Anyone is welcome to submit a Guest Blog Entry to torontomike.com. I received the following submission earlier today.
Following the summer of 1974, my mother began to go through her own quarter-life crisis. She took-up smoking and bought herself an 8-track tape player! With it (the 8-track tape player...not the cigarettes) came Paul Anka, Helen Reddy and Catherine McKinnon...definitely not the classic-country that my ears had been weaned on (eeeuw!) Again, another musical door had swung wide open for me - adult contemporary *shudders*. It became apparent then and there that I would have to make some musical choices of my own.
Disco was all the rage at the time, but I just couldn't stomach any of it - the music, the clothes, the lingo or the accessories. I wanted something a little less...well...flamboyant and overtly stupid. Like most 13-year-old boys, my coolness-phazer was set on superficial. More times than not, my idea of what was cool was based on what the kids a year or two ahead of me thought was cool. Perception and appearance took precedence over logic and quality. That applied to most things...clothes (the words corduroy and velour jump to mind), haircuts (didn't have one from 1972-1977) and especially music. "KC & the Sunshine Band" just weren't projecting the sort of image I wanted for myself.
One Saturday morning in the summer of 1975, I walked into "Sam the Record Man" and stood gawking at the "Top 100 LP's" rack. Nestled in around Number 94 was Supertramp's "Crime of the Century". I knew absolutely nothing about the band. All I knew was that their album cover was "hella-kewl"! It said everything I wanted it to about who I was going to be for the next 4-6 months.
Marty
I just took a look at the cover of Supertramp's "Crime of the Century", and it is pretty cool.
It's funny, but I have distinct memories of the cassette of Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" floating around in my parents' old station wagon. It had a cool cover too. Coincidentally, I just ripped the soundtrack to Magnolia I got from my brother Ryan and it's got some Supertramp on it. Bloody Well Right.
