HE'S GOT A DREAM ABOUT BUYIN' SOME LAND

Okay -- there's nothing wrong with this song that having heard it half as many times as I did wouldn't have cured.  I actually liked it, and still do -- but when it was first out, I heard it so often that as soon as I heard that jazzy analog keyboard riff at the beginning, I started cringing like someone was going to switch the backs of my legs.

Here's some funny shit:

Gerry Rafferty was a member of Stealers Wheel.  You remember -- Stuck In The Middle With You.

Okay, here's a good one.  It seems that back when this song was released, people really weren't into keyboard pop all that much.  No, what they were really into was DISCO.   I know -- can you believe it? 

Well, anyway, enough people believed in the possibilities of Baker Street and Gerry Rafferty that the song was released here in the U.S., and got some airplay.  However, most Yank stations -- and, apparently, Canadian ones too -- were pushing the speeds on songs like this to make them palatable to the skanked-out coke-junkies who actually bought the tires and clothing and anti-constipation aids that the advertisers were selling. 

I think it may also have had to do with the fact that the faster the songs were played, the more commercial revenue the station could collect without cutting back on the gross number of songs it played.   Apparently, this was most obvious when a best-of collection of Rafferty's songs (i.e., Baker Street and Right Down The Line) was released and people could hear what the song actually sounded like.  It's not the only song this is obvious on, of course.  Listen to one of your KKKlassic Rokkk stations some time -- keep an ear out for early Van Halen songs.  It's really easy to tell when you've got a Clear Channel station, because those a**holes know no shame when it comes to destroying the songs for the sake of commercial revenue by speeding them up until David Lee Roth (the king of testosterone) sounds like freaking Debbie Gibson or Alvin the chipmunk. 

The recent cover of this song by Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters gave me definitive proof that Dave Grohl really does have a strange -- but pretty cool -- sense of humor.  Well, except for that line they changed from 'give up the booze and the one-night stands' to 'give up the crack and the one-night stands,' which caused a fluff with radio stations that otherwise would have been more than happy to play a Foo Fighters song for their target audience of 11-year-old boys.  It was edited so they could play it, but now the lyric sounds like 'give up the zzhrmb and the one-night stands.'

I don't miss the sax solo on the Foo Fighters version, though I had assumed I would.