maybe at the time things had to signify as either more rock or more pop
I think this is it. They remind me of Badfinger in a way because they'd do some hard rock/boogie stuff on their albums, as if to prove they weren't just a pop band, and the hard rock/boogie stuff was almost completely worthless.
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:20 (five years ago) link
Yeah, when I wrote that I was even thinking of Badfinger occupying similar territory but getting a pass for the reasons you describe.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:22 (five years ago) link
They had enough power just doing the Carmen pop-rock tunes. "Tonight" could be the New York Dolls or Kiss.
― timellison, Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:23 (five years ago) link
From that reunion tour, on Sunset Strip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07lZSp9yQ-M
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:23 (five years ago) link
(xp) Absolutely, why bother trying to sound like Humble Pie or something.
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:26 (five years ago) link
Something else presumably from that reunion tour, this time with proper video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07lZSp9yQ-M
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:27 (five years ago) link
Aargh, sorry, forgot about the cut and paste problem when you try to paste a video after the original one you hit. Hang on a sec.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:28 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XUGbW9hpKk
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:29 (five years ago) link
Okay, Jim seems a wee bit uncomfortable trying to play Michael’s fills on “Overnight Sensation” but otherwise this reunion stuff sounds really good.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:43 (five years ago) link
I like this description here:http://ericcarmen.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7870-jim-bonfanti-or-michael-mcbride/#comment-92126 mikes "refrigerator falling down a flight of stairs" style
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:44 (five years ago) link
But maybe he got more comfortable with it later in the tour, that was from the first night. As is this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhpgjGYIYjk
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:50 (five years ago) link
One more video, from later in the tour:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ErtYeBJS4
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 May 2019 23:53 (five years ago) link
This starts off with some annoying stuff from the interviewer but Eric has some great stories to tell: https://observer.com/2017/08/eric-carmen-raspberries-pop-art-live-interview/
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 00:04 (five years ago) link
Part of me wants to go on the Burt Bacharach poll thread and stir things up by saying Eric is just as good a songwriter, better even, but that’s not quite my style right now.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 00:15 (five years ago) link
I successfully chased you guys off the thread, the same way Eric chased the other guys out of the band.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 01:07 (five years ago) link
We are here to support you.
― timellison, Monday, 13 May 2019 01:19 (five years ago) link
Go all the way, man!
Eric is good and inventive, but he's no Bacharach.
― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 13 May 2019 01:24 (five years ago) link
Perhaps I would rather say I prefer the more modest but solid and consistent achievement of someone like Eric to the hits and misses of the other guy.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 01:34 (five years ago) link
Perhaps if I had to watch Cilla Black sing "Let's Pretend" I would feel differently.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 02:21 (five years ago) link
Okay, just looked up what Eric said Brian Wilson told him about falsetto voices and apparently it’s true. I mean not that I would doubt Eric or Brian but sometimes misunderstandings arise.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 03:22 (five years ago) link
Yeah, that's news to me, too!
― timellison, Monday, 13 May 2019 04:03 (five years ago) link
what'd he say what'd he say
― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 13 May 2019 04:34 (five years ago) link
Carmen has no falsetto and Wilson said this is true for all true tenors.
― timellison, Monday, 13 May 2019 05:10 (five years ago) link
That’s what is said in the interview. Think that the more correct version of the statement is something like “baritones are more likely to be good falsetto singers than tenors,” apologies for the Internet pedantry.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 09:54 (five years ago) link
So here's my little Raspberries-adjacent story from a couple of months ago:
I had been looking to buy a Strat, and saw one for sale on a local Northeast Ohio gear sell/swap/trade group on Facebook. The seller, Randy, was about 40 minutes away from me in Painesville, OH. (Just west of where I went to high school in Perry, OH.) I drove out to look at it, we agreed on a price, and I bought it. We were chatting throughout the transaction, and he mentioned that he was going to use this money for a new Gretsch to use in his band, The Choir.
"Wait," I said. "The Choir? Like, 'It's Cold Outside' The Choir?" He said it was, and it turns out he was Randy Klawon, brother of The Choir founder Danny Klawon, and that the two of them went to high school in Mentor, the next city over, with Wally Bryson, Jim Bonfanti, etc. Randy joined The Choir a little later originally but played with them on and off over their various reunions and incarnations.
I then asked if he knew a guy named Artie Peeler, another local musician who is good friends with Wally Bryson. He said yeah, he'd known Artie since high school as well. Artie used to date my aunt Debra, and when I was first learning guitar in the 80s he taught me some tricks like different chord voicings and Keith Richards's open G tuning. And to complete the small world circle, he knew Wally's son Jesse, who used to front a Cleveland band called Rosavelt back in the 90s. My band at the time played a couple of shows with them.
Here's a video of Bryson and Peeler at a local bar last Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WZaddldaaU
― Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Monday, 13 May 2019 14:05 (five years ago) link
Cool! Thanks for the story and the video.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 17:54 (five years ago) link
no votes for "i don't know what i want"? amazing song
― na (NA), Monday, 13 May 2019 18:16 (five years ago) link
That's such a great story, Eliza!
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 13 May 2019 19:10 (five years ago) link
"I Don't Know What I Want" is indeed amazing; it even quotes "I'm A Boy"!
Apparently, Eric Carmen was a stone Who fanatic -- he called that song his "love letter to the Who" -- and his pre-Raspberries band Cyrus Erie once opened for the Who in Cleveland in 1968.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 13 May 2019 19:26 (five years ago) link
Yeah, he talks about how term Power Pop was originally used by Pete Townshend to describe what The Who was doing but the term ending up really sticking to The Raspberries, which was fine with him.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 13 May 2019 20:09 (five years ago) link
Also, this is interesting: http://www.ericcarmen.com/eric-interview-03.html
Forgot that Wally Bryson was in Fotomaker, which band I can’t recall ever having listened to.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 14 May 2019 01:29 (five years ago) link
Probably did hear a radio promo for them and definitely saw the album in ye olde brick and mortar record stores.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 14 May 2019 01:33 (five years ago) link
Surely Pete Frame did a Family Tree for this stuff.
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 14 May 2019 01:37 (five years ago) link
* checks book * dang, no
― WmC, Tuesday, 14 May 2019 02:21 (five years ago) link
https://www.facebook.com/raspberriesrock/posts/wally-bryson-may-26-2018-if-any-guitar-players-ever-wanted-to-know-how-to-play-t/1744151732329195/
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 14 May 2019 09:56 (five years ago) link
Also, from that interview I posted yesterday:
I was a little bit in the dark initially about how this was all going to work and at one point Ringo I think could see that I was stressed. Simon and I were going to accompany him to a show while we were in Atlantic City that he was supposed to go to, and I arrived at his room first and he said something like, "I sense a bit of the perfectionist in you." *Laughs* "Not unlike Mark Hudson."
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 14 May 2019 10:23 (five years ago) link
*Bump*... two, three, four!
― TS The Students vs. The Regents (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 31 May 2019 13:30 (five years ago) link
/Maybe they were too formulaic! "I Wanna Be with You" does that same thing, too, with a 6-bar verse and 16-bar chorus! To me, they are formulaic in an awesome way.
Hold me tightOur love could live forever after tonightIf you believe in what we're doin' is rightClose your eyes and be still
― Naive Teen Idol, Thursday, 22 August 2019 04:36 (five years ago) link
Was just listening to a Stories song on a Left Banke playlist and kept thinking it was the Raspberries.
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 31 January 2020 19:54 (four years ago) link
Similar vibe. Not as good though.
― (includes digression on farting) (Tom D.), Friday, 31 January 2020 20:04 (four years ago) link
Ian Lloyd is a great (rock) singer though.
― (includes digression on farting) (Tom D.), Friday, 31 January 2020 20:06 (four years ago) link
“Love Is In Motion.”
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 31 January 2020 20:08 (four years ago) link
That's their best song but it's nothing like anything else they did.
― (includes digression on farting) (Tom D.), Friday, 31 January 2020 20:17 (four years ago) link
Not being a Raspberries trivia geek, I didn't know until today they changed drummers between albums 3 and 4. Such great drumming on their stuff.
― A perfect transcript of a routine post (Dan Peterson), Friday, 31 January 2020 20:43 (four years ago) link
Rhythm section changed between 3 & 4. It kind of weakens the band because the new guys didn't write as well.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 31 January 2020 21:28 (four years ago) link
Timely revive, as I went through my Raspberries vinyl in order this week. Think Side 3 is the best LP this go round (followed by Fresh).
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 31 January 2020 21:31 (four years ago) link
for pure powerpop rush it's always "Tonight", for me
― I wanna publish memes and rage against machimes (rip van wanko), Friday, 31 January 2020 22:08 (four years ago) link
'Come Around And See Me' keeps popping into my head, particularly the delightfully vari-speed 'Don't ever think I'll be cruel to you / I'm a fool for you / Come a-round, and, seee mmeeeeee' part
― doorstep jetski (dog latin), Thursday, 6 August 2020 09:48 (four years ago) link