A Tramp through the old hits - Music - Arts - Evening Standard
       

A Tramp through the old hits

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With his Seventies hair and waistcoat, 57-year-old Roger Hodgson is not a 21st Century man. Yet rehabilitation comes to everyone if they wait long enough, even Supertramp, the covertly adored band that Hodgson co-fronted. Some genuinely timeless songs, the Guilty Pleasures movement, The Feeling, plus Gym Class Heroes' inspired sampling of Breakfast In America have combined to introduce them to a new generation.

The bitterness of his 1983 departure still festers with Balkan intensity, so a reunion is unlikely; hence Hodgson's canny decision to undertake a maiden solo tour of his native land.

And solo was almost the word. "Cheap" might be another. In what may be the most frugal show the Royal Albert Hall has hosted (the set consisted of some pot plants; the lighting would barely have illuminated my shed), Hodgson eschewed a band in favour of commanding multi-instrumentalist Aaron MacDonald.

Thus for all his seeming good-nature, such luxurious, nursery rhyme-esque epics as The Logical Song, Breakfast In America and Take The Long Way Home were rendered small, despite the big setting, despite Hodgson's unchanged voice and despite the admirably literal dedication of Dreamer to "all the dreamers". You could almost feel the moment slipping away ...

Roger Hodgson
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore, SW7 2AP

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