Forgotten Music Thursday - Roger Hodgson - In the Eye of the Storm (1984)

Debut solo albums by former members of notable groups tend to come in one of two varieties-- restrained and tentative or explosive brilliant bursts of creative energy. 

After his tremendous success in Supertramp, Roger launched his solo career with this creative explosion of a debut.  Not only did Roger write, arrange, and produce his debut he also played most of the instruments.  This is a solo album in one of the purest senses of the word.

The album opens with ambitious and cynical eight plus minute Had a Dream (Sleeping with the Enemy).  There was a single edit, however it barely cracked the Billboard charts.  This is likely because any editing of the song would do/did do it a huge disservice.  The song is best enjoyed in its entirety, as are all seven of the songs on this rather auspicious album.

The album then shifts to In Jeopardy which at times hints at the Greg Kihn band hit from a year or two before this album's release...  That is to say it sounds like how the Greg Kihn hit might have sounded had it been recorded by Supertramp instead of the Greg Kihn Band.  Despite the similarities it is a different song that hints and insinuates the other song without ever really plagiarizing it.

Lovers in the Wind is the album's shortest song at four minutes, thirteen seconds.  It has a slow building piano intro reminiscent of Fools Overture from Supertramp's Even In the Quietest Moments.  The vocals are also reminiscent of Fools Overture.  There's a wistful melancholy undercurrent throughout the song that keeps in line with Hodgson's at time biting and cynical and other times laidback and melancholy vibe on this album.

Hooked on a Problem and Give Me Love, Give Me Like sound like they could have come straight off of Supertramp's Crisis? What Crisis?!  Hints of Sister Moonshine and A Soapbox Opera are evident on both songs and musically it is from the same vein of most of the material from that album.

I'm Not Afraid sounds like Roger picking up right where he left off with Supertramp on Famous Last Words.  There are hints of Crazy that can be heard at different times throughout the song. 

The album closes with the haunting melancholy of Only Because of You.  The song shows off Roger's multiple talents (vocalist, keyboardist, arranger, percussionist, songwriter, producer, etc.)  Perhaps moreso than any other song on the album this is an example of all of those talents coming together just right.  Musically it's also an excellent bookend for the album.  It complements the opener, Had a Dream (Sleeping With the Enemy) quite beautifully and gives the listener sense of coming full circle and gives the album a sense of completion.

As already stated, the Supertramp influence throughout the album is unmistakable to the point where it could easily be argued that Roger sounds more like Supertramp after leaving the band than they sounded after continuing on without him.  All that's missing are the trademark Davies/Hodgson collaborations that made those albums so enjoyable.  And given the somewhat divergent direction that Supertramp went following Roger's departure evidence would indicate that he was largely responsible for their trademark sound.  Their sound suffered more from his departure than his sound/style did.

Despite having only seven songs, the album clocks in at just over seven minutes.  Only one of the songs falls under five minutes with several being over six minutes and a couple are even over eight minutes long.  While not progressive rock in the purest sense of the word the album could certainly be described as progressive pop-- the somewhat more accessible "little brother" to prog rock. 

Unfortunately, Roger's 1987 follow-up Hai Hai would lack the brilliance and creativity of his debut and an injury would curtail his career until the late 90s.  Thankfully he finally did show a return to form in 2000 with Open the Door.

While Roger's career in Supertramp is still well respected his solo career, given its sporadic nature, has gone largely forgotten by all but his most die-hard fans since his departure from the band.

This album is a "must-have" for any fan of Supertramp and it's even a little bittersweet as one wonders what material they could have continued recording had Roger never parted ways with them and its easily better than any of their post-Roger output.

Related Links
Other Roger Hodgson/Supertramp reviews
Roger Hodgson (official site)
Roger Hodgson (wikipedia)
Roger Hodgson (AllMusicGuide)

Harry Chapin - Portrait Gallery (1975)

Starting with 1974's Short Stories and right up until his untimely passing in 1981, Harry Chapin released a series of consistently brilliant albums.  Portrait Gallery was one of the best of his best albums.  The quality of the material is considerably more consistent than on Verities & Balderdash. 

Opening with the whimsical yet cynical Dreams Go By.  The clarinet and the whistling provide a backbone of whimsy to the relatively cynical lyrics that tell the story of a couple who grow up together sharing their dreams but keep putting off their dreams when life gets in the way.  The song ends with a gentle but regretful, "But I guess our dreams have come and gone, you're s'posed to dream when you are young." 

The album then shifts to Tangled Up Puppet, which makes for a unqiue companion piece to Cats in the Cradle from the previous album.  This time, instead of missing his son growing up and becoming a man a father laments as his daughter grows less and less a part of his life and becomes increasingly more her own woman.  As a father of a little girl this song packs a wallop every time I listen to it-- "I'm a tangled up puppet, all tangled up in knots, and the more I see what used to be, the less of you I've got." The message, as with Cats in the Cradle is clear, treasure and make the most of the time you have with your children as that time doesn't last.

Star Tripper while one of Harry's weaker songs, lyrically, from a musically perspective is one of Harry's more hauntingly beautiful compositions.  There's a somber melancholy vibe that drips from every note.  The song shows the less glamorous side of the life of the astronaut.  Given that the NASA was in a bit of a lull at the time, it could be argued that the song is also metaphor of the space program in general and the general apathy the public was starting to display towards the space program.

Babysitter had the potential to be a huge misstep, but Harry manages to turn what could have been a sophomoric locker room tale into a poignant coming of age story.  As a young man laments that, "I was much too late to be the first to make you a woman, but you were the one to make my mother's son a man."  The song delves into the beauty of the experience of first love and the impact that first love had on the rest of the man's life, long after the experience had ended.

Harry delves into his back catalog for Someone Keeps Calling My Name.  The song initially appeared on a then (and now) long out of print and largely ignored album that Harry and his brothers recorded as The Chapin Brothers in 1966.  The original version was later re-released on Harry's 3CD box set, Story of a Life.  The original and considerably shorter version was in the tradition of the Kingston Trio and other folk acts of the mid-60s featuring Harry, Steve, and Tom Chapin harmonizing and trading vocals.  Harry dusted off the song and added several verses stretching the song from just under three minutes upt to six and a half minutes.  The vocal harmonies with his brothers are replaced on the newer version with a group of women echoing as Harry sings the chorus.  The verses Harry adds tell the stories of Jenny who is "four fingers old," Jason is "ten birthday's old", Jonathan at "fifty seasons old", and Jamie who at "15 years has been too young,"

The Rock is one of Harry's finest story-telling gems.  It's an instantly catchy Chicken Little-esque tale about a young man who warns his townspeople that the large rock that leans over his town is about to fall.    The townspeople are dismissive of his claims as the rock has always been there and as far as they were concerned it always would be.  Without help, he decides to take matters into his own hands and figure out ways to stop the rock-- "he ran under with one last hope that he could add a prop, and as he disappeared the rock came to a stop, the people ran into the street, but by then all was still, the rock seemed where it always was or where it always will be, when someone asks where he had gone they said 'ah he was daft, who cares about that crazy fool?' then they'd start to laugh." 

Sandy is a song Harry wrote for his wife, the same wife he detailed in his I Wanna Learn a Love Song on his previous album.  Of the two songs, I Wanna Learn a Love Song is imminently more enjoyable.

Dirt Gets Under the Fingernails is an O. Henry-esque story of irony about a mechanic and his wife with aspirations of being a painter.  The payoff at the end is thoroughly enjoyable.  Musically the song is a bit dated but it works but the lyrics make up for it.

Harry brings the epic back to his albums with Bummer, at just shy of ten minutes it's his longest piece since Sniper and A Better Place to Be from 1972's Sniper and Other Love Songs.  It tells the tale of a man who grew up abused and on the wrong side of the law yet he somehow manages to earn a Medal of Honor and a handful of Purple Hearts in Vietnam.  Upon his return he falls back into his old habits and comes to a bad end.  When his body is retrieved they find him clutching onto his Medal of Honor and a smile on his face.  The song features a rather dated 70s horn chart and string arrangement giving the song a similar epic over the top anthemic vibe reminiscent of Sniper.

The album closes with the somewhat more upbeat and tongue in cheek blues tinged Stop Singing These Sad Songs creating a nice bookend for Dreams Go By which opened the album.  Much like Harry's live favorite, Circle, this album come full circle ending on a similar upbeat fun vibe to that which it began.

Portrait Gallery was Harry's strongest album to that point and arguably none of his other studio albums, save for 1977's dual LP Danceband on the Titanic, would quite equal the quality of this album.

Related Links and Media
Harry Chapin (official site)
Harry Chapin (wikipedia)

Harry Chapin - Verities & Balderdash (1974)

From first glance this album has a forceful message.  With Harry sporting an Uncle Sam "I Want You!" pose he singles out the listener before the album is even purchased. 

Largely due to the oft-covered Cats in the Cradle, Verities and Balderdash is Harry Chapin’s best known album. Harry was busy in 1974 as this was the 2nd album he released that year (although Short Stories was recorded in 1973 it wasn’t released until 1974). Short Stories and Verities and Balderdash bookend each other nicely. Harry and his band built on the strengths of Short Stories and recorded what some would argue was his best album to that point.

The album opens with Cats in the Cradle which may actually have done the album a disservice in the era of LPs as there are a lot of other excellent songs on the album and any listener who might hear Cats in the Cradle may or may not have continued on to the rest of the album. Anyone skipping the rest of the album is doing him or herself a tremendous disservice.

After Cats in the Cradle is the autobiographical, I Wanna Learn a Love Song which tells the tale of how Harry met his wife, Sandy, several years before. The song later became a staple of Harry’s live set.

Shooting Star is another of Harry’s story-telling gems about a woman married to a man who is mentally ill. At its core it’s a beautiful love song—a woman standing by her man through all of his mental difficulties even as the rest of the world would either laugh at or ignore him.

One of Harry’s most popular live staples, 30,000 Pounds of Bananas, made its first appearance on Verities and Balderdash. As enjoyable as the song is, the live version took on a life of its own and easily eclipses the original studio version that appears on this album. Both musically and lyrically this is a purely fun and enjoyable album. The live version is sped up at points to great effect as it fits the lyrics as Harry tells the story of the out of control truck of bananas. Incidentally, the song is based on an actual truck crash in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Other notable tracks include Vacancy and What Made America Famous, an ode of sorts to our nation's then upcoming bicentennial.  Today it sounds somewhat dated but it's still an enjoyable song when enjoyed within the context of when it was recorded.

While not quite as strong as Short Stories, Verities & Balderdash is consistently enjoyable and shows Harry's further growth as a songwriter with the albums stronger tracks including his trademark, Cats in the Cradle.  Give it a listen, you won't be disappointed.

Related Links & Media
Cats In the Cradle (Live on PBS Soundstage)

30,000 lbs. of Bananas (Live @ Rockaplast 1977)

What Made America Famous (live on PBS Soundstage)

Harry Chapin (official site)
Harry Chapin (wikipedia)