Supertramp -- Fool's Overture

Discogs.com

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.

Supertramp -- The Logical Song

from Discogs

Since it is a major holiday today in Canada and the United States, I thought that it would be nice to have another special Reminiscings of Youth article up here detailing some of the songs outside of Japan that I heard in my teenage years. 

I think that cover for Supertramp's 1979 award-winning "Breakfast In America" is absolutely iconic. The crazy thing is that though I remember the photo of that really welcoming diner waitress with her orange juice raised up high, I'd always thought that up to an hour ago, the backdrop was truly a photo of Manhattan Island in New York State instead of it actually being a bunch of dining table paraphernalia made up to look like Manhattan. 

By the way, welcome to KKP, Supertramp! The English rock group was a regular on the radio airwaves when I was growing up, and being the kid that I was, I had known them as that band with the fellow with the really high voice. That's about as descriptive as I could get about Roger Hodgson at the time, but his voice did serve as a calling card for me to be able to recognize the band's music...well, that and the Wurlitzer electric piano. 

"The Logical Song" from March 1979 which has been called Supertramp's greatest contribution to music was indeed the lead single from "Breakfast In America", and yep, I heard it all the time on radio. But like the simple mind that is quoted in Hodgson's lyrics, I had no idea of the significance of them until many years later. I thought it had a rather odd title back then and being a budding Trekkie at the time, images of Mr. Spock kept flittering around in my head instead of the debate about what formal education was really worth (to this day, I still don't really know how learning about matrices in math meant anything).

Over the years though, Hodgson's music for "The Logical Song" has gotten increasingly cooler and though I have yet to encounter any official literature about the structure and progression of its melody, it seems to flip between the hecticness of life in the big city and a more dream-like state wondering what life is all about. Then the end with the band members playing their cowbell, castanets and whistle might be showing the protagonist finally going a bit mad.

Certainly my imagination wasn't going mad when it comes to the "The Logical Song" and how often it was hitting the airwaves. It was the No. 1 song in Canada for 1979 while on the US Billboard chart, it scored No. 27.

Well, I might have found a new site providing information on which singles were released in which month and year. And so, I can provide a few singles that did come out at the same time as "The Logical Song".

Momoe Yamaguchi -- Be Silent（美・サイレント）

Satoshi Kishida -- Kimi no Asa （君の朝）

Southern All Stars -- Itoshi no Ellie （いとしのエリー）