1 Thanks for the shout-out for a guy I adored. He was my go to guy for karaoke. Baker Street was my one weekness. RIP, my dear.

2 Weakness, damn smart phone!

3

Baker Street truly was a thing of beauty.

Rest in Peace, Gerry.

4 Shout out?

5

This is dating myself, but I was around when this was played endlessly on the radio, along with AOR favs Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Brown, Springsteen, John Mellancougar, the fucking Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Supertramp, Greg Kihn, Manfred Mann singing Springsteen, Tom Petty and a myriad of other middle of the road pop schlock. I hated it then, I detest it now, when it's become fashionable again. I don't give a fuck if Rafferty just died, it doesn't make Baker St. any less soulless, banal, follow-the-leader bullshit it ever was. Fuck AOR endlessly, even the (marginally) harder rocking stuff like Boston, Journey, Kansasss, Styx, Sammy Hagar etc.

But Gerry Rafferty Baker Street? Let's all give it up for Billy fucking Joel and Al fucking Stewart while we're at it. People like you who bought this shit when it came out are the sheep who made FM radio a desert wasteland of unlistenable shit because you encouraged this kind of crap.

Fuck Gerry Rafferty. Fucking adult contempo like that should have been listened to by old people, not kids driving around in their Trans-Am. But we were forced to listen to it because that's what the programmers of the day told us to like, and if you listened to FM, you heard crap like Gerry Rafferty.

But shame on you for actually purchasing this shit and fuck you for shitting in my hat and expecting me to say "thank you very much, it fits much better".

I did like quite a few bands of the era, and a lot of the bands which were on the radio, however, bands like Queen, Yes, Tull, Steely Dan, Cheap Trick etc. were better than their "hits". Rafferty was not- he was exactly his hits, and that's the entire problem with artists like Gerry Rafferty.

6

On my favorite playlist! Makes me wonder why there wasn't more songs like it...

I'm in the same "space" as you @docweasel BUT I liked this tune! I can like a song dispite the 'artist's' other output... or lack thereof.

7 Huh. Unlike docweasel, I appreciated being able to turn on the radio and hear something other than 16-year-olds who got a record deal because of their bodies, despite their complete lack of musical ability.

But I'm old and cranky.

8 And now Docweasel will tell us how he really feels. Nothing like kicking the corpse.

9 Posted by: docweasel at January 05, 2011 04:03 AM (pyFxp)

That was a pretty dense WOT in the first para .

Do you have a point?

I feel like I should respond but I can't imagine this ending up other than in tears...

10 Congratulations to Rafferty for beating sobriety. And I liked "Stuck in the Middle With You", "Baker Street", not so much.

11 docweasel.  If I may retort.  Ahem.  Fuck Steely Dan. 
That is all.

12 Oh, and I saw Jethro Tull in concert. Tragic.

13 Where can I buy docweasal's CD?

14 So Docweasel doesn't like any of this music. Well well well. It sure beats the ever living shit out of the utter crap that is being spewed forth today.

I have never been a big fan of Gerry Rafferty's stuff but I could listen to it. I have one album of his that my wife purchased.

RIP Gerry

15 OT WOW on Fox Now

The portion of the spending bill that prohibited spending money on moving prisoners from GITMO to the US for trial. Obama signed the bill with one of those "signing statements" that they excoriated Bush for, that said he would ignore the GITMO prohibition!

This is NOT an "interpretation" folks. He says he will totally ignore and outright prohibition from Congress. 

Another one for the whatif book.

16 oops wrong thread

17 Hey Docweasel, Thank you for a Tourette's filled rant perpetrated by a no talent gerbil stuffer - such as yourself ...Maybe you can expound on the virtues of
chowing on a hefty bowl of Froot Loops while reminiscing about Capitan Kangaroo's abuse of Moose puppets and that theory you have of why Grandfather clock always had a scared look on his face...

18

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19 OK, show of hands.  How many people thought of Michael Madsen in "Reservior Dogs" torturing a cop while he dances to "Stuck in the Middle with You?"

I know I do every time.

20 @20 - I think of orgy's...

21 6- is it placebo day already? Damn...

22 I think docWeasel kicks his dog first thing in the morning ~

23
after a long bout with alcoholism

I think that's called The AoSHQ Lifestyle.

docweasel: sometimes, ya just gotta know when to click over to the next article instead of hitting "post". Of course, I believe that's also part of The AoSHQ Lifestyle.

24

I have concluded that being a celebrity is hazardous to your health.  Few of these people live well into their old age.

Interesting/annoying that so many of them preach to us lower life forms about our lifestyles.

25 I still catch Baker Street on the radio nowadays.  Most people are familiar with the song even if they don't know who played it.

26 Docweasel likes Cheap Trick but really, really hates Rafferty and the Eagles?  Oookay.

27 I didn't say I "liked" cheap trick. I named them as one of the bands who were better than their hits.

I prefer ass swords

28 Docweasel, you're wrong.  And kind of an ass too.

29

I always liked Gerry's stuff - not just the hits - though I will never forgive Sheryl Crow for stealing the riff from "Stuck in the Middle with You" for "All I Wanna Do" - trust me, she STOLE it.

RIP.

 

30 Docweasel seems to forget that 1978 was dominated by the likes of Donna Summers, KC and the Sunshine Band, Bee Gees, Barry Manilow, etc. etc. Ugh. I'll take "Baker Street..." stuck in my head until 1982 over all or any of that pant stuffing, disco dreck. C'mon docweasel, put on your Travolta suit and show us your Airplane Bar scene impression. Liking disco puts you lower on the evolutionary scale than being a progressive dem-O-crap.

31 Didn't Doc have an eight-track player in his Trans Am?

32 A little trivia about that Stealers Wheel video, Gerry Rafferty sang on the record but he left the band before they made the video, so that's not him singing on the video.

33 It's Joe Egan, the co-founder of Stealers Wheel, in the video.

34 Yeah, Rafferty was just like Hannah Montana. (Roll eyes)

35 Baker Street banal and souless? That's a laugh. Also, Baker Street will probably go down as one of the top songs of the 20th century.

36

Gerry lasted about 10 years longer than I did so there's that... and to Docweasel,

     With all due respect: You're breaking my heart - you're tearing it apart - so fuck you

37 Hey, they call him "doc weasel" not "doc cool guy."

38 I completely understand what doc is saying.  Baker Street didn't bother me, but I would never risk breaking my neck rushing to buy it (like I did the Ramones, Iggy Pop, Stranglers and Devo).  By the late 70's all the mainstream bands sounded too similar, too corporate, too contrived.  Just my opinion (and, I guess, doc's too).

39 well glad to see the opinions are completely monolithic. My opinion is not completely uninformed: I was in a band signed to a small indy label in '84, put out 4 CDs, toured Europe and S. America. I invested the admittedly modest amount of money I made during those years and built my own 24 track studio and produced and recorded (and played keys, bass, guitar, programmed drums and did vocal work on, when required) literally 100s of bands. You develop an ear recording and mixing thousands of hours of studio work. I know music history, theory, composition and I've also taught both guitar and piano.

Later I actually got paid for record and live band reviews for local rock mags (in the heyday of the Tampa music scene there were 4- I think only Creative Loafing, now a corporate tool, remains). I played in a band appearing in the SXSE music conference every year it was in existence, competing with hundreds of other Tampa bands for a couple dozen slots. I've played in area bands playing everything from alternative to power-trio instrumental along the lines of Joe Satriani to country to heavy metal to standards.

The Tampa music scene pretty much blows these days, kids don't care about live music so it's dying. I have 2 young children (16 months and 5yrs) so my days of playing in bars is over, and I'm good with that. I play one corporate gig, playing as a Tampa Bay Buc's "gate" band (we play inside one of the gates 90 mins before kick-off for all home games) and that's all I do live nowadays. I can also mention that this is a coveted gig and a thousand other bands, local and otherwise, would like to have it, but we auditioned and we got one of the slots several years ago. We played our last for the year last week.

I haven't done a great deal of online music reviews, for the simple reason there's no money in it. But I'm not a complete naif when it comes to music and music criticism.

I know the common trope is "well, everyone has an opinion, and no one's opinion is more valid than anyone else's" but that's shite. I have an opinion about brain surgery too, and how to best build a hydro-electric dam, but that opinion isn't worth a damn, because I'm not educated in those fields.

Here's one of the few online reviews I've done, it's a free one, so feel free to slag it.

I've done about 100 highly rated tabs and chord charts for that site as well, back in 2004-2005. I don't go there anymore, I'm busy.

and an old live review I did for the docweasel site

(it's a group effort of dozens of people over the years, I am not the definitive "docweasel", just one of many writers and artists and bloggers who use the name and the site)

So I do know what I'm talking about. Late 70's-80's radio was dominated by banal AOR garbage, and really edgy and cutting edge bands were ignored. If you listened to Gerry Rafferty, more power to you. But you have no taste and you're a fucking member of the herd. Radio programmers were (and are) scum who, in collusion with the record companies, sold the public a bill of goods, and Gerry Rafferty is part of that disease. So when I see some ignorant fuck lauding this shit, I speak up. It's something I care about.

So throw your stones, the critic keeps the world honest and attempts to maintain a level of quality in art and music. He is hated by the hoi-polloi, but that is the price of speaking the truth: some people are going to hate you for it.

And spare me reviews from other critics saying Rafferty is Jesus Christ of musical genius. There are motivations beyond your ken about why corporate reviewers give something a great review, be it movies, music, art, teevee, etc. Case in point: Roger Ebert. 'nuff said.

40 docweasel: I listened to Gerry Rafferty's City to City and Night Owl on 8 track when I was a little kid. I have tremendously fond memories of those 2 albums. So, um... FUCK YOU and your criticism. And FUCK STEELY DAN. Proof your are a hack. Have a nice day.

41 Hmm...without wanting to debate docweasel's obvious distaste for 70s and 80s AOR music I would be curious:

What do you (docweasel) think of today's popular music (that you hear on the AOR equivalent radio stations of today)?    To me, the pop music of today, whatever one might say about the 70s and 80s equivalent, is much, much worse for all of the reasons you have already enunciated, taken to a much further degree.

It's kind of like how the Bush haters always point to the deficit he created as one of the many reasons for their disdain, but forget to mention that Obama has quandrupled the deficit from the point when Bush left office as his supposed "solution."

Anyway, just curious...

42 Doc, hate to break it to you, but punk is just pop music packaged in a different way, in fact, most punk was much more pop than Baker Street. You can tell yourself that punk wasn't mainstream but it was and still is. There's good music and there's bad music, but this constant harping about some bands being mainstream and others not is nothing but a marketing tool.

43

So I do know what I'm talking about. Late 70's-80's radio was dominated by banal AOR garbage, and really edgy and cutting edge bands were ignored. If you listened to Gerry Rafferty, more power to you. But you have no taste and you're a fucking member of the herd. Radio programmers were (and are) scum who, in collusion with the record companies, sold the public a bill of goods, and Gerry Rafferty is part of that disease. So when I see some ignorant fuck lauding this shit, I speak up. It's something I care about.

Congratulations and shit on being able to make a bit of a living in the music business for a while, which is more than most musicians are able to do.  But you're still wrong.  Your Jeff Beck reviews show that you do have the ability to talk about what's interesting or not about a piece of music -- but in this case, merely shitting on a piece of work, saying that it sucks because its appeal is mainstream rather than "edgy," and gratuitously insulting anyone who finds it pleasing rather than whatever you think is more deserving, is not criticism.  It's merely adolescent Spin magazine / college-radio snobbery.

Yes, "Baker Street" was played to fucking death for a few years.  That's because it was a catchy song that people really liked, with two great hooks (the sax riff and the chorus), some cool chord progressions that were well above "banal," a great conga part, and a guitar solo that, while far from technically difficult or musically complicated, could still be hummed from memory by millions of people who haven't heard it in 30 years.  That right there is a great piece of pop.  It happened to suffer from overexposure, but that doesn't take away that it was a very appealing song.

Personally, I like tunes like "The Ark" and "Whatever's Written In Your Heart" from that album more, probably because of the overexposure of "Baker Street" and "Right Down the Line."

I didn't know he'd been drinking himself to death for the past 25 years or so.  The recent story about a trashed hotel room was pretty shocking to read.

44 So, doc, I can assume then the Partridge Family would be found in your "no" column.

45 Hey Doc , your resume is unimpressive and so is your partisan taste in music...
I think you woke up this morning and had to BITCH about sumpton...
So you took it out on the Dead Guy !

46 The ability of people to make assumptions is awesome. Where do I say I like Steely Dan or punk rock? For the record, at the time I thought there was a lot more energy and entertainment value in punk than in arena rock, but I didn't exactly listen to punk, and I don't think I ever bought a punk album. Hilarious to hear people defend mainstream 80's AOR radio though. That shit sucked.

47 Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty were a duo known as "Steeler's Wheel" when they penned this Dylanesque pop bubblegum favorite that reached #6 in 1973.

48

Poor doc weasel.  Nobody knows who you are or how aparently little talent you have. 

 

33 years later and I can stop someone on the street and tell them I'm gonna give up the booze and the one night stands and they will know what I am talking about.  They will smile.  They will remember.  Why would you want to take that away simply because you spent 30 years trying to be catchy yet failed.

 

RIP Gerry.  Thanks for making me smile.

 

Some people have talent and some people don't.  Get over it. 

 

Cheers to your kids ~ Third lamb from the left.

49 Well there you have it Doc. It ain't about the music, it's about the memories. And for a lot of these folks, the one about the booze and the one-night stands was "our song." At the Prom.

I got out of the children's-entertainment business just about when you went into it. Having learned more than I ever wanted to know of the audience, it no longer meant much to have them looking up at me.

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51 christopher hitchens et al et al et al would never ever had insisted that we make our these changes to our precious rip Gerry ..........

still and even more senior and still and now even more and more and more and cranky  AND remember what every normal la la man woe man said there comes a point when we simply have to spit on our hands, take everything out and start slitting throats (and our your precious johnny depp, helena bonham carter, geoffrey rush, colin firth, gerald butler, all bros and sisses all and JD and JF certainly knows how to spit on our hands, take everything OUT and START SLITTING THROATS AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN (EXCEPT WHEN NIM, JF, AKA ALEX RED ROVER THEE GIVES ME A PAIN IN THEE NECK AND LOWER DOWN ARE IN TOWN AND THEN JD GUARD EVERYTHING YOU DARE TO TAKE OUT BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT LEAVE  Not Him but N I M  ISLAND WITH & OUT & In & ON AND ON WE GO).

RIP notre gerry rafferty who is now safely dis lodged from / in / out / of / line/ order all bury the fucking baker streets and take those brutal butchers with us / all (we will see you sweet sweet boy on all those fucking streets as hitch allows us to stop and draw up our trousers but never to drop them again unless GERRY RAFFERTY is with us all one sweet time again chez sweet sweet adelaide .....

52 no more comments from me ever ever again unless you pay all of us very very well bonne bonne nuit (and we beat those un not so sweet russian bottoms when next we meet. GO CANADA GO) - Hitch where were you during the third period . out to lunch perhaps, our dear dear Hitch Christ o phere atmosphere 1 of 4 trillion horse woe man right this very minute (check it out hitch, pull yourself together, get a grip, come back to sweet adelaide to stay this time and give us back our gold medallion......even if we DO NOT DESERVE IT we have had enough suffering since the dying moments of that third period. check it out, check it, check, check ing fuck ing out of my mind/s

53

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