Eric Carmen

ERIC CARMEN
 
 
Eric Carmen  (born August 11, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist.  He scored numerous hit songs across the 1970’s and 1980’s, first as a member of the Raspberries (who had a million-selling single with “Go All The Way”), and then with his solo career, including hits such as “All By Myself”, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”, “She Did It”, “Hungry Eyes”, and “Make Me Lose Control”.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
After writing the article, I began to wonder whether Cyrus Erie had actually made any records; I certainly didn’t have any of them (unlike everyone else that I have written about).  All I really knew about them was that they were one of the leading bands in Cleveland for a while; and that, when lead singer Eric Carmen left Cyrus Erie and essentially joined the Choirthe Raspberries were born.  The story is more complicated than that actually; several of the bandmembers in the Choir were also in Cyrus Erie at one time or another.  
 
Happily, there is one Cyrus Erie track out there on YouTube:  “Get the Message” from 1969 is unabashedly Beatlesque and shows Eric Carmen exercising his pipes well – check it out (with several stills of the band) at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Dtg295wVk .  A song called “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Stop Me” by the Quick also features Eric Carmen on lead vocals and can be heard at www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PXpKUNYUTk&feature=related .  The song was co-written by Carmen and Dann Klawon.  A couple of years earlier, Klawon had written the immortal song “It’s Cold Outside” by the Choir that you really shouldn’t miss either; that one is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JndhLibASI&feature=related .   
 
 (February 2012)
 
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Cyrus Erie is an early band that Eric Carmen was in before he and several members of another Cleveland band the Choir put together the celebrated 1970’s power pop band the Raspberries.  They evidently only ever released one single; this is the A side: 

 
Here is a shot of the bandmembers in Cyrus Erie; Eric Carmen is second from the right.  The gentleman in the middle, Wally Bryson was in both the Choir and the Raspberries:

  

(February 2013)
 
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After I got a copy of Choir Practice, the retrospective album by the Choir – which someone at a pre-blog bulletin board about the Raspberries told me about – I wrote up an article on that band.  They are basically a predecessor band to the Raspberries, before Eric Carmen joined as the lead singer – in fact, Carmen had failed his original audition to join the Choir.  Their song It’s Cold Outside” is one of my favorite songs of that era; it was a big local hit but unaccountably never made much noise nationally.  Read about them in Wikipedia at:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Choir_(garage_band) . 

 

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I had always intended to write up something in Wikipedia about Cyrus Erie; this was the band that Eric Carmen was in shortly before the Raspberries were formed.  Instead, Cyrus Erie became the third UARB that I wrote about in this series of posts.  I included in that article information about the Cleveland music scene in the 1960’s and 1970’s that I had learned from writing the Wikipedia articles – and from that point on, I have generally included information about better known bands and musicians in the Under-Appreciated Rock Band and Under-Appreciated Rock Artist posts. 

 

(September 2013)

 

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However, I had not gotten around to writing up a Wikipedia article on a Cleveland band called Cyrus Erie, a rival of the Choir whose lead singer was Eric Carmen.  Carmen was the future lead singer of the Raspberries and also had a successful solo career afterward as both a singer and a songwriter with hits that include “All by Myself”, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”, and “Hungry Eyes”.  As only my third Under Appreciated Rock Band post, my entry on Cyrus Erie also talked extensively about the 1960’s Cleveland music scene. 
 
(December 2017)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021