CRIME OF THE CENTURY

I don`t know if this album is a "concept album". I can`t see any "connection" between the lyrics of all the songs. And also with other "much praised" albums (like GENESIS `s "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" and YES`s "Fragile") I don`t consider this album as SUPERTRAMP`s Mastepiece. All the songs from this album, except "If Everyone Was Listening" were released in live versions in the "Paris" album, and I prefer some of those live versions than these studio versions, but I also could have prefered less songs from this album in the "Paris" album and more songs from other albums instead. Maybe the band considered in the seventies this album as their peak, but I prefer other albums by this band.Yes, it is a good album.Roger Hodgson`s vocals sound to me a bit different in comparison to other albums. I don`t know if other people thinks the same about this. "School" has good lyrics and a very good piano solo. "Bloody Well Right" is a song influenced by Blues with good guitars."Hide in your shell" has interesting lyrics and it is sung by Hodgson with feeling."Asylum" has funny lyrics about someone who doesn`t feel good and is considered as "crazy" enough by other people to be send to an "mental asylum". "Dreamer" is a commercial pop song which was a hit and I don`t like very much. "Rudy" is one of my favourite songs fom this album, with a very good piano and lyrics about a lonely man called Rudy (I prefer the "Paris" live version). "If Everyone was listening" is another of my favourites, with a very good orchestral arrangement. The best song in this album is "Crime of the Century", with very good lyrics about pollution (I think so), very good lead guitars and sax solo, plus a very good orchestral arrangement (I prefer the live version of the "Paris" album as it is more "intense" in feeling). Hodgson said in some interviews done in the 90s that this was the last album on which Davies and him collaborated very much to justify the "Davies/Hodgson" names in the joint songwriting credits.