Supertramp / Crime of the Century vinyl box and deluxe edition

One of the greatest studio albums of all time.. and they put LIVE TRACKS? No alternate versions? Take 2? Songs that were scrapped? NOTHING? I don’t want to hear clapping!! I want to hear studio genius. Well shit. Back to the mega awesome Rumours Deluxe for me.

Timeless album! Songs like Hide in Your Shell, Dreamer, School and If Everyone Was Listening sound freshly written for times of today. I feel the reason those songs still resonate well is because Roger Hodgson wrote them in a way that connects all of us. With each of our unique life “stories” we all go through the motions, troughs and crests of life’s winding road journey – yet the emotions and memories these songs evoke, reveals how music can be a unifying force. Every song one after the other affects you in a different way…this montage gives a good glimpse of the show – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMLNeSbtVN0. It’s always evident when seeing Roger in concert, all surrounding you people of several generations, all walks of life visibly and deeply moved.. very special feeling to experience!

Can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this set! This will be a Christmas present to myself. I had the great privilege of seeing Roger Hodgson in concert this year and it was amazing. I was so happy to see on his site that he will be touring again in 2015. Greatly looking forward to another show.

So in Supertramp collection is a slimline double CD case with the last remaster of COTC in the front, and Is Everybody Listening in the back. Makes this set a little redundant to my wallet’s taste.

On a happier note, I might finally be able to get the concert because I’d been searching for it but it was only available then for ridiculously high prices.

Hopefully the BRA edition will at least also include the original mix.

BluRay Audio – 5345068 – down for same release date on Universal site.

As for packaging – there’s plenty of indie retailers in the UK despatching things that don’t get damaged in the post. The problem you’ll find with larger digipaks is that you can get over-zealous stuffing of boxes at the distribution plants resulting in spine crush – we get a fair few rejects that way – as far as I am aware most major label box filling in distribution is robots – if the correct parameters aren’t in, you get nightmares.

Amazon? – well you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys – the packing staff are just picking machines, there’s no QC going on – so spend more money and get things from retailers who are bothered about your purchase!

If this had been anything like the new Tull or TFF releases and with a 5.1 DVD or blu-ray, just imagine how exciting this would have been. Sigh. :(

I honestly thought I was the only person getting damaged cd boxes etc from amazon!!! I bought a genesis sacd boxset from them ages ago- it was sent out in a box clearly too big for the product and with a small screwed up piece of brown paper in it clearly not big enough to stop it flying about in the outer box. Im sure you can imagine the condition it arrived in (which was appalling given the value of the set)

Another UK only release?

Correction, on Novemeber 1st.

Bonus Track?? Land Ho and Summer Romance why not???

Hello all,

SHM-SACD release should be on December 31 this year. It was just delayed, not cancelled. Maybe the new holy grail, legacy of the MFSL version.

Will the download with the vinyl be a 24bit hires, maybe? Paul, could you find out?

I’d love to hear some of the unreleased stuff, and an extensive box set is long overdue. Once of my favourite memories of Supertramp is the Spring of 1979, on the Breakfast in America tour, the band played 2 nights at Jarry Park in Montreal. I went both nights. Afterwards, it was reported that just a few hours prior to each performance, as all the fans were arriving, the band and road crew played a soccer match in the field outside the front entrance to the stadium, but since the band members were so anonymous, nobody recognized them or noticed. Supertramp was, and still is, so popular in Montreal, Hodgson solo sells out 3 nights in a row in 8,000 seat halls. Amazing longevity to this band.

my train of events on reading this – already have a decent cd album but the accompanying live album, gotta get that – unreleased show from 76, wow! – hang on, already out under another name, why didnt i spot that – quick check online, oh it’s “is everybody listening” i already have that, never realised it was Hammersmith, must go and give it a spin. cheers for the info everyone!

There was/is also supposed to be a Japanese SHM-SACD release
of this earlier this year that is either postponed – or cancelled altogether.
I am still hopeful that it (like the Blu-Ray) will eventually get released…

The problem for me is that the pricing isn’t good enough at the moment. They want £2 more than I paid for the four disc Warchild set – and that comes in book format with a no doubt excellent booklet (based on the other book releases).

I love this album though, and I don’t have the concert at all.

I’ll price watch it – but currently it’s a no-go.

As said above, there are already exceptional CD releases of this album, which will be hard to excel. I have the ‘Cleveland’ concert of Hammersmith, so it will be interesting to hear the remix.

One of my all-time faves! An anniversary box set is exciting, really I am more looking forward to hearing Roger Hodgson live on tour this year & the next. Simply a night full of grandiose, timeless music… it surprised me when I had read that he composed alot of the songs we all identify as “Supertramp”, that he actually composed separately from the band too (did you know that Dreamer, Give a Little Bit, Breakfast in America and most of Fool’s Overture were written before Roger co-founded the band)? I didn’t either, until recently! I found all of the info on Roger’s website Repertoire page – http://www.rogerhodgson.com/documents/repertoire. Lots of good info there on his songwriting process.

It might be worth noting that the concert that is featured as the second disc isn’t infact unreleased… In 2001 a live CD was released on a budget label (officially licensed from A&M) that featured the Hammersmith concert. The booklet contained in the CD actually states that the concert was recorded in Cleveland, Ohio, however this appeared not to be the case as band member John Helliwell confirmed on his website that it was infact from Hammersmith.

If only Davis and Hodgson could reconciliate and do a proper raiding of the archives and release something worthwile.
I read in an interview with Hodgson that there’s is a lot in the archive but they cannot come to an agreement about this!!!
Not getting this anyway as I don’t do vinyl anymore!!

if the cd edition sounds better than my mobile-fidelity one, i’ll eat my shorts!

There is a bluray and the 2 cd format does have a live at hammersmith 1975. Now if the bluray has 5.1 I would be in for sure but my guess is stereo only for the bluray.

This edition is a joke !
Sorry people, for me Rodger Hodgson is a pain in the as……
Without a concert dvd and no 5.1 ? I don’t buy this !

Another one of those times when I got excited by a headline, then disappointed when I read the description. Most die-hard Supertramp fans already have the Hammersmith concert in very high quality, so even though it’s never received an official release before, there really isn’t anything new here. As a post above mentioned, video from the era would have made the package more appealing (although given all the bickering among band members about the Paris video, you have to wonder if we’ll ever see any more archival footage from Supertramp again.) A 5.1 mix would have been welcome as well. Hard to believe that nothing from Supertramp has ever been mixed for surround sound. Reissues like this make me appreciate my Peter Gabriel box; at least with that we got some previously unheard material from the vaults.

They intended on including the Hammersmith DVD but Rodger Hodgson vetoed it unfortunately. Damn shame.

Wasn’t there supposed to be a Blu-ray audio of this a year or so ago – after the release of Breakfast In America on BD ?

I seem to recall having in on my Amazon wish list for ages until I deleted when it was perpetually unavailable.

Any word if this will be resurrected with the new version coming out?

I also try to exploit Japanese retailers whenever I know a release will be coming in a cardboard sleeve. For example, I ordered all the Suede reissues from a while back from CD Japan simply because I knew that they would arrive in pristine condition (which they did). Sure, it can be more expensive to buy the Japanese or Asian pressings, but you know you’ll buy/pay once, and be happy with the product in your hand…and won’t be looking at some mangled garbage.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Amazon will ever change…although I hope they prove me wrong one day.

Yeah, I only ordered from Japan because they had some exclusive items.
I complained to Amazon.com a thousand times about their packaging, and today I informed them of this post. Don´t think anything will change but I tried.

I thought I was the only one getting damaged items from Amazon.com.
Does the same thing happen with Amazon.co.uk?
I also order from Amazon Japan but the japs know how to pack these things, as Amazon.com used to do.

Ooh I must have missed the mention of an online store. Sounds exciting…

I always look forward to news like this then the realisation hits me that the deluxe edition CD will arrive from Amazon in their rubbish cardboard envelope resulting in the inevitable crease down the spine of the CD case and dented corners etc.

Bring back the jewel case that I can replace if damaged.

Once a cardboard cover is damaged, that’s it. They are eco-friendly but unfit for purpose.

Shame they haven’t included a DVD, the Hammersmith gig was shown as a OGWT special