Supertramp

Supertramp is a British Progressive Rock band, that was big in the 70s and 80s, with such songs as "The Logical Song", "Breakfast in America", and "Take The Long Way Home", all three of which appeared on what is considered their greatest album, Breakfast in America. Their most well-known members are singers and multi-instrumentalists Roger Hodgson (who left in 1983) and Rick Davies (still in the band).

Current members

• Rick Davies – Vocals, keyboards, harmonica, composition, saxophone
• John Helliwell – Vocals, woodwinds, keyboards, synthesisers
• Bob Siebenberg – Drums, percussion
• Carl Verheyen – Guitars, percussion, backing vocals
• Cliff Hugo – Bass
• Lee Thornburg – Trombone, trumpet, keyboards, backing vocals
• Jesse Siebenberg – Percussion, vocals, guitar, keyboards
• Gabe Dixon – Keyboards, tambourine, vocals
• Cassie Miller – Background vocals

Former members

• Roger Hodgson – Vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass, cello, flute, composition
• Dougie Thomson – Bass, backing vocals
• Mark Hart – Vocals, keyboards, guitar
• Tom Walsh – Percussion
• Kevin Currie – Percussion
• Richard Palmer-James – Vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, balalaika^[1]
• Robert Millar – Percussion, harmonica
• Dave Winthrop – Woodwinds, vocals
• Frank Farrell – bass, keyboards, backing vocals

Discography:

Studio albums to date:

• Supertramp (1970)
• Indelibly Stamped (1971)
• Crime of the Century (1974)
• Crisis? What Crisis? (1975)
• Even in the Quietest Moments... (1977)
• Breakfast in America (1979)
• ...Famous Last Words... (1982)
• Brother Where You Bound (1985)
• Free as a Bird (1987)
• Some Things Never Change (1997)
• Slow Motion (2002)

Live albums to date:

• Paris (1980)
• Live '88 (1988)
• It Was the Best of Times (1999)
• Is Everybody Listening? (2001)
• 70-10 Tour (2010)

Compilation albums to date:

• The Autobiography (1986)
• The Very Best of Supertramp (1990)
• The Very Best of Supertramp 2 (1992)
• Retrospectacle (2005)

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Supertramp provides examples of the following tropes:

• And That's Terrible: From "Crime of the Century"

So roll up and see
How they rape the Universe
Now they've gone from bad to worse.

• Assimilation Academy: "School", which is the page quote.
• Because I Said So: "School" even provides the page quote.
• Big Applesauce: The cover for Breakfast in America is NYC with boxes as buildings and a waitress as the Statue of Liberty.
• Book Ends: Crime of the Century opens and ends with the harmonica solo of "School", and their debut album features one version of the song "Surely" at each end.
• Captivity Harmonica: "School"
• Casanova: "Lover Boy"
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: On the original Lyrics sheet insert for Crime of the Century (the album), Roger Hodgson's vocals are colored white, and Rick Davies' yellow.
• Contemptible Cover: Indelibly Stamped
  • For those who don't want to look (or are at work), it's basically the arms and chest of a naked and heavily tattooed woman.
• Concept Album: Crime of The Century. Its uniting theme being insanity, or the dark side of society.
• Creator Breakdown: Many of their well-known songs involved Davies and Hodgson taking shots at each other.
• Despair Event Horizon: "If Everyone Was Listening", "Lord Is It Mine", arguably "Rudy".
• Epic Rocking: They have some roots in progressive rock, so it's not surprising. The most well-known is the 11-minute long "Fool's Overture".
  • Brother Where You Bound's title track takes up most of side two.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Lover Boy".
  • and "Fool's Overture," which fades out right before the singing starts.
• Genre Shift: They started out as a Prog Rock band, but as time went on, they became more poppy, culminating in their extremely poppy Breakfast in America.
• Go Among Mad People: "Asylum"
• Growing Up Sucks: "The Logical Song"
• Hates Small Talk: "Casual Conversations"
• Here We Go Again: Hey, hey, hah-oh, lah-la, hey-hey. Give a little bit. Give a little bit of your love to me...
• Horrible Hollywood: "Gone Hollywood".
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The song "Crime Of The Century" is either this or a group jumping the Moral Event Horizon (Raping the universe besides being difficult, would obviously cross that line) depending on how you interpret the fact that behind the masks "there's you and there's me".
• Jade-Colored Glasses: The page quote is from "The Logical Song".
• Last-Note Nightmare: "If Everyone Was Listening" ends with foreboding strings. Also, the Fake-Out Fade-Out in "Lover Boy" is very abrupt.
  • Subverted with "Asylum", which ends with a faint cuckoo noise.
• Long Runner Lineup: From the revamp to Hodgson's exit was 11 years with the same band.
• Loss of Identity: "The Logical Song", again.

Please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

• Non-Appearing Title: "The Logical Song", "Breakfast In America", "Gone Hollywood", "A Soapbox Opera", "Fool's Overture", "Downstream".
• Not Staying for Breakfast In America: "Goodbye Stranger"
• Or Was It a Dream?: "Even In The Quietest Moments" has the singer asking this question at the end of the song
• Parody of Evolution: Brother Where You Bound
• Please Don't Leave Me: "Don't Leave Me Now"
• Red Scare: "Brother Where You Bound", complete with excerpts from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Refrain From Assuming: "Breakfast In America" is not "Take a Look at My Girlfriend".
• Rhymes on a Dime: "The Logical Song," again.
• Rhyming with Itself: "Breakfast In America" rhymes girlfriend with girlfriend.
• Rockstar Song: "Take the Long Way Home"
• Sanity Slippage Song: Asylum
• Seventies Hair: Davies and Hodgson, to this very day.
• Silly Love Songs: A couple, such as "Oh! Darling!", "Give A Little Bit", and "Downstream".
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids: "Dreamer"
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Many of their songs head straight for the cynical end of the scale, and never look back.
• Soprano and Gravel: Hodgson is a tenor, while Davies has a deep voice.
• Spoken Word in Music: "Fool's Overture" has a short clip of Winston Churchill's famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.
• Take That: Word of God says that "Casual Conversations" and "Child of Vision" are take thats to Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies respectively (and written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, respectively).
• The Band Minus the Face: Supertramp minus Roger Hodgson.
• The Man: A common theme in their music, especially their more cynical songs, such as "School", and "The Logical Song".
• The Something Song: "The Logical Song"
• When She Smiles: "Know Who You Are"

"When you smile we can see the sun"

• Vocal Tag Team
• You Are Not Alone: "Hide In Your Shell."

1. ↑ If you're wondering what a balalaika is, it's a kind of Russian stringed instrument with a triangular body and three strings.