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Gerry Rafferty – Check Out the the Huge Chorus of The Ark

More of the Music of Gerry Rafferty

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 no 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.

This is a rock demo disc of the highest order, but only when it’s playing on big speakers at loud levels. That’s what it takes to get City to City to sound the way we hear it in our shootouts.

Starting in the mid-70s, our reference system had to evolve in order to play the scores of challenging recordings that came out in that decade and the two preceding it. Looking back now, it’s clear that City to City, as well as other large scale works, in any genre, informed not only my taste in music but the actual stereo I play that music on.

I’ve had large scale dynamic speakers for close to five decades, precisely in order to play demanding recordings such as City to City and others like it, music I fell in love with all those years ago, and still enjoy the hell out of to this very day.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

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Gerry Rafferty – City To City

More Gerry Rafferty

More British Folk Rock

  • This early British pressing of Rafferty’s Must-Own Classic boasts an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side two
  • 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
  • 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.”

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…)

Gerry Rafferty – A Simply Vinyl Disaster

More of the Music of Gerry Rafferty

Reviews and Commentaries for City to City

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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Gerry Rafferty / City To City – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Gerry Rafferty

More Reviews and Commentaries for City to City

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.

People sometimes ask us:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one rare exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please consult our FAQs:

More Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

Half-Speed Mastered Disasters

Half-Speed Mastered Mediocrities

Half-Speed Mastered Winners

Half-Speed Masters – The Complete List

New to the site? Start here.

Gerry Rafferty – Our 2012 Four Plus Mindblowing Shootout Winner

More of the Music of Gerry Rafferty

Reviews and Commentaries for City to City

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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