Live in Paris '79
Video by Supertramp
Released	2012
Recorded	1 December 1979
Venue	Pavillon de Paris, Paris, France
Genre	Progressive rock, pop rock, art rock
Length	94:44
Label	Eagle Rock Entertainment
Producer	Peter Henderson, Russel Pope, Peter Clifton

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic

Paris is a live album by the English rock band Supertramp, released in 1980. It was recorded on Supertramp's Breakfast in America tour in Paris, France, with most of the tracks taken from a 29 November 1979 show at the Pavillon de Paris, a venue which was once a slaughterhouse. The album was originally going to be called Roadworks.Paris reached number 8 on the Billboard 200 in late 1980 and went Gold immediately, while the live version of "Dreamer" hit the US Top 20.

According to Roger Hodgson, Supertramp had several reasons to record a live album at the time, including a desire to introduce their pre-Breakfast in America works to USA listeners and a mutual sentiment that some of their songs were pulled off better live than in the studio. However, he admits that the chief purpose of the album was to buy time; the band was under pressure to produce a suitable follow-up to the immense success of Breakfast in America, and needed to get off the treadmill of touring and recording for a while in order to consider their direction for such an album. Taking such a breather meant the next studio album wouldn't be finished until 1981 at the earliest, and so something was needed "to fill the gap."

Using the band's mobile studio, a number of shows in Canada and throughout Europe were recorded. However, when Pete Henderson and Russel Pope presented the band with unlabeled cassettes containing rough mixes of these recordings, and the members voted on their favourite tracks, the majority of votes coincidentally fell on recordings from the 29 November show at the Pavilion. A few tracks were taken from other concerts during the band's stay in Paris, and studio overdubs were also added, chiefly for the vocals and John Helliwell's organ. However, Helliwell contended that the amount of overdubbing was minimal compared to most live albums of the time: "A lot of people, when they make a live album, just keep the drums and bass and redo everything else." Filmmaker Peter Clifton shot the concerts in 16 mm film, missing only five songs ("A Soapbox Opera", "You Started Laughing", "From Now On", "Ain't Nobody But Me" and "Downstream") to lower expenses and give the camera crew some rest. A&M Records requested music videos out of three songs, “Dreamer”, “The Logical Song” and “Asylum”. Clifton edited them along with Sarah Legon, and even extended his work to ten songs. However, the studio never sent an approval, so Clifton retreated back to his Sydney home and brought the negatives along to Australia.

...
Wikipedia