Supertramp school kid
By speaking of feeling alone, trapped, and maybe even being crazy, Supertramp had paradoxically helped tell me that I wasn’t alone, wasn’t trapped, and that I wasn’t crazy. I downloaded the album from iTunes.Īs I’ve re-listened to the music, I’ve come to realize what this album had meant to me back in my youth. Forgot again, but then remembered again when a fellow college student talked about listening to Supertramp with her father. In reading from her “Outdancing the Universe” collection, Lauren recited her poem, “My Dad’s Favorite Supertramp Album,” and then I remembered. In the decades that followed, I didn’t think much about my favorite adolescent album until this past summer when I attended Lauren Gilmore’s book launch in downtown Spokane. The perfect picture for this album, the representation of our condition, our humanity hemmed in inside of ourselves. The outline of a prison cell window, fingers grasping the bars. As the five-minute song started to reach its climax with the sax and the piano crying to one another, an image started to appear in the distance, indefinable at first, but slowly taking shape and growing until it filled the entire screen. Supertramp’s concert finale was the titular song from “Crime of the Century.” Once again, the screen lit up with images, this time displaying a film of slow movement through a galaxy of stars.
#Supertramp school kid movie#
“Asylum.” “If Everyone was Listening.” “Dreamer.” “Rudy.” This latter song, one of my all-time favorites, commenced with its singular, crisp piano notes while the fog rolled out and a movie started projecting on a screen behind the band. I hadn’t bought their latest yet, but most of the music they played came from the album I loved so much. On April 15, 1979, Supertramp’s tour visited the Spokane Coliseum to introduce their new album, “Breakfast in America.” As I think back now, it’s hard to believe I’d never been to a concert before.
Because I wasn’t figuring it out very well and I’d taken to hiding the real me, just like in the song. The song’s lyrics “But what you see is just illusion,” “You’re surrounded by confusion,” and “To feel that you are alone” described my interior condition, one of wondering what life was all about. The first album I bought? “Crime of the Century ,” only I bought the expensive “Original Master Recording” version – $20 was a lot of money almost 40 years ago.īy this time, I was 19, and on my new stereo I was connecting with different songs from the album – “Hide in Your Shell” was especially hitting home. Just out of Mead High School in Spokane, I was hired for a Spokane Falls Community College work-study job, and I saved all of my wages to buy a high fidelity stereo. My love of this album continued through the decade. But I did know enough to identify with the feelings of fear, confusion, competition, and all of the rest. I wouldn’t understand what conformity meant for years to come, or that going through a public school system was designed to produce a certain kind of kid end-product. “They tell you not to hang around and learn what life’s about.
#Supertramp school kid full#
“School,” the album’s opening song, led out with the harmonica for almost a full minute before the vocals of co-lead singer Roger Hodgson began to tell the story, about his experience going to school.
I was 15, just starting to feel my way through life, and I so identified with the words of these songs, and it was as if Supertramp had somehow gotten inside of my head and read my thoughts. My brother was with me, and my older cousins were playing us their latest musical find, Supertramp’s “Crime of the Century.” It was 1974, and I had just entered high school. The low wail of the harmonica rose and sang to me as I sat in the basement of my uncle’s home in Mead.