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Tag: Gerry Rafferty

  • The Version Everybody Knows: A rant about music discovery in the streaming era.

    The Version Everybody Knows: A rant about music discovery in the streaming era.

    A while back, I was looking for an alternate version of Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309/Jenny” that appeared in Rock Band 3, but every time I tried to look for this version, it kept giving me the original version from 1981’s Tommy Tutone 2. Even with putting in the album name (Tutone-ality) and “re-record” into my searches, it kept coming back to the original album version and not this unique re-record. That made me sad, because I genuinely want to listen to this version of the song in a way where I don’t have to hear game sounds from Rock Band 3.

    This surprisingly happened a lot with songs in music games. Either the masters were lost to time, or legal issues between the band and record label have necessitated a re-record – similar to the Taylor’s Version fiasco – thus they either got the current lineup in the studio to make a similar-enough sounding version to the original, or they’d opt for a cut from a Live album instead.

    One thing that really irks me about the streaming world of Spotify et al is that if you wanna find a classic rock or pop hit, they’ll just give you the most popular version. Usually that’s the version featured on the original album. Which, hey, if you’re just looking for that song to listen to, that’s great, you’ll be happy, end of story.

    The thing is that it leads to a problem I’ve called The Version Everybody Knows. You hear about a song, you wanna listen to it, places like Spotify or Apple Music give you the original version. But sometimes, especially in the days before the internet, that may not have been the version that was the hit. That isn’t to say the album version wasn’t popular, but it clouds the history of the songs a little.

    For me, I have a softer spot for alternate mixes and radio edits. This was incredibly common in the 1970s, where there would be a song from a hit album of which they’d speed up and edit it down for radio airplay. This continued after the age of album-oriented radio, but usually would be relegated to special remixes and 12” mixes that would be played at clubs. Most of the time they’d play the original song from the album, perhaps cut down so the radio station can get more songs and commercials in.

    YouTube player

    Here’s a few examples. Example one: Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street.” You search for that, you get The Version Everybody Knows from his 1978 album City to City. A smooth, catchy 6 minute jam with that famous Raphael Ravenscroft saxophone lick.

    However, the version that charted in the Billboard Hot 100 was a completely different mix, featured above: It’s a little over 4 minutes, it’s moved up one key, a bridge or two taken out to immediately get to Hugh Burns’ guitar solo. This might sound weird to your ears if you’re used to the album version like I was, but for folks who were around back then when it was new, this is likely the version they remember.

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  • I Bought Some Stuff: Winter 2021-2022 Edition.

    I Bought Some Stuff: Winter 2021-2022 Edition.

    Wow, it’s been… about two and a half years since I’ve done a blog post on the things I’ve bought. For the most part, motivation was the main reason I didn’t make any, but then there was this thing called the COVID-19 pandemic which made me pretty afraid to really go shop and risk getting a life-threatening illness in the process. Thankfully masking up, vaccinations and a general change in my perspective made me a bit more confident to head out again starting in 2021.

    I kinda like doing these posts – previously under the boring, uninspired “Game finds” and the unfortunate initialism of “I Bought Stuff!” – and in spite still of buying things here and there during the pandemic times, I never really compiled enough to make a new post during that time. But I figured with such a hiatus that it would get me the inspiration to write, as well as document some of my hobbies and interests.

    For this article, I chronicled all the times I bought something physical throughout last Winter: December 2021 to March 2022. Of which I’ll talk about my reasons for the purchase and any sort of information I could gleam off the internet or remember from the recesses of my mind.

    While there is some video game talk in this article, they are definitely not the forefront of this article. So if you decide to tune out of me nerding out about old bands and board games from 50+ years ago, I understand, but I do plead for you to stick around regardless.

    But before we get to the nitty-gritty, there’s a handful of things I skipped upon that in hindsight I should’ve grabbed instead:

    • A box copy of The 7th Guest (DOS). The CDs were missing, floppy disks for a bootleg copy of SimCity 2000 were in there instead. Tried to see if the CDs were in the CD section, to no avail. I probably could’ve just bought the box and found a loose CD copy to replace it, which is what I might do from now on if something like this comes up again.
    • Vietcong (PC), a clunky budget shooter made to cash in on the Vietnam War in the early-to-mid 2000s. I was considering this, but then I put it aside and someone else had snagged it not long after me. A shame, I probably would’ve added it to the pile here otherwise.
    • A copy of a VideoNow XP disc featuring The Batman. Youtuber Techmoan had recently covered the VideoNow, a defunct video disc format made by Tiger Electronics, and the XP was the last model Hasbro released before killing the entire product line around 2007. In addition to having viewable TV episodes, XP discs also had interactive Q&A elements. I passed this up because I don’t have any of those players, and finding one in the wild without having to resort to eBay seemed unlikely, so I passed it up for now. (I may buy it again in the near future if it’s still there, so I’m not ruling it out.)

    Now we’ll start with my sole purchase from mid-December 2021, at a nearby thrift store I’ve talked about countless times in this series. Most notably, the time where I had found a dozen old demo discs and some PC games back in 2012. This has always been a reliable place for interesting things, and here was no exception.

    Getting my racing game on.

    $2 each:

    Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (PS1)

    Need for Speed: High Stakes (PS1)

    Rage Racer (PS1)

    I’ve probably mentioned this before, but the original PlayStation was one of those platforms that completely passed me by. Since I was basically a Nintendo diehard in the late 90s, I didn’t get a PS1 until I bought the discount portable PSone in the early 2000s. I’ve been slowly amassing a collection of games to try to right that wrong, and when I saw a bunch of racing games at this one thrift store, I couldn’t resist. Even though I’m not a big racing game aficionado.

    Need for Speed is a franchise that I wish I really got into like some people did. I had played a few from the Street Racing era like Most Wanted from 2005 and Carbon, and the 2010 Hot Pursuit reboot by Criterion that everybody loved that I just didn’t like. But when it comes to the early era of NFS, I’ve played very little. At most maybe a little bit of Need for Speed II on PC years ago. I figured NFSIII was one of the most popular ones of the older games, and I thought it was worth a try. Now to just get used to how these games handle, because they hit a middle ground when it came to racing: Not super arcade-like a Cruis’n, but not a hardcore simulation like Gran Turismo.

    High Stakes is the followup to Hot Pursuit, of which I know very little about. I bet it’s fine for the price I paid. Though honestly I wish I found one of the V-Rally spinoffs instead, which were branded as Need for Speed titles in North America. I’m starting to realize that my knowledge of the pre-Underground days of Need for Speed is very little, and I should probably change that by playing these games a bit more.

    Finally, Rage Racer. The third installment in the long-running Ridge Racer franchise, and this is the one that introduces franchise mascot Reiko Nagase. The Ridge Racer games were another one of those franchises that I never really paid attention to, which is a shame because I’ve heard they’re surprisingly good at being fun racing games without being too simulation-heavy. I don’t know if this installment is well-received or not, but I figure it would make a nice addition to my game collection.

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