Home and dry (Gerry Rafferty) (LP 3588 - 3590)

Gerry Rafferty  City To City (CD, United Artists Records, 1978) ****  

Gerry Rafferty  Night Owl (Vinyl, United Artists Records, 1979) ****

Gerry Rafferty  Snakes and Ladders (Vinyl, United Artists Records, 1980) ***

Genre: Pop 

Places I remember: Vinyl Countdown, Spellbound Wax Company

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Baker Street (City to City)

Gear costume: Right Down the Line (City to City); Get it Right Next Time (Night Owl); The Royal Mile (Snakes & Ladders)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5

Active compensatory factors: I've written about Gerry's work with Stealers Wheel before (here and here), now it's time for the solo albums.

City to City contains the peerless Baker Street. It still sounds amazing all these years and radio plays later. Gerry's talent is all over this album - his wonderful vocals, his guitar prowess, and his knack for catchy pop hooks are world class.

Night Owl might even be better than City to City. He was in a purple patch in the late seventies. By the eighties though he was starting to run out of steam.

Snakes & Ladders (with another great cover) starts off well with The Royal Mile (Sweet Darlin') but then doesn't quite match that quality throughout the rest of the album. It's still good, just not as great as the previous two albums. And - that voice!! 

Where do they all belong? I need to find more of his albums - Can I Have My Money Back? was his debut before Stealers Wheel kicked off with their chart success.

Stop press! Since writing this post, I managed to find a copy of Can I Have My Money Back? at a record store in Palmerston North. It will come up later in the countdown.