious musical analysis. Do we really need the keyboard player with Mostly Autumn to tell us that in order to make this tune, Roger Hodgson had to press these keys in this sequence on the keyboard. Do we really need 4 or 5 journalists to tell us that "Crime of the century" was a good album and that "Dreamer" was a good pop song?

In another unforgivable faux pas, the programme starts with "Crime of the century", almost completely ignoring the band's first two albums, and telling us nothing of the rather interesting tale of the band's early mentoring by a millionaire. Three albums are covered in total, the other two being "Crisis what crisis" and "Even in the quietest moments", so albums such as the mega-selling "Breakfast in America" do not even warrant a mention. Surely a sensible stopping point would have been the departure of Roger Hodgson from the band?

"Crime of the century" dominates things, occupying over half an hour of a programme running to just over an hour. Every track is discussed individually (but not in the correct sequence), but despite the time devoted to it, we learn absolutely nothing we did not already know about the album.

I know I am being particularly critical here, and there is a very strong plus point. Footage of Supertramp performing in the 1970's is notoriously hard to find, and this programme does contain a generous helping of such film from a handful of different sources. Some ambient views are used to fill the gaps when footage is not available, but we get a good chance to see the band performing live and live for TV, even if the sound quality is at times quite dreadful.

It is great to see the footage Bob Carruthers has managed to gather together here, it brings back happy memories of a gig in Glasgow I attended just after the release of "Crime of the century". It is just a pity more effort was into put into assembling a documentary worthy of the footage to place around it.

Report this review (#204036)
Posted Sunday, February 22, 2009 | Review Permalink
AtomicCrimsonRush
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Honorary Collaborator
3 stars I admit I got this DVD in a box set with a whole lot of other Prog DVDs from the inside series. It is worth noting that there are a series of "Inside" DVDs available, including Pink Floyd, Van der Graaf Generator, early Genesis, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and of course "Inside Supertramp". Each DVD is in Dolby digital 5.1 and DTS.

The Inside series is an independent critical review featuring rare archive footage much of which has been previously unavailable on DVD.

Of all the Inside series this one peaked my interest most as I knew least about the band. Supertramp explain a few things about three of their popular albums "Crime of the Century", "In the Quietest Moments" and "Crisis? What Crisis!" Everything else is ignored without explanation and this spoils an otherwise informative rockumentary. As usual we are treated to rare film clips of the classic years and seeing the Tramp kicking on stage in the 70s is a genuine delight.

Musicologists of varying backgrounds critically assess the music to discover the essence of the band. It is a very brief look at the band as are all of these DVDs of the "Inside" series, clocking just over one hour in length. Therefore it is more of a taster for those new to Supertramp or for those who just want to look back at the golden years of this legendary rock band.

Report this review (#1432152)
Posted Tuesday, June 30, 2015 | Review Permalink

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