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poltr1(First in a series of my favorite albums of all time.)
It was a sunny Saturday morning in Tonawanda, NY in March of 1979. I had a podiatrist appointment that morning. I don't remember if I was with my father that day. If I was, he would have driven me to the doctor, and if not, I would have bicycled there. I had lunch at Colosso Taco, which was around the corner from the doctor's office, and then I went to Twin Fair to pick up the new album from Supertramp, which had just been released.
I was already quite familiar with the British rock band Supertramp -- "Bloody Well Right" got a lot of airplay on the album rock station in town, and in the spring of '75, even the local top-40 station played it, even though it wasn't a single, as far as I knew. A lot of my fellow students in the high school band liked Supertramp. It was one of the few rock bands that featured a woodwind player. A few of them commented that they really liked "Fool's Overture", off of "Even In The Quietest Moments", which I didn't have at the time. All I had was a cassette tape of "Crime of the Century".
And so I walked into Twin Fair -- a regional discount department store similar to Gold Gircle, Target, K-Mart, Hills, Meijer, and Wal-Mart. I headed straight for the record department, and there it was, in stock and ready to sell -- Breakfast In America. I bought that, and I may have bought Styx's album "Cornerstone" as well that day. And so I went home, opened the polyethelene seal, removed the record, put it on the turntable, put on the headphones....and listened.
I read the lyrics while I listened. The first song, "Gone Hollywood", mentioned Taco Bell in the lyrics. I didn't know what Taco Bell was because there were none in my area. A few opened up later that year....and closed the next year. Apparently it couldn't compete or compare with the local chain Mighty Taco. (And it still doesn't. Trust me on this.)
I also spent several minutes gazing at the album cover while I listened. The New York City skyline was recreated with various breakfast food items and containers, and the Statue of Liberty was replaced with a buxom, curly-brown-haired waitress holding a glass of orange juice aloft on a plate. (Trivia: The woman's nametag reads "Libby".) The outer edges of the front cover suggested that this was a view from an airplane window. On the back cover was a picture of the 5 band members, at the counter of a diner, reading newspapers and eating.
I always loved the experience of listening to an album the first time. I could hear every nuance, every minor detail in the recording, that I didn't hear in subsequent playings or the home-recorded cassette of the album. I even loved the smell of the inks used in the 4-color printing process for the inner album liners. With CDs, it's like listening to it the first time...every time. But the artwork is shrunk more than 50%, and it's nearly impossible to see the minor detail.
All of the songs on the album were great -- I liked every one. Three went on to become singles: "The Logical Song", "Goodbye Stranger", and "Take The Long Way Home". There was one minor click on the album at the beginning of "Oh Darling"; otherwise the album was perfect in my opinion.
The songs on that album stuck with me through the years. I ended up completing my Supertramp catalog in the two years following, including the rare first two albums. A few years later, I was in college, and one night, went out to a strip club -- The King Edward in Niagara Falls, Ontario -- with some of my fraternity brothers. One of the young women who was dancing that night performed to to "Hello Stranger". One of my best friends from the fraternity -- Rob, from New York City -- was also a Supertramp fan, and it was often a topic for conversation or reference. (Rob was killed in a motorcycle wreck a few years ago. I think he worked in the World Trade Center at the time.) And when I was out of work 4 years ago an having a bout of insomnia, I put on "Lord Is It Mine".
In a way, it's hard to believe that the album, and the music on it, is 25 years old this year. The three singles still get occasional airplay on the local "Mix"-format radio station. (And that's the only Supertramp they'll play, unfortunately.) And the Colosso Taco is still there, at the corner of Main and Broad Sts. in the city of Tonawanda.
My life, and I, were so much different then. Back in 1979, I was a 10th grader, riding a bicycle to get around, active in the Boy Scouts, and delivering newspapers in the afternoon. LPs were still the primary way to deliver music, with cassettes running a distant second. Cable TV and video recording were around, but we didn't have them at home. I used an HP 33E programmable calculator as part of an experiment in my honors trigonometry class. Personal computers, compact discs, cordless phones for home use, the Sony Walkman, and cell phones were either not conceived, in the prototype stage, or being worked on in the R&D labs. "Modem" was something I did to the front and back lawns. The only long-term plan I had after graduating from high school was to go on to college. I wasn't sure which one I wanted to go to, nor did I know which field I wanted to pursue. All I knew was "I'm going on to college."
It was a sunny Saturday morning in Tonawanda, NY in March of 1979. I had a podiatrist appointment that morning. I don't remember if I was with my father that day. If I was, he would have driven me to the doctor, and if not, I would have bicycled there. I had lunch at Colosso Taco, which was around the corner from the doctor's office, and then I went to Twin Fair to pick up the new album from Supertramp, which had just been released.
I was already quite familiar with the British rock band Supertramp -- "Bloody Well Right" got a lot of airplay on the album rock station in town, and in the spring of '75, even the local top-40 station played it, even though it wasn't a single, as far as I knew. A lot of my fellow students in the high school band liked Supertramp. It was one of the few rock bands that featured a woodwind player. A few of them commented that they really liked "Fool's Overture", off of "Even In The Quietest Moments", which I didn't have at the time. All I had was a cassette tape of "Crime of the Century".
And so I walked into Twin Fair -- a regional discount department store similar to Gold Gircle, Target, K-Mart, Hills, Meijer, and Wal-Mart. I headed straight for the record department, and there it was, in stock and ready to sell -- Breakfast In America. I bought that, and I may have bought Styx's album "Cornerstone" as well that day. And so I went home, opened the polyethelene seal, removed the record, put it on the turntable, put on the headphones....and listened.
I read the lyrics while I listened. The first song, "Gone Hollywood", mentioned Taco Bell in the lyrics. I didn't know what Taco Bell was because there were none in my area. A few opened up later that year....and closed the next year. Apparently it couldn't compete or compare with the local chain Mighty Taco. (And it still doesn't. Trust me on this.)
I also spent several minutes gazing at the album cover while I listened. The New York City skyline was recreated with various breakfast food items and containers, and the Statue of Liberty was replaced with a buxom, curly-brown-haired waitress holding a glass of orange juice aloft on a plate. (Trivia: The woman's nametag reads "Libby".) The outer edges of the front cover suggested that this was a view from an airplane window. On the back cover was a picture of the 5 band members, at the counter of a diner, reading newspapers and eating.
I always loved the experience of listening to an album the first time. I could hear every nuance, every minor detail in the recording, that I didn't hear in subsequent playings or the home-recorded cassette of the album. I even loved the smell of the inks used in the 4-color printing process for the inner album liners. With CDs, it's like listening to it the first time...every time. But the artwork is shrunk more than 50%, and it's nearly impossible to see the minor detail.
All of the songs on the album were great -- I liked every one. Three went on to become singles: "The Logical Song", "Goodbye Stranger", and "Take The Long Way Home". There was one minor click on the album at the beginning of "Oh Darling"; otherwise the album was perfect in my opinion.
The songs on that album stuck with me through the years. I ended up completing my Supertramp catalog in the two years following, including the rare first two albums. A few years later, I was in college, and one night, went out to a strip club -- The King Edward in Niagara Falls, Ontario -- with some of my fraternity brothers. One of the young women who was dancing that night performed to to "Hello Stranger". One of my best friends from the fraternity -- Rob, from New York City -- was also a Supertramp fan, and it was often a topic for conversation or reference. (Rob was killed in a motorcycle wreck a few years ago. I think he worked in the World Trade Center at the time.) And when I was out of work 4 years ago an having a bout of insomnia, I put on "Lord Is It Mine".
In a way, it's hard to believe that the album, and the music on it, is 25 years old this year. The three singles still get occasional airplay on the local "Mix"-format radio station. (And that's the only Supertramp they'll play, unfortunately.) And the Colosso Taco is still there, at the corner of Main and Broad Sts. in the city of Tonawanda.
My life, and I, were so much different then. Back in 1979, I was a 10th grader, riding a bicycle to get around, active in the Boy Scouts, and delivering newspapers in the afternoon. LPs were still the primary way to deliver music, with cassettes running a distant second. Cable TV and video recording were around, but we didn't have them at home. I used an HP 33E programmable calculator as part of an experiment in my honors trigonometry class. Personal computers, compact discs, cordless phones for home use, the Sony Walkman, and cell phones were either not conceived, in the prototype stage, or being worked on in the R&D labs. "Modem" was something I did to the front and back lawns. The only long-term plan I had after graduating from high school was to go on to college. I wasn't sure which one I wanted to go to, nor did I know which field I wanted to pursue. All I knew was "I'm going on to college."
