Star rating: **** When I was a lad, there were certain album covers it was cool to be seen carrying about at school. Strange as it may seem now, Supertramp's Crime of the Century was one of them. The vocalist and principle songwriter of that band was Roger Hodgson and by his own reckoning, it had been nearly 30 years since he had been in Glasgow. He professed to "not knowing whether anyone would remember him". He needn't have worried.
Having stolen the show at the Diana concert and with a song in the latest Ben Stiller movie, there were generations of fans present to witness an outstanding performance by a man who has forgotten more good tunes than many of today's hip young popsters will ever learn.
Opening with Take the Long Way Home, Hodgson covered his entire career in a solo performance which including just one new song, Oh Brother, taken from his concert DVD. Very much in the Supertramp style, it fitted nicely with the classic songs which this audience had come to hear, such as Sister Moonshine, It's Raining Again and the excellent Dreamer.
The stripped-down arrangements revealed just how good these songs were to start with, despite a disappointing sound mix which robbed the 12-string of much of its impact and, unforgivably, muddied the vocals.
However, that distinctive electric piano sound and Hodgson's obvious enjoyment more than made up for it. He was aided and abetted by multi-instrumentalist Canadian Erin MacDonald, whose contributions on sax, in particular, were terrific, although he also provided backing vocals, piano and memorably, whoopee whistle.
The best song of the night was School from Crime of the Century. How apt.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article