Customer Reviews

One More Dream: Very Best of

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a fan of good music (we all are) then i advise you buy this CD coz its fantastic. Gerry Rafferty is completely unique and aswell as his well-known hits such as Baker Street and Right Down The Line there are some excellent songs on the CD. Moonlight and Gold is a song that can only be described as "perfection." Modern version of Stuck in The Middle With You does the original justice also. BUY IT!

If you are a fan of good music (we all are) then i advise you buy this CD coz its fantastic. Gerry Rafferty is completely unique and aswell as his well-known hits such as Baker Street and Right Down The Line there are some excellent songs on the CD. Moonlight and Gold is a song that can only be described as "Beautifully Perfect". Modern version of Stuck in The Middle With You does the original justice also. BUY IT!

For any fan of Gerry Rafferty, this album will be a delight. It includes a great mix of several albums and I really enjoyed what songs were selected for this release. For anyone who is not familiar with Gerry's music, I would HIGHLY recommend that you purchase this album to get the best flavor of what Gerry has to offer. This is what I would call a "mellow" and at times "upbeat" type of album. This is an album I would select when taking a long drive on a summer day for several hours and you want to listen to some music that would enhance the experience. This album would be that album. Anyone who purchases this album will be thrilled. Enjoy! Thanks Gerry for producing the greatest music of the modern age!

Aside from the songs most of us love from Gerry Rafferty there are several great songs I personally have never heard before. However, most of the songs seem to be re-engineered in mono, plus all are muffled and unclear. There is no soundstage or ambience. Most of the album would sound the same comming from a four inch speaker or large Martin Logans.
I have other CD's from this era which when pumped through my Sonic Frontier tube pre-amp,Conrad Johnson Premier 12 tube amps and sound produced from the Martin Logans put you in the room with the ability to place the musicians around the stage. Just a bad job done to a great recording artist.

I have always liked this man's recordings and was so sorry to hear he passed away. Had to have this in his memory and was not disappointed.

"One More Dream" is a solid collection of Gerry Rafferty's output, catching most of the highlights of his late 70's/early 80's work. His biggest singles are here ("Baker Street", "Days Gone Down", "Get It Right Next Time", and "Right Down The Line") in their album versions.

Inexplicably, however, the set is missing another charting single, "Home And Dry". This cut is from Rafferty's "City To City" album, which is on Capitol Records, the only LP he released on that label. I'd be tempted to think there were licensing issues with this song, but "Baker Street" and "Right Down The Line" are from the same album, so the omission of "Home And Dry" is odd. That song is missing from every other Rafferty compilation I'm aware of, so if you want it, you'll likely need to spring for "City To City".

Other than the missing "Home And Dry", the only other notable MIA cut is "The Royal Mile", a 1980 song that hit the bottom half of the charts, and will not likely be missed by most casual fans.

All in all, "One More Dream" is a solid summary of Gerry Rafferty's highlights, and demonstrates his generous melodic gifts. His music may not appeal to those who dislike slick pop, but, for many others, these songs defined the sound of the late 1970's, and are indispensable. Definitely recommended.

I got this CD for some songs I had on LP's I don't like all the songs,some I don't know,but I do like the ones I do know.For the price it's not bad.

My comments regard only the song "Baker Street" from this record.
Of course I love Baker Street. There is a lot going on in that track, sophisticated and excellent. Comparing it with the (obscenely bad) Foo Fighters cover shows both the weaknesses of the Fighters' arrangement as well as the talent, polish, intelligence, and diligence of Rafferty's producer.

I personally don't like solo sax much and so it doesn't touch me as much as it seems to touch others, but even so I can see that the sax intro and other sax parts are electrifying. I respect this production choice because for so many people the sax is the only part of the song they identify and according to some reviews the sax bought most of that copious radio air-time in 1978. On the other hand, it's a shame to see this overstated sound overshadow the rest of the beautiful song in peoples' minds.

The swooping guitars are awesome and yet subtle and fill a crucial spot in the intro melody. The guitar solo is masterful. Much of the time in the solo is taken up with only a few sustained and repeated notes and the bulk of the solo is made up of bends, trills, swoops, dives, and inventive tremelos. Each note of the minimal note count speaks out to us in important ways. It reminds me of lyrics that say volumes with only a few words. It's one of my all time favorite guitar solos.

The two featured analog synthesizer sounds are way cool. The synth during the verse sounds like falling leaves or water. The bass synth sound that counterpoints the vocal during the chorous, again, is inventive: an interesting, unusual sound, delightful instrumental melodic counterpoint to the vocal, a melodic sound in this region of the bass territory is also unusual in pop. You usually have the bass drum and the bass guitar in the bass region and that's about it. This synth sound and melody is something like a `cello line, lending an orchestral feel while still using pop instruments.

The lyrics to Baker Street are good, but I wouldn't say great. They give an overall impression of loneliness, futility and yearning for something better in the future. What's there is good but it's not great because the song does not tell a complete story. The "City to City" album from which this song is taken is a concept album and every lyric addresses these issues of loneliness and itinerant living on the road. Considering the entire album's lyrics as a whole pushes them up a notch as ambitious, intelligent, very good, and maybe you could consider the whole as a complete story. They fall short of something blisteringly great like "Eleanor Rigby" (The Beatles) or "She Always a Woman" or "AllenTown" (Billy Joel).

Regarding the Foo Fighters' cover version: The Foo Fighters skip the swooping guitars during the intro melody and you can hear it as dead space, causing a drop in intensity there resulting in an undesirable volume pumping effect. The Fighters copy the guitar solo note for note, what's the point? We've heard that already, and much better, so why bother? Granted I'm not that familiar with post 1989 Pearl Jam clone musical styles so I might be missing something, but to me the Fighters' guitar version of the sax intro melody is just plain wrong. The rhythm is wrong and corny, the accents are in the wrong place, and the guitar sound is so anemic when compared to the sax. Why would a band of the Fighters' stature cover a song anyway? The whole thing is just wrong.