Carpenters: Classic or dud?

If you've never see 'The Karen Carpenter Story' with the Barbie dolls, you haven't lived.

The Sonic Youth cover of 'Superstar' is better than their original version.

My favorite Carpenters cover is American Music Club's "Goodbye to Love." Depending on the song, that tribute record is either right on the money or fucking horrid.

superstar is probably my fave. and i agree with jimmy. i too equate them with abba. there's like a distanced-ness thing going on.

and sonic youth's version of superstar is, indeed, very good.

And it's not a camp thing: I think the problem I had with the Carpenter's tribute from a few years back was how jokey and kitsch some of the songs were treated. It seems so fundamentally wrong to me, because there's something profoundly haunted and sad about all of their songs, even the supposedly upbeat songs like We've Only Just Begun -- probably due to Karen's voice. Sonic Youth were really one of the only ones to get it right, and Superstar remains one of the best songs they have ever done.

Followed by thinking "What's so flipping most extraordinary about a silver flying saucer, singing drummer girl."

[classic]

cClLaAsSsSiIcC

As classic as they come.

Karen's voice IS melancholia made audible.

Additional exhibit: "Rainy Days and Mondays"

Loneliness is such a sad affair
And I can hardly wait to be with you again
What to say to make you come again
Come back to me again and play your sad guitar

Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby
Baby baby baby baby oh baby
I love you I really do

Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby
Baby baby baby baby oh baby
I love you I really do

Paul Williams, little criminal genius.

Other favorite is Hurting Each Other, which seemed to be their career peak ...

I'm honestly kind of surprised this thread isn't some 500 posts long. Hm.

Me on the blog recently about them, Todd Haynes, etc. This kinda came up out of nowhere.

Nicole's comment way upthread v. OTM, especially about Sonic Youth.

While on the issue, is there a suggested collection of Carpenters songs? I've recently taken an interest in the music but don't really want to sift through all their albums. Is that being lazy?

Gold looks reasonable enough.

C obviously. Karen's voice is really something else - in another performer its low, husky quality would've been put to use being hot n sexy, but instead its almost always used to a way more melancholy and detached effect.

Thanks Ned, I picked up the 35th Anniversary Edition today at the store today. It was used, and the thought of two discs was appealing.

Rock, as they say!

I just remembered that "Close to You" was used to very good effect in MirrorMask a couple of years back.

...and rerevive a bit thanks to an unexpected encounter with a cover version I wasn't aware of until now -- "I Won't Last a Day Without You" redone as "Greatest Hits of [heart symbol]" on Star Pimp's 1993 album Seraphim 280Z. Really nice version -- straightforward singing, heavily distorted demi-Sonic Youth grunge arrangement -- and somehow sidesteps the early nineties Carpenters cult attitude a bit (admittedly the retitling and lack of writing credits helps...).

I did not know, until a few minutes ago, that "Hurting Each Other" is a Walker Brothers song.

Remodeling problems

Ugh.

I've been meaning to revisit them since Richard Hell and others told all those stories about Bob Quine listening to Carpenters records over and over to figure out what Joe Osborn was doing.

In 1974, Rolling Stone magazine reported that a stalker had driven up and down the avenue's short cul-de-sac looking for Karen. "I guess the Downey police are good -- that was the end of the story," Konjoyan said.

justice, san gabriel valley style

Anyone see the two Carpenters' shows/concerts on BBC4? The one from, I assume, 1970 was great... apart from when they let one of their band sing a song, a totally early 70s kind of thing to do but I really wish they hadn't. The one from 1976 was dire: Richard plays a bit of classical music; Richard and the guys in the band do a Spike Jones version of "Close to You"(!); Karen does wacky percussion solo. Truly appalling!

I always remember my mum never liked them, specifically because she thought there was something a bit weird and creepy about Richard. Hmmmmm.

Yeah, I saw the first one. It was ace. She looked wrong wrong wrong on a drum kit though.

She was a great drummer!

You have to remember that a seldom-mentioned early influence on Richard Carpenter was Frank Zappa...

Oh yeah, I knew that. Actually Karen was coming over a bit Ruth Underwood in that 1976 concert.

Basically a perfect band. There is somethings so indescribable about their music.

I cried while listening to "let me be the one" for the first time :'(

could you recommend me other 'overlooked' songs by them? thanks.

is "a song for you" overlooked? if so, that.

Goodbye to Love melts your face off in the end, doesn't it?

for some reason i'm really feeling "i won't last a day without you" these days. no particular reason. just a catchy tune. i like the big crescendo at "...and there's no getting over that rainbow."

also been thinking about the line in "rainy days and mondays," "what i've got they used to call the blues..." i can't decide if it's beautifully clumsy or just, you know, accurate. do they really not call it the "blues" anymore?

You have to remember that a seldom-mentioned early influence on Richard Carpenter was Frank Zappa...

good thing he got over that

Gold looks reasonable enough.

i picked up a mint copy of Gold on vinyl (with shiny gold embossed cover) for 50p a few weeks ago.

truly magical.

um, so, I know Jut1n B0nd and dated his current beau for a bit, but we stopped seeing each other right after he said he was going to make me a tape of the most essential Carpenters tracks...

so, i can get an idea from this thread, but i'm wondering: what is their most psychedelic shit? cuz i remember him playing some CRAZY-sounding, haunting psych stuff for me.

Uh, the guitar solo in 'Goodbye To Love?'

I've never any heard crazy psychedelic Carpenters, but this one has a jazz/almost Stereolab vibe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BciD8PCpGB8

My thoughts on one of the Carpenters' best and most underrated albums.

> I've never any heard crazy psychedelic Carpenters, but this one has a jazz/almost Stereolab vibe

Wow that track is rad! Great mixtape fodder.

And check out this Richard Carpenter-penned tune from their early days - Richard on piano, Karen on drums. More than merely a jazz vibe on this one; it's straight-out jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lIRbYY_yE

Nice one Marcello. I don't necessarily agree with you on each point (to me Desperado and Solitaire are, along with Love Me For What I Am, the highlights of the album, but it's tremendous that you wrote that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Horizon_%28Carpenters_Album%29.jpg

this is a pretty weird record

the harmonized vocals on I Can Dream Can't I are def too syrupy

The isolated rhythm track from We've Only Just Begun makes no sense. Hal Blaine played a funky beat that is hard to square with the full song.

https://omny.fm/shows/meruelo-la/hf-studio-session-with-christian-james-hand-03-01?in_playlist=meruelo-la!the-session

(skip ahead to 2:45 into the podcast)

That's the beat from the refrain/bridge.

So I just read a Karen Carpenter bio over the weekend which was well-done but painful to read. Feel like it should be filed under True Crime.

SPOILER ALERT****
Phil Ramone and his wife Karen Kamon tried to save her with her solo album which was popular with the East Coast crowd, but when they played it in Cali, the kibosh was put on by Herb Alpert & co., presumably because Richard and family disapproved. There was also some similar meddling in her romantic life. On the rebound from the solo album silencing, she ended up in a disastrous marriage with a Golddigger in Robber Baron's clothing and then kept going downhill from there.

She also went to some doctor or "doctor" for her eating disorder but that didn't quite help enough either. Again, the family didn't seem to want to play along. It was some kind of Rosemary's Baby-level stuff of trying to escape but the control was too strong. Hope I am not overdramatizing.

Anyway, you be the judge, the proof is left to the reader. Back to the discussion of the music.

I have this slight frustration in wishing some of the choruses sounded a little bigger. Sometimes it almost sounds like in addition to the backing vocals there is something going with Karen's lead, like maybe they double-tracked her voice but her intonation was so good that it didn't really make a difference, think I read George Martin complaining about this problem with one of the Brothers Gibb in All You Need Is Ears.

Reading up on Hal Blaine and came across this interview on Karen Carpenter:

https://www.jazzwax.com/2012/05/hal-blaine-on-karen-carpenter.html

Some excerpts:

JW: Her parents must have been quite domineering.
HB: Her mother hated that I was there. Karen played the drums, and her mother didn’t like that I was playing on the session and not her. Her mother said, “I’ve seen many drummers on TV, and Karen can play just as good as they can.”

JW: What did you say?
HB: I said, “Of course she can. But she doesn’t have the studio experience. Playing in the studio is completely different.”

JW: How so?
HB: As a drummer, you’re sitting in a room at your kit in a tight space, and the mikes are highly sensitive. Most 61JIM7Y+N6L._SL500_AA300_drummers are used to knocking the hell out of their set. But in the studio, at least back then, before the digital recording age, you didn’t do that. With all those mikes, you can’t be wailing away or you’ll hit one of the stands. You also have to develop a 510Xlbi7PoL._SL500_AA300_technique of playing in your own little zone of space. You have to play gentle. If a song calls for something a little heavier, you turn the sticks around so you’re using the thicker end. It’s like the difference between driving a little car and a semi-truck. There are different rules for maneuvering.

JW: So what did you tell her mother?
HB: I said, “Karen is a fine drummer, but there’s some things you have to know about playing in a studio, and you can only learn those things by spending years there and listening back to hear what’s right and what’s not working.”

JW: Did Karen ever play on those recording sessions?
HB: No. I played on all those dates. Karen liked to hang around a lot at A&M because I was always there recording for Herb. She loved the drums, which helped her a great deal as a singer in terms of her time and tempo.

JW: Why were her parents so insistent on her playing the drums?
HB: Probably because I kept insisting she was the natural voice for the group, not the drummer. Karen had an extraordinary voice, the kind you wanted to hear over and over again. To me, that translated into hits.

JW: Why did her parents oppose that?
HB: I don’t know. Her mother kept saying, “But Richard is the star, Karen is just the drummer.” I think part of that stuff pushed Karen over the edge eventually. The poor thing was playing her buns off on the drums, trying to do the right thing, and her parents were letting her have it.

...

JW: As the years went on, could the studio musicians tell that Karen Carpenter had an eating disorder and was having health issues?
HB: Not at first. Everyone who came to Hollywood back then and became a star thinned down. It was the style out here and probably still is in many ways. The rule of thumb, sadly, was if you’re going to be on film or TV, you had to be 15 pounds underweight to look normal. It’s crazy, I know, but that’s how it was.

JW: No one could tell there was an issue?
HB: There were times when I’d give her a hug at the studio and I could feel her rib cage. She was like a little bird that Karen_carpenter2had fallen out of a tree. For me, the saddest thing of all came in the later years. Karen had finally met a guy she liked, and he just took her money. He broke her heart completely. It was so damn sad. Her face was so hollow.

JW: When you think back, what do you think of Karen?
HB: How sad her life was. Years after she died in 1983, Richard called me to update some of the older tracks, for remastering. We were in the studio for about six hours, and I cried all the way listening back and playing over the parts. What a shame.

😞

Yep

Karen's birthday today.

Dust to digital posted an isolated vocal of "Close to You" and it is effing amazing.

No one extracted the purest and sometimes quite frightening melancholy out of Karen than John Bettis, not even her brother. Goodbye To Love and I Need To Be In Love would be the obvious ones, but this feeling hits directly via Crescent Noon and the intro and outro of Horizon. Carpenter/Bettis didn't write in the vein of Bacharach/David or Nichols/Williams. They wrote FOR her. Those songs are bucolic, impressionist and hermetic little shimmering pieces. Not words written after a dream or a personal "napkin afterthought" that Bettis then took to the studio. They were written anticipating exactly what her delivery would be and I can't help this slight discomfort, despite the artistry, despite you want more and more as a fan, without really thinking of the toll on a gravely ill person. By the end, fragile as a skeleton, she still had it in her to sing like that. Richard chose a Williams song (Only a Fool) that again, is beautiful but also wrong, like smoking in front of someone with terminal emphysema. Hopefully I'm reading too much into this, but then her solo album sounds lighter, adventurous, sensual, FREE away from home, trying to find her way. She went back to somehow fulfill those prophecies.

That interview with Hal Blaine is crushing.