Search - Supertramp :: Classics 9

Jes G. (jesgear) from DAVENPORT, IA
Reviewed on 4/1/2012...

"Goodbye Stranger"
"The Logical Song"
"Bloody Well Right"
"Take the Long Way Home"

0 of 4 member(s) found this review helpful.

Not your usual boring run of the mill greatest hits albums.

07/09/1998

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A Wonderful retrospective from one of the most talented and clever bands. Great selections from those classic albums of theirs but there is one question. Why are the tracks from their biggest seller Breakfast in America much shorter whereas the others aren't? "Goodbye Stranger", "The Logical Song" and "Take the Long Way Home" aren't the same unless they are heard in their entirety. If you buy this album, I highly suggest you go out and pick up the Breakfast In America album where you can experience the uncut versions of those wonderful songs."

Excellent, but some throw-away tracks

Ben Frey | Nashville, TN | 02/10/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have read several reviews on here complaining about this particular supertramp collection. As someone with quite a lot of appreciation for this band's "middle ages" I can say that this album, with a couple of qualifications, doesn't dissappoint. A couple of the songs are the "radio" versions, which are slightly shorter, but if you're like most people, this is the version you actually recognize.



I would like to address the statement by one person that the audio quality wasn't up to par. I have to completely disagree. I'm listening to this album right now (the reason I'm writing the review), and the packaging states that the album is mastered "aad" which means they went from the original analog masters up until the final conversion to CD. This is appropriate for a band like Supertramp, who spent so much effort on their audio fidelity back in the 70s. I've got several thousand dollars of audio equipment and well over 1000 CDs copied to my computer in lossless format to preserve the complete fidelity of the recording, and let me tell you that short of a DVD-A or SACD (Please!) version, it's not going to get better than this. There is absolutely no dynamic compression being applied on this disc, which means you get all the subtle and dramatic changes in volume that should be there but are missing from many of the other Supertramp "greatest hits" collections. Modern engineers are compressing the heck out of audio to make it more "loud" because market research shows that loud music gets more attention on the radio. I could care less. Listen to "Rudy" or "Hide in Your Shell" or "Give a Little Bit" on this compilation and then put the popular "Autobiography" version in the drive and it will sound like someone turned up the volume. That's bad. Common today, but bad. Part of what made supertramp so great was the recording quality. Despite the lack of special packaging treatment, this version is the closest I've heard to the original LP versions, which is the highest compliment I can think to give.



The only weaknesses on this album are the couple of later, dud songs that were included...Nobody wants to listen to "Cannonball." It's not good.



If you're going to buy a greatest hits album, supertramp is the band to buy, because they were a "singles" band more than an album band. Aside from Crime of the Century, which is excellent, most of the albums are filler songs wrapped around the singles. Really big fans know this already and don't care. Or maybe they like the obscure album tracks. That's fine. Those people don't want a compilation anyway. A Bob Dylan greatest hits, or a Pink Floyd greatest hits, not really the way to go. Supertramp? Greatest hits is almost the only way to go."