INSIDE SUPERTRAMP 1974-1978

The "Inside" series of DVDs may be rather dubious when it comes to the publishers right to use the material, but the fact is that they can be a goldmine for otherwise unavailable footage of major prog bands from their heyday. The publishers seek to avoid accusations of using unauthorised music and film by maintaining that the projects "require totally independent editorial control". What this means is that archive footage is intermingled with the thoughts of random hangers on, and presented as a documentary style examination of the music.

Sometimes this works well, and those chosen to provide input are relevant and well informed. Band members, producers, road crew, etc., can all be called upon along with the ubiquitous array of journalists and experts. Unfortunately, this DVD does not feature any of the current or former band members, or indeed anyone who has been directly associated with the band in any way. What we are left with then is the aforementioned clever Dickies, plus rather bizarrely and for no apparent reason, several members of the band Mostly Autumn. This leads to a curious mix of superficial fawning and trainspottingly tedious musical analysis. Do we really need the keyboard player with Mostly Autumn to tell us that in order to make this tune, Roger Hodgson had to press these keys in this sequence on the keyboard. Do we really need 4 or 5 journalists to tell us that "Crime of the century" was a good album and that "Dreamer" was a good pop song?

In another unforgivable faux pas, the programme starts with "Crime of the century", almost completely ignoring the band's first two albums, and telling us nothing of the rather interesting tale of the band's early mentoring by a millionaire. Three albums are covered in total, the other two being "Crisis what crisis" and "Even in the quietest moments", so albums such as the mega-selling "Breakfast in America" do not even warrant a mention. Surely a sensible stopping point would have been the departure of Roger Hodgson from the band?

"Crime of the century" dominates things, occupying over half an hour of a programme running to just over an hour. Every track is discussed individually (but not in the correct sequence), but despite the time devoted to it, we learn absolutely nothing we did not already know about the album.

I know I am being particularly critical here, and there is a very strong plus point. Footage of Supertramp performing in the 1970's is notoriously hard to find, and this programme does contain a generous helping of such film from a handful of different sources. Some ambient views are used to fill the gaps when footage is not available, but we get a good chance to see the band performing live and live for TV, even if the sound quality is at times quite dreadful.

It is great to see the footage Bob Carruthers has managed to gather together here, it brings back happy memories of a gig in Glasgow I attended just after the release of "Crime of the century". It is just a pity more effort was into put into assembling a documentary worthy of the footage to place around it.

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