Every vintage rock fan I know has a list of tours they kick themselves for missing, and the jaunt Supertramp managed for their mega-popular Breakfast In America album was surely one for the ages. That tour produced the band’s Paris live album, released in 1980.
For 2025, it’s been reconfigured as Live In Paris ’79, available as a triple LP and double CD set, bringing Tramp fans a newly updated reissue of music, some not part of the original LP, taken from two shows the band played on a four-night sold-out stand at the Pavillon de Paris in December 1979.
Here we get the classic lineup of singer, songwriter, and keyboardist Rick Davies, singer, songwriter, keyboardist and guitarist Roger Hodgson, horn man John Helliwell, bassist Dougie Thomson, and drummer Bob Siebenberg. This is the dream team of the Tramp delivering their music masterfully. And as much as a live album often is released to afford a band time between studio releases (…Famous Last Words…,the last with Hodgson, wouldn’t be released until 1982), what’s always struck me especially about this live collection was how the band played lots of pre-Breakfast In America material on this tour.
The songs not on the original album make a great addition. Davies shines on vocals and piano, without accompaniment, on “Downstream.” The jamming “Another Man’s Woman” is a chunky rocker featuring a mid-song piano and guitar exchange. “Even In The Quietest Moments,” with its wonderful 12-string and clarinet opening, is another standout from the Supertramp oeuvre.
From Breakfast in America, we get live versions “Goodbye Stranger” and “Child Of Vision” for the first time. I can remember playing side four of the original Paris, and listening to “Take The Long Way Home,” “Fool’s Overture,” “Two Of Us,” and “Crime Of The Century,” over and over. What’s added to Live In Paris ‘79 makes for an even better listening experience, making a great live album even greater.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
