Ye Olde Hit Parade: Baker Street

In case you haven't noticed (and you probably haven't, because I don't think anyone reads this blog anymore), I've been trying to write something every day. Last night, the family and I were partaking in Saturday Night Dominoes, which we've been doing since the lockdown began in mid-March. I've been soundtracking these by playing my old KUMAR 50 Spotify playlist (which I put together for my 50th birthday party a few years ago) and last night a few songs came up that I remarked were my favorite songs of the year they came out.

Which made me think it would be fun to compile a list of my favorite songs of every year; I'm starting with 1978 because that was the year I really started paying attention to music. This isn't a list of the songs I've gotten into years after the fact, but rather the songs I really dug at the time. This is strictly subjective based on my memories, however sketchy, of the year in question. So without further ado, let's get going.

1978: Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street

This song was all over the radio in 1978. At the time, I was mainly listening to Toronto's 1050 CHUM-AM, which was a pretty great station (the FM rock stations were playing album sides and stuff I hadn't really discovered yet). It played songs from all genres of pop music, so you could hear anything from Zeppelin and the Stones to Canadian acts like Rush and Max Webster to the Bee Gees, the Commodores and Donna Summer to, well, Gerry Rafferty. He had been in Stealers Wheel, which had a big hit a few years earlier with "Stuck In The Middle With You," but I had no idea about any of that at the time.


Apparently, legal problems that arose after Stealers Wheel broke up left him unable to release any music for three years. "Baker Street" was the first single from his album City to City and was released in early February 1978. I don't remember when I first heard it, but it didn't pick up steam until the late spring/early summer, when radio picked it up and played it like crazy.



This was the summer after 5th grade for me, so I was 10. We were living in Pickering, Ontario, a suburb to the east of Toronto, and life was good. Much of my summer was spent going to a day camp in Pickering. I'd get on a bus in the morning around 8 and spend the entire day doing camp activities (crafts, sports, games, whatever) before coming home around 3:30-4. You don't see too much of it these days, but back in the '70s, it was a good way for working parents to keep their kids occupied in the summertime. My little brother was 6 at the time so I'm guessing he was too young for camp and was probably with a babysitter.

Anyway, "Baker Street" had that smooth AM Gold sound of the '70s, but it stood out thanks to a catchy sax riff that propelled it like a goddamn swooping eagle, as well as a terrific guitar solo. I never owned the song, but back then I wasn't buying much music, just waiting for it to come back on the radio in a few hours. And it sure did. It was definitely the song of the summer. Disco was also in full effect at this time, so there was plenty of Saturday Night Fever stuff going on, but this one stuck out for me.

Years later (like 20 years later), I bought the CD of the album, partially because the Foo Fighters had covered it and reminded me that I liked the original better.

Rafferty had a few other radio hits off City to City, including the great "Right Down the Line," but I don't really remember hearing much from him in the subsequent years...until the movie Reservoir Dogs came out in the early '90s and Quentin Tarantino used "Stuck In The Middle With You" in that infamous scene with Michael Madsen.

One of my favorite things about listening to music is how it can transport you back to a certain time or place, and when I hear "Baker Street," I go back to that summer of '78 and how I really didn't have a care in the world. It was just summer camp, hanging with my friends, riding my bike and scraping up enough spare change to get some comic books or baseball cards.

Honorable mentions: Frankie Valli - "Grease"; Andy Gibb - "Shadow Dancing": Bee Gees - "Stayin' Alive"; Bee Gees - "Night Fever"; Meat Loaf - "Paradise By the Dashboard Light"; Village People - "YMCA."