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How Good Are the Domestic Originals of City to City Cut by Artisan?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Gerry Rafferty Available Now

The original domestic pressings may be cut by Artisan, but they are brighter and dramatically more congested and distorted than the better UK imports, and should be avoided at any price.

They are clearly made from dubbed tapes, and there is no getting around what that does to the sound.

However, as good a cutting house as Artisan may be, it’s shocking how bad the sound is on most of the domestic copies of the album they mastered.

Atrocious, to be honest.

When it comes to stampers, labels, mastering credits, country of origin and the like, we make a point of rarely revealing any of this information on the site, for a number of good reasons we discuss in some depth here.

We will happily make an exception in this case. Stick with UK imports. Or buy a Hot Stamper pressing from us.

If you’re a Gerry Rafferty fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-70s British folk pop, this title, a personal favorite of mine since 1978, is surely a Must Own.

In our opinion, City to City is the man’s best sounding album, and probably the only Gerry Rafferty record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.

The sound, at least on some tracks, Baker Street amoung them, may be too heavily processed for some, making the album fairly difficult to reproduce, but the best sounding pressings — played at good, loud levels on big dynamic speakers in a large, heavily-treated room, as god intended — are a truly powerful listening experience.

1978 was a good year for music on vinyl — we have some excellent pressings of well-recorded albums available now for those who want the best and are willing to pay a premium price to get it.

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City To City on Gold CD

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The DCC gold CD sounds very respectable; Hoffman did his usual excellent job.

But it’s still a CD, and no CD has the kind of warmth, sweetness and Tubey Magic that can be found on a properly-mastered and -pressed LP.

As we’ve noted in our listings, “Here you will find the kind of rich, sweet, classically British Tubey Magical sound that we cannot get enough of here at Better Records.”

A list of Must Own rock and pop albums from 1977 would have to have this album on it, somethere near the top I would think.

In our opinion, City to City is Rafferty’s best sounding album, and probably the only Rafferty solo release you’ll ever need.

Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.

Night Owl (1979), Snakes and Ladders (1980) and Can I Have My Money Back (1971) strike us as weak albums, strictly for hardcore fans.

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Gerry Rafferty – City To City

More Gerry Rafferty

  • This early British pressing boasts a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • City To City is a Must Own album – no right-thinking audiophile can fail to be impressed by the songwriting and production of Rafferty’s masterpiece of British Folk Pop
  • You won’t believe how rich, Tubey Magical, big, undistorted and present this copy is (until you play it anyway)
  • If all you know are audiophile or domestic pressings, you should be prepared for a mind-blowing experience with this UK pressing
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Rafferty’s turns of phrase and tight composition skills create a fresh sound and perspective all his own… resulting in a classic platter buoyed by many moments of sheer genius.”
  • A list of Must Own rock and pop from 1977 would have to have this album on it, somethere near the top I would think
  • In our opinion, City to City is Rafferty’s best sounding album, and probably the only Rafferty solo release you’ll ever need.
  • Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done. Night Owl (1979), Snakes and Ladders (1980) and Can I Have My Money Back (1971) strike us as weak albums, strictly for hardcore fans.

Here you will find the kind of rich, sweet, classically British Tubey Magical sound that we cannot get enough of here at Better Records. (more…)

City to City – Check Out the Huge Chorus of The Ark

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Albums with Huge Choruses

Listen to the chorus on the first track, The Ark. On the best copies, it really gets loud without becoming harsh or shrill. So many popular albums have choruses (and guitar solos) that are not much louder, and sometimes not even as loud, as the verses, which rob the songs of their drama.

This recording has the potential to give you a dramatic, powerful, loud chorus and it’s a thrill when you find a pressing that delivers on that promise.

One way we know to listen for these volume changes is that we actually play our records good and loud. When a dynamic recording such as this comes along, we have to watch our levels, otherwise, the chorus will overwhelm the system and room.

When playing this copy, be sure to set the level for the chorus of the first track. Everything should play just fine once that setting is correct, as the artist intended.

The double-tracked vocals on Whatever’s Written in Your Heart are a good test for transparency, resolution and Tubey Magic. There should clearly be two voices heard. The richness and the clarity of the best pressings make it possible to have it all.

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City to City Is a Disaster on Simply Vinyl (and I Used to Sell It)

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Sonic Grade: F

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Simply Vinyl pressing debunked.

We had two copies of the Heavy Simply Vinyl pressing to audition as part of our big shootout from many years ago.

We actually used to like it, but it now sounds worse than we remember, especially in the low end, which is a blurry mess.

Better than any domestic copy I suppose, but that’s not really saying much, since those are terrible. 

Rolling Stone Rave Review

Even in his mother’s womb, Gerry Rafferty must have expected the worst. This Scotsman entitled his melancholy 1971 solo album Can I Have My Money Back? (the answer was “No!”). And when Stealers Wheel, the group he subsequently formed with Joe Egan, became an overnight success with the hit single “Stuck in the Middle with You,” only to lapse into morning-after obscurity, he probably said, “I told you so.” On City to City, his first LP in three years, Rafferty sticks grimly to his guns. Not only does he use the same producer (Hugh Murphy) and several of the same musicians, but a similar un-self-pitying fatalism pervades the record.

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City To City – MoFi Reviewed

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Sonic Grade: F

A hall of shame pressing and another MoFi LP reviewed and found seriously wanting.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a complete disaster — it’s fat, muddy and compressed. It was mastered by Jack Hunt, a man we know to be responsible for some of the thickest, dullest, deadest MoFi recuts throughout their shameful catalog.

With mastering credits on this album, Michael McDonald (149) and Blondie (050), you have to wonder how this guy kept getting work.

Further Reading

City to City – Our 2012 Four Plus Mindblowing Shootout Winner

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In 2012 we wrote:

This Gerry Rafferty White Hot Stamper LP has the best side one we’ve ever heard. So good in fact that we had to go above and beyond our usual top grade of three pluses and award this amazing copy a huge A++++!

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that unexpectedly revealed to us sound of such high quality that it changed our understanding and appreciation of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “who knew?” Perhaps a better question would have been “how high is up?”

It’s guaranteed to put to shame any UK import you may have. Since those are the only pressings with any hope of sounding good, it simply means that we are very confident in the sound of this copy.

The original domestic pressings may be cut by Artisan, but they are brighter and dramatically more congested and distorted than the better UK imports, and should be avoided at any price.

We award this copy’s side one our very special Four Plus grade, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a recording to a level never experienced by us before, a level we had no idea could even exist. We estimate that less than one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade. You can’t get much more rare than that.

This side one gets everything right — it’s open, transparent, rich, full, tubey and sweet. It has a wonderfully extended top end and presence that’s off the charts.

This side is As Good As It Gets (AGAIG), folks.

Side two is a step down but still sounds great. It’s smooth and rich with lovely clear vocals. If you kick the volume up a bit it starts to sound even better.

In addition, we are especially delighted to report that not only is the sound better than ever, the music is too. The album as a whole, unlike so much of what came out in 1978 (Do Ya Thnk I’m Sexy asks Rod Stewart, followed by stony silence) does not seem to have dated in the least, with the possible exception of the big hit Baker Street, which is arguably somewhat over the top but still works for what it is — a radio-friendly folk pop song with a compelling narrative.

Surprisingly, the same is true for most of the British early pressings we had acquired over the last year or so (at significant expense I might add). Most of them simply have no top end to speak of whatsoever. The bells at the beginning of Baker Street sound like somebody in the studio must have thrown a blanket over them.

We were forced to narrow the pool of good sounding candidates quite significantly from those that we had hopes for. The DCC gold CD sounds very respectable; Hoffman did his usual excellent job.

But it’s still a CD, and no CD has the kind of warmth, sweetness and Tubey Magical qualities that can be found on a properly mastered and pressed LP. Which is of course where we come in.

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