Advent 3

Punk was a rebellion against the self-consciousness of prog rock but I certainly never was a punk - I mean I was School Vice Captain for goodness sake! Neither, in its full flush, was I really a prog rocker. I was stuck with my outdated preference for the Moody Blues, not that it did me any harm.

Today's album is though definitely prog rock. Supertramp's 1974 breakthrough album Crime of the Century did not initially grab my attention. We have to wait for 1979 when I am living in a student flat in South Kensington (yes that used to be possible) and this was one of the albums we listened to communally (there were eight in the flat) as the conclusion to a night at the Zetland (the pub's still there) on the export cider. The music would be served with boiled egg and Tabasco sandwiches, the batch of which was prepared before we went out. If only we had been so organised in our studies. Different times. Great times. Great album.