5 Minutes Talking SUPERTRAMP with John Helliwell 

John Helliwell mentioned how Roger kept wanting to venture off to India during the production of Crime of the Century. He was indeed a genius. What does any of that have to do with creating and playing beautiful music? Roger was no more of a genius than John Helliwell. The incredible passion in Rick was a one in a billion anomaly.

Crime of the Century sent Pink Floyd back into the recording studio to re-record their Dark Side of the Moon. Both Supertramp and ELO used a recording technique that recorded onto and played back onto a track at twice the speed. I think the group's production of Roger's song 'Hide in Your Shell' managed to take that song to a level that other songs failed to do. I'm talking about how dramatic songs burn out and stick around failing to progress from each verse chorus into the next ones and becoming anti-climactic. A good example of this is the song McCarthur's Park which started off so up tempo leaving no place for it to progress to causing the song to be criticized as too over dramatic. Another example is Pink Floy's 'Us and Them' which progressed nicely between both the first and second verses and choruses and then again between the second and the instrumental part which included the interlude of the saxophone. That final forth verse and chorus just has no place to progress to and then concludes awkwardly. In Roger's Hide in Your Shell, the song is pushed up into the third verse by the inclusion of lots of percussion.

Thanks for the lovely comment! Glad you enjoyed the videos @DGK - Paul

All the songs were great, but not as interesting. The first four songs making up the first side of Crisis What Crisis was a continuation of Crime of the Century because Roger and Rick took turns dueling it out with their song writing. The second side is merely great in comparison, but lacked the incredible dynamics of the prior 12 songs they produced on both albums. Did you get the wit buried in the title "Crisis? What Crisis?" "Cry Sister What Christ is."

@@WilliamJones-sf5pt It still stands the test of time & its still a great album that deserves as much attention as crime of the century. For me crises is a little bit like famous last words. They need more attention to be appreciated. They are both the most overlooked supertramp albums.

@@toddblanks The standard way back then was to put your best songs on the A-side of the album and to put trash on the flip B-side. While Crisis What Crisis didn't have a B-side, it seemed to be used more as room for Roger to place his excessive amount of sugar coated numbers. Rick liked to go Choo-Choo in his songs and it is almost like he had lost interest and was ready to move on.

@@WilliamJones-sf5pt So you don't like crises what crises. Or is it that your basing your opinion on what each member has said during the history? If so, its a bit like when pink floyd thought atom heart mother was crap. Or like when rick wakeman said he dislikes parts of topographic oceans. I listen as a 1 piece album in whole. Im not listening out for whats better than this side or that. That somewhat devalues the albums on a whole scale for me. Sure one song pr side might be a little better than that. But that's albums for you. I can easily forgive them

@@toddblanks Supertramp as a group were mostly kids during that early time of Crisis What Crisis save for Rick. Their magic came from the group's synergy created by their suffering each other to remain a group. I think the stress they suffered during Crisis What Crisis created a magical quality in the album that the audience could perceive but that the members couldn't. Lots of bad memories for them looking back on it. Still, the quality of music during that time was so incredible it wasn't enough to just to play great beautiful music. It also needed to be interesting which was Rick's concern. Crisis What Crisis had a B-side while Crime of the Century didn't. For example, back then, the song Asylum on Crime of the Century - just the forth song on that album - would have been the concluding song (the four songs on the B-side being their creative stuff or just throw away trash). Yet, the strings weren't even added onto the album until the song Asylum! Dreamer one of their hit songs then opened up on the B-Side! Rick's RUDY concluded twice the first a very dramatic ending when Rudy was inside the theater watching himself. The second ending was an epilog as it included the juxtaposition of slow strings and concluded with Rudy coming out from the movie after being in the audience watching himself. Next, Roger's Hide in Your Shell was also about ending a song. Finally, Rick's Crime of the Century ends the album with the mother of all doomful songs. The album builds and builds from the first to last song on Crime of the Century with Rick and Roger taking turns dueling it out. They write lots of poetic play on words, but back up that trivia with astounding dynamic music. The prerequisite for timeless music is great percussion and Supertramp had that with abundance as Rick, Bob Siebenburg, and Roger all played the drums (in that order).