Supertramp -- Fool's Overture

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I had another song (album, actually) ready to go for this week's Reminiscings of Youth but on hearing about Supertramp's Rick Davies passing away on September 6th, I decided to devote a ROY in his memory. The band's music was indeed part of my experience growing up.

As I mentioned in my first ROY for Supertramp, the band's music was something that I heard a lot on the AM radio from the late 1970s going into the 1980s starting with "The Logical Song". Moreover, it was there that I got the impression that the band was a pretty happy-go-lucky pop group from the UK, not knowing that they had started all the way back in the early 1970s presenting a mixture of pop and progressive rock.

Little did I know that a particular excerpt from one of their prog rock/pop creations from the late 1970s would be used for one of the better known shows on CTV. "W5" has been a news analysis show that's been around for decades and for a time, their theme used this excerpt, and as a result, I thought that "W5" had one of the coolest theme songs around. Usually when I thought about newsmagazine shows, sounds of typewriters or stopwatches came into my head...not something synthy that made the reporters look like intrepid counterspies on their own adventures.

It was only in the last couple of years that I realized that at around the 3-minute mark of "Fool's Overture", the final track from Supertramp's April 1977 album "Even in the Quietest Moments...", that "W5" theme plays like a boss; something mysterious and catchy before breaking into major chord resolution. As for why it took me so long to realize this, well, songs like "The Logical Song" are short enough to be played happily on AM radio which I was listening to as a kid. FM radio didn't touch my ears until I was in my senior years of high school and even then, I didn't listen to CFNY or Q107, the only FM stations in Toronto that would play something like the 11-minute "Fool's Overture" in its entirety. I have to say though that for Roger Hodsgon's overture for a fool, the piece does sound rather cool. Now, having heard it a few times, I'd probably point to this song if someone asked me to identify a prog pop/rock tune.

April 8th 1977 was the release date for "Even in the Quietest Moments...", so what was up in the Top 10 of Oricon a few days later on April 11th? I give you Nos. 1, 4 and 5.

1. Pink Lady -- Carmen '77 （カルメン '77）

4. Candies -- Yasashii Akuma（やさしい悪魔）

5. Ami Ozaki -- My Pure Lady

My condolences to Rick Davies' family, friends and millions of fans.