Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

C is for the Carpenters

It was the version of Superstar by an unknown singer named Bette Midler that caught Richard Carpenter’s attention.

Some of the albums I own that came out in 1971, the year I went to college, include Sticky Fingers – Rolling Stones; Pearl – Janis Joplin; Aqualung – Jethro Tull; What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye; Every Picture Tells a Story – Rod Stewart; Who’s Next – the Who; Santana (III); Led Zeppelin (IV); Hunky Dory – David Bowie. And, oh yeah, Carpenters, the eponymous third album put out by the sibling duo of Karen and Richard Carpenter.

Talk about uncool! These are the artists who took one of the Beatles’ hardest rockers, Ticket to Ride [LISTEN], and turned it into a ballad on their first album. (I rather liked it.) I loved Karen’s voice, though, and I thought they performed some lovely songs.

Side 1
The “tan album” begins with Rainy Days and Mondays [LISTEN], written by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams, which I swear radio DJs at the time referenced every time there was precipitation on the first day of the workweek. The Carpenters* had recorded the Nichols/Williams tune We’ve Only Just Begun [LISTEN] on their previous album. Both songs went to #2 on the US singles charts.

Richard Carpenter was a great arranger for himself and his sister, and a decent keyboard player, but often wrote drippy songs, with a person named Bettis, and, worse, sang them. Saturday at least was only eighty seconds long.

Let Me Be the One was yet another nice Nichols/Williams song.

(A Place To) Hideaway was a lovely song by someone named Randy Sparks

For All We Know [LISTEN] was another hit single, going to #3. It was written for the 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers.

Side 2

Superstar [LISTEN], written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell, was originally recorded by Delaney and Bonnie in 1969. Then it was covered in 1970 in Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen Revue, with ex-Delaney and Bonnie singer Rita Coolidge as featured vocalist. But it was the version by a largely unknown singer named Bette Midler that caught Richard Carpenter’s attention. Their recording had the audacity of changing the line “And I can hardly wait to sleep with you again” to “And I can hardly wait to be with you again,” which solidified their white bread status among many. I thought it was a sage commercial move myself. Yet another #2 single.

Druscilla Penny [LISTEN], another Bettis- R. Carpenter song I hadn’t heard in years, yet remember instantly. Goofy song sung by Richard.

One Love [LISTEN] – a Bettis-R. Carpenter that was NOT goofy. Sung by Karen.

Bacharach/David Medley: Knowing When to Leave/Make It Easy on Yourself/(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me/I’ll Never Fall in Love Again/Walk on By/Do You Know the Way to San Jose – I was never a big fan of medleys, but they are great songs sung well. The idea actually came from Burt Bacharach a couple of years earlier, I learned. (Of course, their first hit was the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song (They Long to Be) Close to You [LISTEN], which had gone to #1

Sometimes. Written by Henry and Felice Mancini, it is a suitable ending.

They won their third Grammy, this time for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for the Carpenters LP. They had previously won for Best New Artist, and Best Pop Performance by a Duo, Group, or Chorus, for Close to You in 1970. The quality of her singing on this album reportedly got Richard to suggest that Karen get from behind her beloved drum set and sing center stage in a live performance.

The Carpenters put out a half dozen more albums, with hits such as [LISTEN TO THEM ALL] Top of the World , the Sesame Street song Sing and Yesterday Once More, possibly my favorite of their songs.

This I did not recall: “Richard sought treatment for his addiction to quaaludes at a Topeka, Kansas, facility for six weeks starting in January 1979. He then decided to take the rest of the year off for relaxation and rehabilitation.” But Karen didn’t want to either stop singing or “seek help for her anorexia” Nervosa for a few years. When she did seek treatment a few years later, it caused a dizzying yo-yo weight gain and loss which ended up killing her on February 4, 1983.

The only good thing to come of her passing was a greater awareness of anorexia and also bulimia. Richard, among other things, continues to keep the flame for the music of the duo.

*Yes, I know the name of the group is Carpenters, not The Carpenters, so named, Richard once said, “After much thought, we decided to name the act ‘Carpenters’ (No ‘The’; we thought it sounded hipper without it, like Buffalo Springfield or Jefferson Airplane.)” But I always thought Carpenters sounded like woodworkers.

 

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

Video Review: Muppet Treasure Island

I think Kermit the Frog is better suited playing himself or a variation of same.

The Daughter went to the library and got out the video of the 1996 Muppets movie adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island. She really liked The Muppets (2011) in the theater, as did The Wife and I. I’ve also enjoyed some of the early Muppet movies and that classic TV program, The Muppet Show.

Tim Curry as Long John Silver was great. Yet this story seemed to meander. Partly, it was difficult to find the tone of the film. Fairly early on Rizzo, the Rat’s character complains that there’s a dead body in a movie geared toward children. There was a lot of grungy, unappealing, and, for my nine-year-old, somewhat frightening stuff in the first third of the film.

The late Roger Ebert made an interesting observation about the source material: “Stevenson is a splendid writer of stories for adults, and he should be put on the same shelf with Joseph Conrad and Jack London instead of in-between Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan.” Maybe that’s an issue.

Captain Smollett I thought was miscast. I think Kermit the Frog is better suited to playing himself or a variation of the same. He was believable as Bob Cratchit in the Muppets’ adaptation of A Christmas Carol because they have a similar persona. Here, the joke IS that this purportedly mean seaman is in fact, an amphibian, and until a late duel, it’s a largely untapped plot device.

Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins grew on me as a character after that first third of the movie. Miss Piggy, playing a variation of herself, was more relatable in a smallish role. Indeed, Frank Oz plays most of the interesting characters here, including the strict Sam the Eagle, and the more addled than usual Fozzie Bear, though his jokes about his constant companion wore thin over time.

There were a lot of songs, and I watched this video twice in two days, yet I can’t remember most of them. The second viewing, though, made me more forgiving of its flaws; go figure.

Meanwhile, more recently, we were away on a business trip and managed by chance to catch much of The Great Muppet Caper (1981). Now THAT is a fun movie, especially the Esther Williams-like scene. And the bicycle scene was quite impressive, though they didn’t wear helmets in those days, I guess.

Muppet goodness from SamuraiFrog: A movie blooper reel;
commercials for the new movie; Jim Henson: The Biography.

The Lydster, Part 118: shared songs

abraham_lincoln_subwayI have what I imagine is an annoying habit. Someone says something, and it often leads me to a song. Those references to music in my blogs are not an affectation, or looked up to be hip, it’s just THERE in my head.

The habit used to drive my dear late mother crazy when I was growing up, and I knew far fewer songs then. The Wife tolerates it, but The Daughter hated it. Or used to, until she started doing it herself.

The turning point involved a Subway commercial.

Periodically, the sandwich restaurant offers all their twelve inch sandwiches for five bucks each. Or as the maddeningly catchy repeated four bars go:
FIVE
FIVE DOLLAR
FIVE DOLLAR FOOTLONGS
It’s the minor key ending that’s the clincher.

The ad, in some variation has been around since 2008. WATCH THIS ONE, or several like it.

Not only do we sing it together, in harmony, no less, she’s now taken to coming up with new lyrics, such as:
SCHOOL
SCHOOL IS
SCHOOL IS SO HARD.

So I bug my daughter less than I used to. Is this, or is this not, a good thing?
***
A Motown medley my daughter and her classmates will be singing this month.

Occupation: writer

I guess I am a writer, in that I write.

One of the fascinating things I’ve observed for a long time is how well – or not – people know each other, even when they see each other on a regular basis. I was reminded of this last month, during a break at church choir rehearsal. I made an offhand remark about the trials of being a librarian. One of the choir members, who’s been there a couple of years, said, “But you’re not really a librarian, are you?” And I looked at another choir member, who has been to the office where I work as a librarian, with a mutual puzzlement.

“Oh, yes, I am,” I noted. And the other choir member confirmed this. “Oh, I thought you were a writer.” I said that I’ve been doing the librarian thing for over two decades.

But being mistaken as a writer – even a writer she evidently didn’t read, or read often – is NOT the worst thing in the world. I guess I am a writer, in that I write. I don’t get paid for writing very often, probably not at all in 2013. Still, I WRITE. Somehow, this tickled me.

Now, you all know I’m a librarian, right? Some of you – you probably know who you are – DO know me better than people I see every week, or even every weekday. I find this an endlessly interesting sociological phenomenon.

Note to self: do not talk about religion on Facebook

While I’m perfectly willing to debate religion, I find it tiresome when persons unknown to me make assertions about me that are untrue,

Twice late last month – once on Christmas eve – I had “conversations” about religion on Facebook. It’s often unsatisfying, because I am a believer in spite of uncertainty, and these folks are usually convinced of their rightness.

Oddly, both ended up involving the Biblical phrase “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, render unto God what is God’s.” Without getting into the whole back-and-forth, one guy insisted that the verses, appearing in all three of the synoptic Gospels (all, except John), meant that we are directed to obey earthly authority, pay taxes, and the like.

My view is more in line that it suggests a separation of church and state, and that, further, the church should speak out when the state is going wrong, rather than embrace the state’s bad behavior (apartheid, slavery, exploitation, et al.) If you read the Wikipedia article on the phrase, you’ll see that there are several different interpretations of those verses, including both of these, a notion which I can accept.

The guy on Facebook cannot. While I’m perfectly willing to debate religion, I find it tiresome when persons unknown to me make assertions about me that are untrue, such as “You don’t know the Bible very well” or “You must not have read very much of the Bible.” Defensively, I sneered (if you can sneer online): “I have read the Bible at least three times all the way through,” noting the King James, New Revised Standard Version, and the New International Version.

Now he has ticked me off, and I assert something about the nonviolent direct action of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others being in the Jesus tradition. Bored with me, he went away.

He’s like those people I grew up with who were convinced at least two-thirds of the world is going to hell. This, BTW, was the mindset that drove me out of the church by the time I was twenty. As the article says:

…we WILL NOT judge another person’s soul. Jesus warned us not to do so. Paul warned the same thing. Jesus will be the judge. Period. It is not our job and we are not qualified.

I’ll give a big AMEN to THAT.

Ramblin' with Roger
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