My Music Memories : Baker Street - Gary Rafferty

 

I don't know much about Gary Rafferty, for me, his hit Baker Street was just a 1 hit wonder, like so many others. 

Baker Street is a song that is sweet and sour at the same time. 
Softly sang by Gary, but the raw sax and furious violins give the listener a slap in the face before he could take a nap. 

On top of this, all the guitar solo battling the sax is magnificent. 

The song Bakerstreet came from his album "City to City" and especially for this post I listened to other songs and checked some background info about Gary Rafferty. 
Seems his drinking problem got him in the end, 
after releasing 9 albums.  

Maybe you know Gerry Rafferty also from him previous band Steeler Wheel "Stuck In The Middle With You", before he went solo. 
Anyway, I listen to "City to City", "Night Owl" and "Snakes and Ladders" and it was really ear-candy for me. 

Very smooth with enough moments to keep you awake.  
It's pop music with a capital P at its best. 

I want to call it Lounge-Pop music. So if you are still interested, go to YouTube or AllMusic and start your own Gerry Rafferty adventure.

 
Years later the group Undercover added a simple housebeat to the song and scored a hit.

While listening I found a lost Gary Rafferty classic "Get It Right Next Time" I remember vague on Night Owl

And a lovely ballad Right Done The Line also from City to City.

Note: Baker Street sounds a bit like The Year of the Cat of Al Stewart only more aggressive by the saxophone riff, did you find the resemblances between the 2 songs?

Auf Wiedersehen Monty (TnC Gamemusic Collection)

In my opinion is the title music of the MSX-1 game "Auf Wiedersehen Monty ",
one of the best PSG songs I ever heard. Great bassline, steady ritmes and a melody with some of the highest notes I ever heard the in-game music.  Still the original music was made for Commodore 64 and the MSX version was not more than a remake of the ZX Spectrum conversion of the original C64 game.

While I was searching on YouTube I found the Auf Wiedersehen Monty game was released for at least 8 different microcomputers including, for example, Amiga 500 and Atari ST ! With great disappointment, I must say the best title music was made for the original game on C64. Still, the MSX/ZX Spectrum version is very enjoyable although it is just the standard 3 PSG voices, melody, bass and drums.
The composers of the C64 are Ron Hubbard and Ben Anglish, however, the MSX version gave al the music credits to Ben. Both are famous in the C64 scene as SID music format composers,  the non-official standard music-format tor chiptunes.

Okay now back to the MSX part of this post. Auf Wiedersehen Monty was just 1 of the few European game-music titles that were remade on an MSX-computer itself (of course also some Konami, XAK, Aleste and other Japenese stuff). I found 2 different MSX remakes, 1 from FAC and 1 from Airborne, lucky for me FRANK DEMOS FOR YOU AND ME had already put the whole musicdisks (Synth Power 2 and Fading Away ) on YouTube. So I extracted the remakes from these videos. Then I discovered both MSX composers were lazy and didn't remake the whole song.The FAC compo stops (out of tracks) and the Airborne starts the loop after the 2nd bridge. Also, both have no intro. Despite these facts, I uploaded both versions to show the C64 world that MSX-2 can be much more than just another ZX Spectrum with a better video chip.

I search for the best remixes and this my editor picks:

- Dimitris Kouts 
(interesting choice of instruments, more spooky than the original)

- On Guitar
(it's Solknight remix with Ruvino playing live electric guitar, just the melodies)
- Die Gronkh Version, La La
(this is how the Amiga version should sound, no SID emulation needed)
- Metalmix
 ( by RBT, who that might be, but it's sometime metal, sometimes more rock)

- Oxygener(Ron Hubbard)  

 (early dnb from the master himself, great for halloween)

- makke root down
( rapping, movie samples, hiphop-beats, really an outstanding version)
- Rene-Berti's 
( first it started scary, then it goes to swinging big band music, amazing )
- MIDIbox SID
(it sounds like the C64 SID version, but with lots of effects it sounds fresh again)

Jeroen Tel suprised me with a live mix at Assembly 2012 including only remixes of famous computergames, like...Auf Wiedersehen Monty, featuring Ben Anglish on freestyle flute!

And I made me think back to a message I send to some MSX-BBS for help organizing The MSX GOES HOUSE project for some MSX House parties (like this at Assembly 2012).
I will tell you more about this in another post soon.