Yeah, all this is true, BUT Drew Emmitt, who used to be in Leftover Salmon, just put out a new album with a KILLER cover of Long Way Home on it.

I was all ready to jump up and testify that I enjoyed re-discovering Supertramp, but upon reflection, it was E.L.O.

p.s. I like the Olympics.

Breakfast In America was THE album of-oh, 1978?

I still love just about every cut on it. It was perfect for its time...go google the cover. It kinda has a different aspect after 9/11.

Really? 'The Long way Home' still freaks my shit out. I always thought it was in the voice of a guy contemplating doing something like mass murder.

Aww I love Supertramp. My dad plays it all the time during long car rides.

Heh, mine too divabat. For me it falls in the category of music I like purely because my dad likes it and played it incessantly in the car when I was younger.

When I was in high school, I had an ethics teacher who, at the beginning of class each day, would play a song of his selection ('The Living Years,' 'Spirit in the Sky,' 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'Fire and Rain,' etc.), then attempt to have a sort of roundtable discussion of the xeroxed lyrics with the class. One day, it was 'The Logical Song.' For whatever reason, it opened the folks up like nothing else he played all semester, and the discussion wound up stretching until the next class period.

I always thought it was in the voice of a guy contemplating doing something like mass murder.

Funny you should say that, because that song always reminds me of that guy who had his wife killed on the NJ turnpike. Well, specifically it reminds me of the TV movie they made about the case where Robert Urich has Joanna Kerns killed because he's in love with the lady who played Dorian Lord on that soap my grandmother used to watch. They use that song in one of the scenes.

There is some "late" Jefferson Airplane that I can't listen to now, as it feels me with self-loathing, wondering why I ever enjoyed it in the first place. Early Airplane, no prob, but as they were segueing into the Starship, which I always found to be excreble, the well ran dry.

I liked the logical song - rang true with me at the time. Then again, it also had the double whistle from a Mattel Electronic Football game in it.

Funny you should say that, because that song always reminds me of that guy who had his wife killed on the NJ turnpike. Well, specifically it reminds me of the TV movie they made about the case where Robert Urich has Joanna Kerns killed because he's in love with the lady who played Dorian Lord on that soap my grandmother used to watch. They use that song in one of the scenes.
posted by jrossi4r 11 August | 22:50

That was taken from fact. I read the Ann Rule book about the crime (I think it was she who wrote it) and the son talks about the last drive he and his mother had together in the car where that song comes on the radio so they decide to take the long way home and enjoy hanging out together.

Supertramp was the soundtrack to riding home from Baltimore Orioles baseball games in my dad's '70 Ford Maverick. We would park up the hill in the Eastern High School parking lot or sometimes on the street around Ellerslie by that Colts bar with the blue door.

This was back when games only took a couple hours to play, so we'd go on school- or worknights, no problem, though if it looked like a stretch or like the O's had it sewn up, we'd leave in the eighth inning and turn on the radio to listen to Chuck Thompson (who was eventually replaced by Jon Miller and Tom Marr; yeah, the O's employed broadcasting royalty up until '96, when Fuckin' Peter Douchebag Angelos, That Son Of A Bitch, fired Miller, who had criticized the team's lousy play, for "not bleeding orange and black enough"); anyway, this was all long before the O's moved on to the wine and cheese crowd at Camden, back when they were the class of the league, just before they were Champions of the World.

So on WFBR (callsign comes from First Baltimore Regiment, from whose Armory the station originally broadcast; they were at 1300 on the AM band so their bumper stickers all said WF13R, presaging 1337-speak by decades) we'd catch the last innings as we sped home before the crowds left the stadium, and man, did the O's broadcast people like Supertramp! To this day, everytime I hear "The Logical Song" or "Take the Long Way Home," I expect to hear little splashes of AM radio interference as we drive under the overpasses by Druid Hill and through the city home.

I shed a tear for those old times, and for that team, the love of my youth, and for that old ugly stadium, The Old Gray Lady of 33rd Street aka The World's Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum.

This has nothing to do with Supertramp, but like most Major League stadia, Memorial Stadium was ringed with pennants from every other team in the league. One pennant stuck out, though; out in left field, in the corner, one pennant simply said, "HERE." That's where, in 1966, Frank Robinson hit the only home run ball to ever exit the stadium completely.

What, nobody's mentioned the Magnolia soundtrack yet? Since I'm a huge Aimee Mann fan, this sort of made a connection for me to an album that I was too out of touch to appreciate when it came out. (Honestly, I didn't listen to much pop music until my 20s.)

Anyway, I guess you could say that the production and sound is perhaps dated, but what's wrong with the songwriting? Or maybe because I experienced it out of context I don't have the associations that would taint it today.