Some things more important than me

July, 2007 :

Part One.

The most influential album in my young years was "Crisis, what Crisis" by Supertramp, not only because it was a fantastic and thoughtful album, but also that, in my little life, the songs and emotion in that album was a timely and grounding soundtrack to my film.

And, a valid point about the importance was that I personally discovered the group, well, John Peel had a hand in it and pointed me in the right direction and also forced me to illegally record that album on compact cassette. I mean, didn't he realise at the time that Home taping was Killing Music?

It didn't actually, and I quietly admit that I did in fact discover Supertramp.

In the years that followed Crisis, I had my own personal crisis, with the soundtrack still playing, through "Crime of the Century", "Even in the Quietest Moments" and "Breakfast in America" and it was Breakfast that resulted in my first divorce.

Well, that and Jerry the Fireman.

Hodgson and Davies didn't actually shag my first wife, or make toast that morning, but they had a hand in it.

Jerry, the man with the hose, had carnival knowledge of the tangible bits but I'm sure that those two monkeys had their hand in it all, working from the other side of the fence, making me react to the situation, especially under the influence of mind altering Asda Lager, forcing my hand and eventually bringing the curtain down.

Joking aside, the closure in the late 1970s of the fools apprentice marriage was by far eclipsed by the sad destruction of the super group that was called Supertramp. The 1982 Album "Famous Last Words" was not only blessed by the poignant track "Its Raining Again" but the final curtain call, the last track on the album, "Don't leave me Now" broke my heart.

It was as though the film had ended, the opening scene in a grubby Enfield Street in Wigan with a light, young and enthusiastic fool with his good friend Mark Gaskell, way back in 1975 backing a light blue Hillman Imp into a parked car and a massive fast forward to the closing credits of a sad, lonely boy and redundancy from the dark mining company, Gullick Dobson six years later, in that same Northern Town. Arthur Scargill, Maggie Thatcher, divorce and botched suicide a distant memory.

Wait, revisionists, six years later, that works out at 1981 not 1982.

The synch track was out, it was in fact 1982. Not 1981 where that final Supertramp album would have worked in the final dub.

So, it became apparent that this super group was far more important than I was, because, they decided to wait, patiently, in the background, while I had my quietest moments and took the long way home.

I miss the group, not from an aspect of soundtrack, but, I think that they would have been better if they had stayed together, it would be fantastic to have experienced their later albums together.

Listening to "Crisis what Crisis" all over again (yes, home downloading is killing music!) makes me realise what I should always remember :

Some things are more important than me.