*Driftin' through the dreams we used to share ... *

Thirty years ago, Karen Carpenter passed away. As I’ve expressed before, I’ve been a long time Carpenters fan and Karen has always been quite special to me. I thought that in remembrance of this exceptional talent, I’d write a little bit about her solo album.

 

Now, Karen’s solo album is the source of some controversy among the Karen Carpenter fan community (and yes, I am a part of said community!). The story of Karen’s solo album is a bit tragic considering the album was ultimately shelved and wasn’t released until 13 years after Karen left this world. When Karen started her solo project, Richard was in rehab ridding himself of a sleeping pill addiction. Rather than remaining idle, she went out to New York, teamed up with producer, Phil Ramone (known for producing for Billy Joel and Paul Simon), and started work on an album. I’m sure it was an odd experience for Karen to be in the studio without her brother, but I bet it was also quite liberating for her to be breaking out of the Carpenters mold and doing something on her own.

 

The album didn’t come together quickly, taking well over a year to complete. After it was finished and Karen came back to LA, she was called into an intense meeting to discuss the release of the album. Despite the fact that Karen was rather proud of the record, the pressure and negative criticism from the label and Richard, Karen reluctantly allowed the album to be shelved.

 

In 1996, the album was released to little fanfare – though, I remember cutting out a small article out of a magazine that mentioned the album. And of course, in 1996, being deep in my Carpenters obsession, I picked up the CD from Camelot Music in the local mall. Upon first listen, I enjoyed it (except for the second track, “All Because of You” - a song that has since become a favorite). My favorite song from the album at that time was “If I Had You” – I loved all the intricate layers of harmonies and complex vocal arrangements.

 

I hadn’t listened to the album much for several years, but after getting the book Little Girl Blue, I felt the need to dust of the album and check it out again. As is typical of anytime you haven’t listened to something for a while, I heard much more than I had the first time around and heard it in a different way. The album is much different from the standard Carpenter albums – Karen is edgier here than she was as part of the Carpenters. She plays with a number of styles including disco, power pop, smooth jazz, and includes a couple tunes with a bit of a country lilt to them. While this album is not my favorite work of Karen’s, I do enjoy the songs.

 

The album opens with an upbeat disco tune, “Lovelines” (Karen was a fan of disco). The next song is “All Because of You”, which has become the most played song on my iPod of her solo songs. It’s an interesting song because it’s just Karen accompanied by an acoustic guitar – very limited production, which I dig. Karen’s performance is very intimate and sincere. “If I Had You” is all about the complex vocals – my favorite part is towards the end, when you’ve got about 16 Karen’s singing together. “Making Love In the Afternoon” is a sunny, light pop song that Peter Cetera contributes some background singing on. “If We Try” is a jazzy ballad and “Remember When Lovin’ Took All Night” is another disco infused song. “Still In Love With You” used to be my idea of what rock music was (at that age, I had very limited exposure to true rock music). And while it’s definitely not rock, it is a catchy power-pop song with some crunchy guitars. “My Body Keeps Changing My Mind” takes you back to some more disco, but the limited production version of “Make Believe It’s Your First Time” I feel is far superior to the later released Richard Carpenter arrangement. To me, when you’re dealing with such a rich, pure voice like Karen’s, there’s no need to add choirs and heavy orchestration… At least, not with such an intimate song. “Guess I Just Lost My Head” is a nice ballad with some lovely harmonies. “Still Crazy After All These Years” is a splendid cover of the Paul Simon ballad (For some reason, it always makes me envision Karen singing it leaning against a piano in a smoky bar – but that’s just me.) “Last One Singin’ the Blues” was notable for me when I first heard it because I was so excited about hearing Karen speaking a little at the beginning – instructing the band about taking it a bit slower this time. (I had never heard her speaking voice at this point, thus the novelty!)

 

Of course, there are also quite a few outtakes from her solo sessions that are floating around on the internet – and I’m rather intrigued by them as well. My favorites of the non-released tracks are the ballad “It’s Really You” and the edgy “Keep My Lovelight Burning”.

 

So… All in all, it’s a very pleasant listen, though I’ll admit to a number of the songs being a  bit dated. There’s definitely a 1979-1980 feel to the productions, but that is when they were recorded, so it should be expected. And while I’m not convinced the album would have been a smash hit, I do firmly believe it wouldn’t have been a flop and that it should have been released when originally intended. (And I do prefer her solo album to the following Carpenters album, Made In America). Of course, it’s hard to know how the release of the album would have changed the course of events in Karen or Richard’s lives, and I’m not going to play the “what if?” game now. I guess all we really need to remember is that Karen was a remarkable talent – both as a drummer and as a vocalist. Her voice was always rich, pure, and haunting and provided layers of longing, maturity, and vulnerability. She will always be remembered.

Top 40 of the '60s

For the past several months I’ve become a bit infatuated with Top 40 stations from the mid-‘60s, particularly a local station that I parents listened to while growing up. I found a website with a ton of airchecks between 1963 and 1968 and while you don’t hear much music (it’s mostly just the DJs talking and old commercials), it has caused me to branch out and hunt down some of the songs from the time period. Some were very easy to find, but some were songs released by local bands, and those were particularly hard to get my hands on.

As you’re probably aware by now, I have a pretty large music collection and have an affinity for the ‘60s, but there were a ton of songs released during that decade and I only owned a small fraction of it. Of course, I had all The Beatles songs and quite a bit of The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Mamas & The Papas, The Beach Boys, The Doors, The Who, The Kinks and The Monkees, but there were a number of songs that were pretty good sized hits that I had either not heard before or never paid much attention to.

“Red Rubber Ball” by the Cyrkle is one of those songs that I’d heard but didn’t really know. Co-written by Paul Simon with a happy tune, it’s a song I really enjoy. And the lyrics – I like the sentiment of being okay with the end of a relationship, particularly the chorus: “I think it’s gonna be alright. Yeah, the worse is over now. The morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball.”

“Sunny” by Bobby Hebb is another song that I’d heard and never listened to the various nuances of the song that make it so great – and one of the most covered popular songs. I think because the song has been covered so many times, I didn’t immediately make the connection that it was originally from the ‘60s. There were a couple other songs that I also hadn’t realized were from the ‘60s. One was “But It’s Alright” by J. J. Jackson and the other was “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” by Jimmy Ruffin – which has a very popular song on my playlist in the last few months. It’s really an amazing song – I really enjoy the last 28 seconds of the song, but I always enjoy the bits of songs that the vocalist is adlibbing a bit off of the original melody.

The Association’s “Along Comes Mary” is another one I’ve become hooked on in the last year or so. It’s got kind of an unusual melody and some pretty cool harmonies (though, it is The Association, so that should be expected)… And there’s a jazzy flute solo, which is something you don’t hear much these days. It’s also pretty fun to sing because some of the lyrics aren’t words you hear a lot and the rhythm of the words is kind of unique.

“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” was originally recorded in the early ‘50s, but Mel Carter’s version released in ’65 may be the definitive version.  “Cara Mia” by Jay and the Americans tends to make me giggle a little. Not because it’s a bad song or not well performed, mostly because it’s so different from a lot of what you hear now and even back when it was released in 1965. It was a pretty big hit… I think it topped out around #4 – and Jay could really hold those high notes. I really should look up the lyrics because there are pieces of the song that I just end up singing gibberish.

“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” by the Four Tops and “Get Ready” by The Temptations are great Motown tracks that I had kind of disregarded until recently – and I’m not quite sure why. I probably had just heard them too much on the local oldies station or something so I never stopped to really listen to them. I had originally only known the song, “You’re the One” sung by Petula Clark, but I’ve found that I prefer The Vogues’ version. “Because” by The Dave Clark Five is a lovely ballad and I ended up hunting down Chad & Jeremy’s song, “My How The Time Goes By” after seeing them on The Dick Van Dyke Show (in an episode that satirized Beatlemania). “Catch the Wind” by Donovan is a gorgeous melody with some very lovely lyrics. I think it’s a tune that’s often mistaken for something written by Dylan… and it is definitely Dylan-esque with the acoustic guitar and harmonica. “Nowhere to Run” by Martha and the Vandellas is a great, driving song – and love the snow chain percussion. It gives the song a pretty distinctive style. “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes is another song I seemed to have disregarded in the past. I do have a tendency to get a little bored with The Supremes sometimes, because all of their songs have a very similar sound, but this is a really like this song. I really appreciate the sentiment behind it – though last year, I related it directly to my job – at least the chorus. And there are a couple Barbara Lewis songs I really like - "Baby I'm Yours" and "Make Me Belong To You". She really does a very good vocal performance on both tunes, though, I think I may be a little more partial to the latter (and it has a nice little keyboard interlude).

“The Game of Love” by Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders is a song I was really infatuated with when I downloaded it this past spring. There’s so much in this song that I feel is noteworthy, the drum beat, the twangy guitar, and use of tambourine. And I really like how the tempo picks up during the bridge then stops and goes back into the original tempo… Yeah, I dig that. “I Go To Pieces” is my favorite Peter & Gordon song … I really like the piano bit during the chorus.

Paul Revere & The Raiders are very new to my music collection and were added specifically because of the airchecks I had found from the old radio stations. Up until then, I’d really only known them for “Indian Reservation” and that is not one of my favorite songs. Their stuff from the mid-‘60s is pretty good though. The first song of theirs I added to my collection was “Kicks”… Great guitar riff in that song. A few other songs that are worth mentioning are “Hungry”, “Him or Me, What’s It Gonna Be”, and “Too Much Talk”.

There were 2 groups that I did discover solely because of my aircheck research: The Excels and The Aerovons. The Excels were a Michigan based blue-eyed soul group… My favorite of their songs (the few I was able to locate, that is) is “Little Innocent Girl”. The Aerovons were a psychedelic - Beatle-esque group from St. Louis. The song “Resurrection” is my favorite.

Dino, Desi & Billy are the latest of the mid-‘60s groups I’ve gotten into. I’m quite aware that they aren’t the most talented band of the ‘60s – not by a long shot, but some of their songs, like “If You’re Thinking What I’m Thinking” are just plain fun, and in my book, it’s okay to have songs just for fun. And the video for the song “Thru Spray Colored Glasses” is something I find very amusing. I’m all about the transistor radio hanging from the rearview mirror and the random ‘60s dancing!