Supertramp - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Sheffield Arena, Sheffield, Britain, 9-26-1997

I posted four Supertramp BBC albums a while back, all from the 1970s. I thought that's all there was, but I recently discovered material for a fifth one. This is a concert from 1997.

I was a bit reluctant to post this, because it doesn't include Roger Hodgson. Hodgson left Supertramp for good in 1983. The band was led by Rick Davies from that point on. Both Hodgson and Davies wrote and sang songs for the band. For instance, Davies wrote the hits "Bloody Well Right," "Rudy," and "Goodbye Stranger." But Hodgson wrote more hits, including "Dreamer," "Give a Little Bit," "Take the Long Way Home," "Breakfast in America," and "The Logical Song." So while both were very talented, I'd say Hodgson was the bigger reason for the band's success. Thus, it's pretty rough not having him in the band.

Still, Supertramp carried on without him (while he had a solo career). They released albums in 1985 and 1987, then took a long break before releasing "Some Things Never Change" in 1997. That's what they were promoting for this concert and tour. I think it sounds pretty good overall, and very Supertramp-y, since everyone but Hodgson remained. Still, it's a bit weird hearing band member Mark Hart sing "Take the Long Way Home" and "The Logical Song" instead of Hodgson. I'm rather surprised the concert didn't feature "Cannonball," which was the one big hit the band hand (in 1985) after Hodgson left. But no doubt this was edited down from a longer concert, and the BBC must have cut that one out.

This concert is unreleased. However, note that an official album from this concert tour was released, called "It Was the Best of Times."

This album is an hour and 14 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 21, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. Someone sent me another version of this concert that had a somewhat different song list. It had three songs I didn't have already: "Breakfast in America," "Bloody Well Right," and "Goodbye Stranger." It also had two songs that I didn't have to edit, since there wasn't a BBC DJ talking over them.

01 It's a Hard World (Supertramp)
02 You Win, I Lose (Supertramp)
03 talk (Supertramp)
04 Listen to Me Please (Supertramp)
05 Sooner or Later (Supertramp)
06 Rudy (Supertramp)
07 Another Man's Woman (Supertramp)
08 Breakfast in America (Supertramp)
09 Bloody Well Right (Supertramp)
10 Take the Long Way Home (Supertramp)
11 The Logical Song (Supertramp)
12 Crime of the Century (Supertramp)
13 Goodbye Stranger (Supertramp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/txyAAgEU

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/n943IHMeNGE4UML/file

The cover photo was taken in Paris, France, in 1997. That's Rick Davies on keywords and John Helliwell on the saxophone in the background.

Supertramp - Reitstadion Riem, Munich, Germany, 7-23-1983

I recently got a request to post more Supertramp music, so here you go. I very much would have liked to post a BBC concert from the last tours with Roger Hodgson, who wrote and sang the majority of the band's hits (with Rick Davies writing and singing the rest). However, I can't find any BBC concerts from those tours in 1979 and 1983, so probably they didn't happen. The 1979 tour is already well represented with the official live album "Paris." But there's no such album from the 1983 tour. So this bootleg serves that role.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Hodgson leaving Supertramp:

"In 1981, Hodgson moved his family from Los Angeles to northern California, where he built a home studio and began contemplating solo recordings. The rest of Supertramp remained in Los Angeles and the geographic separation created a rift between them and Hodgson; feuding was virtually non-existent, but the group harmony was lost. Hodgson felt increasingly constrained in the group context, and during the [1983 tour] he made the decision to leave Supertramp. He has denied any real problems in his relationship with Davies as speculated."

If you listen to the banter between songs in this recording, at one point Hodgson told the crowd that this was his last concert with Supertramp. That wasn't actually true, since the tour continued for a couple more months. Probably, he said something like that at every concert, meaning this was the last time people in that location would hear him with Supertramp. The rest of the band continued without him (though that's a bit like Pink Floyd continuing without Roger Waters). He never did get back with them for a reunion tour or anything like that.

The sound quality here is excellent, as good as an official live album. This is probably the best sounding bootleg from this tour. There were no problems for me to fix.

This album is an hour and 37 minutes long.

01 Crazy (Supertramp)
02 Ain't Nobody but Me (Supertramp)
03 talk (Supertramp)
04 Breakfast in America (Supertramp)
05 Bloody Well Right (Supertramp)
06 It's Raining Again (Supertramp)
07 Put on Your Old Brown Shoes (Supertramp)
08 talk (Supertramp)
09 Hide in Your Shell (Supertramp)
10 Waiting So Long (Supertramp)
11 talk (Supertramp)
12 Give a Little Bit (Supertramp)
13 From Now On (Supertramp)
14 The Logical Song (Supertramp)
15 Goodbye Stranger (Supertramp)
16 Dreamer (Supertramp)
17 Rudy (Supertramp)
18 Fool's Overture (Supertramp)
19 talk (Supertramp)
20 School (Supertramp)
21 Crime of the Century (Supertramp) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zcZanQQE 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5KxV2E9fdnhDrWF/file

The cover photo shows the band on the German TV show "Auf Los Gehts Los" in 1983.

Supertramp - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1974-1975

I've already posted a volume of Supertramp performing for the BBC. That contained BBC studio sessions. This is another volume of more studio sessions. After this, they didn't do any more BBC studio sessions that I know of. However, they did record two concerts for the BBC, so I plan on posting those as well.

Supertramp was formed in 1969, but languished in obscurity for most of the early 1970s. It was only in 1974 with the release of the album "Crime of the Century" that they started to have big success. Their success continued in 1975 with their "Crisis? What Crisis?" album.

When I put together the songs for Volume 1 in this series, I found many early BBC performances had poor sound quality, so I didn't include them. With this volume, the sound is significantly better, despite the fact that everything here is officially unreleased. 

Only two of the songs, "School" and "Crime of the Century," come from proper BBC radio studio sessions. "Dreamer" and "Rudy" were played on the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test." Supertramp did two concerts in 1975 that were broadcast on BBC radio. I will post one of them in full as Volume 3 in this series. The other one only has three different songs, so I've put those as the last three songs here.

"Dreamer" has "[Edit]" in its title not because of BBC DJs talking over the music. Thankfully, that was very rare by the mid-1970s. Instead, it's because I found a glitch that I patched up with a different section of the song.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 School (Supertramp)
02 Dreamer [Edit] (Supertramp)
03 Rudy (Supertramp)
04 Crime of the Century (Supertramp)
05 Ain't Nobody but Me (Supertramp)
06 A Soapbox Opera (Supertramp)
07 From Now On (Supertramp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2avTBv83

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9dal6lKhVo3sLTb/file

For a band that sold tens of millions of records, it's surprisingly hard to find good photos of them. This can be seen on their album covers, which never show the band members. I guess they were really modest or shy or something. As a result, I had to resort to taking a screenshot of their "Old Grey Whistle Test" TV appearance. It's pretty low-res, and only shows three band members. If anyone has a better color photo from this time, please let me know so I can use it.

Note that in February 2025, I improved the photo with the Krea AI program.

Supertramp - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: Sight and Sound, Queen Mary College, London, Britain, 11-10-1977

Here's the last of four volumes of Supertramp at the BBC. Like Volume 3, this is a full concert that was broadcast on BBC radio. The difference is that one was from early 1975, and this is from late 1977.

Between that concert and this one, Supertramp released two studio albums, "Crisis? What Crisis" in late 1975, and "Even in the Quiestest Moments..." in April 1977. Not surprisingly, this concert featured several songs from that 1977 album, including the hit single "Give a Little Bit."

This concert is an hour and five minutes long. I'm not sure if that's the complete concert, since it would be a rather short one for a headlining act. But it's all we've got. This concert remains officially unreleased, but the sound quality is as good as you'd expect from a BBC broadcast.

Apparently, parts of this concert were broadcast by the BBC at different times. The bootleg I took this from used no less than five different sources to present the songs with their best sound quality. 

The band's next album, "Breakfast in America," would be a massive blockbuster, selling four million copies in the US and over 10 million worldwide. Unfortunately, it seems the band got so big that they decided they didn't need BBC promotion anymore, because I can't find anything they did for the BBC after this. One of the band's two lead singers and songwriters, Rodger Hodgson, left in 1983, so I'm not that interested in the band after that point.

That said, I do plan to post a live album of the band from 1979, in order to include their great "Breakfast in America," but it's not a BBC related recording.

01 Give a Little Bit (Supertramp)
02 Bloody Well Right (Supertramp)
03 talk (Supertramp)
04 Lady (Supertramp)
05 From Now On (Supertramp)
06 talk (Supertramp)
07 Babaji (Supertramp)
08 Poor Boy (Supertramp)
09 Dreamer (Supertramp)
10 Another Man's Woman (Supertramp)
11 Hide in Your Shell (Supertramp)
12 talk (Supertramp)
13 Fool's Overture (Supertramp)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15176016/Supertmp_1977_BBSessionsVol4SghtandSoundQueenMryCollge__11-10-1977_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1977. I would have preferred one of the band in concert, but at least it's in color and from the appropriate year.

Supertramp - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 3-9-1975

Supertramp did some BBC studio sessions in the early 1970s. As their popularity grew, they graduated to have entire concerts broadcast for the BBC. Here's one, from 1975.

Supertramp actually performed two concerts for the BBC in 1975, one in January, and this one in March. Both set lists were very similar, but there were three unique songs to the January concert, so I included those in Volume 2 of this series. That concert remains unreleased, while this one has been released as part of the 2014 deluxe edition of the "Crime of the Century" album. It has slightly better sound than the other concert, so I'm posting this one.

The album "Crime of the Century" was released in late 1974, and the band's 1975 album "Crisis? What Crisis" wouldn't be released until November. So this was still part of the tour to support "Crime of the Century." However, a couple of songs that would appear on "Crisis? What Crisis" do appear here, like "Lady" and "Another Man's Woman."

At an hour and 14 minutes, this appears to be the compete concert.

01 School (Supertramp)
02 Bloody Well Right (Supertramp)
03 talk (Supertramp)
04 Hide in Your Shell (Supertramp)
05 Asylum (Supertramp)
06 talk (Supertramp)
07 Sister Moonshine (Supertramp)
08 Just a Normal Day (Supertramp)
09 Another Man's Woman (Supertramp)
10 talk (Supertramp)
11 Lady (Supertramp)
12 talk (Supertramp)
13 'A' - You're Adorable (Supertramp)
14 Dreamer (Supertramp)
15 Rudy (Supertramp)
16 If Everyone Was Listening (Supertramp)
17 talk (Supertramp)
18 Crime of the Century (Supertramp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KSVF5iXy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/GaslLL37V7AeR9s/file

I'm still surprised how hard it is to find any good color photos of Supertramp, since they're so popular. I found one of the band in concert in May 1975. However, the band members were spread out on stage. So I chose to crop it down to just show the band's two main singers and songwriters, Rodger Hodgson and Rick Davies. In February 2025, I improved the photo with the Krea AI program.

Supertramp - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1969-1974

So far with my BBC project, I've been emphasizing posting the 1960s material before getting to the 1970s and beyond. But that's just a rough rule, and I've been posting some things from different decades. I had a request a while back to post Supertramp's BBC material. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so here's the start of that.

Supertramp was an extremely popular British prog rock/ pop rock band, selling over 60 millions records worldwide. The band formed in 1969, but it took a few years, and some personnel changes, before finding mainstream success. I've found enough material for four BBC albums. This first one deals with the years before they really hit it big.

The first song is not actually a BBC recording, but it's remarkable in a number of ways, so I've included it. The band formed in 1969 with Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, who would be the main singers and songwriters for the band through the 1970s. Everyone else in the band at the time would leave by 1973. The band had their first concert in Munich, Germany in 1969, while still known as "Daddy." By chance, a German filmmaker filmed one song at that concert, a ten-minute long cover of the Bob Dylan classic "All Along the Watchtower." Thanks to that film footage, the audio to that has survived with pretty good sound quality.

That performance is still officially unreleased. Everything else here comes from unreleased BBC studio sessions. I found double the amount of material I'm presenting here, but the sound quality ranged from just okay to pretty bad, so I left all that out. Most of it were different versions of the same songs here anyway, so you're not missing that much. What remains doesn't always sound great, but at least it's good and listenable.

Supertramp put out albums in 1970 ("Supertramp") and 1971 ("Indelibly Stamped"), neither of which had much of an impact. Then they changed the sound and had significant personnel changes. It took three years until their next album, which was an eternity in those days. But the wait paid off, because their 1974 album "Crime of the Century" had two hit singles, "Dreamer" and "Bloody Well Right," and sold millions around the world.

Somewhat surprisingly, Supertramp had occasional BBC sessions all through this time period. There are songs here from 1972, 1973, and early 1974, months before "Crime of the Century" was released. The song from 1973, "Chicken Man," is an early version of "Another Man's Woman," which would appear on their 1975 album "Crisis? What Crisis?"

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 All Along the Watchtower (Supertramp)
02 It's a Long Road [Edit] (Supertramp)
03 Try Again (Supertramp)
04 Birds of Prey (Supertramp)
05 Pony Express (Supertramp)
06 Chicken Man [Early version of Another Man's Woman] (Supertramp)
07 Bloody Well Right (Supertramp)
09 If Everyone Was Listening (Supertramp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sSKnFKhG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/58DZ4i8NnJKfGag/file

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from the 1969 film footage mentioned above. It's pretty low-res, but it's historic. Plus, there's a real lack of any good color photos of the band from their early years. The text of the band's name is a version of the font used on their 1979 album "Breakfast in America." In February 2025, I improved the photo with the Krea AI program.