Supertramp
Breakfast In America

THE REVIEW

Supertramp - Breakfast in America -1979-

I come out of the freezer, the alarm clock rings, I brush my teeth while eating corn flakes, spit it all out, take the coffee and head to the shower, where there's a drenched radio from misuse, 6:00 a.m.: please tell me who I am.. One two three four Ddddigital... No! I'm begging you...

Supertraaaaaaaaaaaaaamp... At 6:00? What delightfully silly songs that album has; the waitress on the cover looks like my mother -Mommy dear!- the time she brought me breakfast in bed before school... Where I lived back then felt like America, even though I came from the older part of the neighborhood, which is the biggest and most populous in Rome, as big as a small metropolis; moving a few kilometers was like changing customs and habits, and the diversity of people was just as incredible: from the old and historic, rooted and provincial part to the new, aggressive and wealthy one. The gap was strong, easy-going girls, condominium pools -off limits to the poor-, private TVs, private radios, concrete, futuristic buildings, skyscrapers, wealthy people, and fake rich, many jerks, love for anything foreign, and music, lots of music. More America than that...

Today, I've got a digital alarm clock, of course, and there's no turning back. Yet, yet, listening again to "The logical song" mmmh, and that album? Homework. How has this bestseller aged, well, badly, does it still say something? I believe this super pop is quite unpresentable today, dear teacher, and not even revisable in terms of arrangements and message. It's for the group's aficionados and nostalgia addicts, it's too different from what’s out there today. So many years have passed, too many, that Fender piano, the backing vocals, mhhh yet ...it's still beautiful! And what matters most is the feeling of talking about something you perceived while hearing certain songs, just as it's true that some songs aren't processed until much later. In that carefree age, I wasn't thinking about the meaning of radical, practical, responsible. But who writes such rambling, super-derelict, and radio-friendly pop-rock like this anymore, so slyly American? Actually, Californian, like Californian prunes, all pretty, equally polished and mass-produced... Like the millions of vinyl records sold of this album, like these songs that melt in your mouth, all there in a row, no pit, like a lineup of exes, one leads to another, and nothing is hard to stomach, just one long sugary and often poignant suite. It wasn't understood that behind all that caramel there was so much bitter irony of quiet middle-aged gentlemen. These songs are all shiny, clean, crystalline, slightly tainted by enough guitars. It’s all perfect, from the stratospheric falsettos -biggis flavour?- to the dizzy saxes, to the ever-present and hammering barber shop electric piano as a trademark. Even the non-hits are above average, like the decidedly Beatlesque "Oh darling", "Lord Is It Mine"', the super radio-friendly mystical finale of "Child of Vision" or the distant echo of School that resonates in the harmonica of "Take the Long Way Home".

Where have all the friends from back then gone... It was early morning yesterday, I was up before the dawn- Goodbye Mary, Goodbye Jane, will we ever meet again?