Harry Paterson

So Daughter Spawn despatched, SheWhoIsNeverWrong fancied a trip to Tesco. Yeah, check us out, crazy rock ‘n’ roll nihilists. First time she’d ventured outside for over a week. Certainly the first since coming home from hospital last Monday, so this was A Big Deal.

Went OK, to be fair. She even put clothes on. Not pyjamas, not nighties but actual going-out-in-public-grown-up clothes.

We bought stuff, like you do, like we used to, and made it back no worse for wear and while that aint no cure, it’s a boost for morale. Mine, more than hers. But then she copes better than me. Always has done. She might be the one with the malfunctioning brain but I’m the one whose head is fucked…

But anyway, the music, then. Yeah, that.

Settled on Crime of the Century by Supertramp. What a strange band they were. Way too far from the mainstream ever to be a pop act, despite a few covert assaults on the top 40 at the arse-end of the 70s, but a long way from what most would understand as rock. They lived in a strange no-man’s land of not-quite-prog meanderings.

The odd chorus that you’d imagine live, backed by a bevy of stocking-clad, cane-twirling, top-hatted lovelies. But far too eccentric, far too quintessentially English for that to ever really be a possibility. Some hints of Gabriel-era Genesis in there, as well, when Hodgson really hit his stride. Not enough guitar, either, but, instead, that plaintive, wistful quality that suited the mood perfectly.

Must be twenty years, more, maybe, since I’ve given their shiz an outing and it’ll probably be twenty years more before I do it again. If I ever do.

Glad they’re there, though.

Bloody well right.