Supertramp

It Was the Best of Times is a live album by Supertramp. The title makes use of the opening line from A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It was recorded in London at the Royal Albert Hall during the It's About Time tour in September 1997. This CD also features the song "Don't You Lie To Me" a blues song that the band had performed on their 1988 tour and the only song not written by a current or former band member. The band is augmented by additional players added for this album and tour as well as Slow Motion, the followup studio album recorded and released in 2002.

In the midst of the late 1970s punk/new wave revolution, England's Supertramp tore a page from the Genesis playbook, suffusing their previously overwrought prog-rock influences and bittersweet hippie optimism gone sour with muscular pop hooks. They eventually became one of the world's foremost rock acts–and later a rich source for contemporary TV commercial music. But while Supertramp peaked quickly, they nonetheless spawned at least two bona fide classic albums–Crime of the Century and Breakfast in America–and a slate of FM radio staples, all of which are included on this near 80-minute anthology. Fully three-quarters of Crime is represented, and rightly so. That 1974 album both stripped down and reinvented the band's sound, centering it around the songs of Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, pulsing electric piano chords, and distinctively reedy vocals on tense, spare songs like "Bloody Well Right" and "Dreamer." But by the time of the multiplatinum Breakfast, they had refined their edgy prog sensibility to virtual extinction with well-crafted pop hits like "The Logical Song" and "Take the Long Way Home." This well-chosen collection spans a decade, but focuses intently on the five great years that cemented Supertramp's reputation. –Jerry McCulley