Dec 14

Carpenters

Greatly Appreciated

CARPENTERS

 
Carpenters  were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter.  Together, they produced a distinctively soft musical style, later becoming one of the best-selling music artists of all time.  During their 14-year career, the Carpenters recorded 11 albums, thirty-one singles, five television specials, and a short-lived television series.  Karen Carpenter’s death in 1983 from heart failure brought on by complications of anorexia increased public awareness of eating disorders.  To date, Carpenters’ album and single sales total more than 100 million units.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
My general stance in writing these posts about Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Artists has never been to say to my readers:  What you listen to is crap – here is what is good.  I have always enjoyed mainstream rock and still do.  What I am trying to do is to say instead:  Here is something else that is good.  Also, I have tried not to put down even artists that I don’t particularly care for; as someone who finds equal pleasure in the music of Carpenters and Ramones (just to give one example), my musical tastes are hardly average, so I am not about to pass judgment on someone else’s. 
 
(August 2012)
 
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With all of that as background, the first hint that garage rock might at long last find widespread appeal came with the 1998 release of the first album, The White Stripes by the rock duo the White Stripes.  At first guitarist and vocalist Jack White and drummer Meg White pretended to be brother and sister (they were actually previously married; the members of the new wave band Eurythmics, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were also former lovers), causing Rolling Stone magazine to run a tongue-in-cheek cover story on the band:  “The White Stripes: The New Carpenters?”.  
 
(January 2013)
 
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Carolyn Lee of Music Emporium hadn’t started singing though until she joined an a capella choir at Long Beach State, where she was seated beside Karen Carpenter; Richard Carpenter was their accompanist on piano.  The brother and sister would later become world famous as Carpenters, but not many people know that Karen was also a drummer – in fact, she described herself as a “drummer who sings”.  Dora Wahl knew both of the Carpenters also.  

 

(October 2013)

 

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The final song on “Side 1” of Each One Heard in His Own Language is a rocking rendition of the well-known “Get Together”, though this was before the Youngbloods made a hit of the song in 1969.  The song dates from the early 1960’s and had been recorded by We Five (it was the follow-up to the 1965 hit song “You Were on My Mind” by this band, who as I recall style themselves as the first band in San Francisco to go electric).  Other versions were made by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, Jefferson Airplane, Hamilton Camp, Carpenters, the Dave Clark Five, H. P. Lovecraft, and many others.  
 
(September 2014)
 
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Wikipedia lists an almost completely different group of artists in that article (as opposed to those listed above who were backed by Glen Campbell in particular):  “Notable artists employing the Wrecking Crew’s talents included Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Vee, the Partridge Family, the Mamas and the Papas, the Carpenters, the 5th Dimension, John Denver, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, the Grass Roots, and Nat King Cole.” 

 

(February 2015)

 
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My own theory is that Crystal Mansion suffers from the same “problem” as last month’s UARB, the Human Zoo:  The band has real variety in its material and doesn’t sound the same all through the record.  The Allmusic article on the band, by Lars Lovén, starts off:  “The Crystal Mansion’s relatively short story is that of a white R&B band moving towards groovy psychedelic rock in the ’70s.”  Joe Viglione writing for Allmusic grudgingly acknowledges this about the final track:  “‘Earth People’ is reminiscent of ‘Calling Occupants’, the hit for the Carpenters and Klaatu.  It is the highlight of the album.  Let’s call it Crystal Mansion’s ‘I’m Your Captain / Closer to Home’.”  The reference of course is to the closing song on the Grand Funk Railroad breakthrough album, Closer to Home (1970), “I’m Your Captain”, although Crystal Mansion was able to craft their memorable song in barely one third the playing time of the Grand Funk track. 
 
(August 2015)
Last edited: March 22, 2021