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I used to LOVE this cover! Until I bought the album 'A Kind of Hush' in 1977, this was one of only five photos of Karen and Richard that I had ever seen, despite being a fan of them since the early 70s. I didn't see them on TV until early / mid 1977 either, ('Live at the New London Theatre'). I bought 'Close to You' in 1976. The other photos that I owned were a photo of K&R with Bette Midler at the Grammys, a small pic from a teen pop mag that included very wrong lyrics for 'Goodbye to Love' and the inner photo from 'Great Hits of The Carpenters Vol 2, 1969-73'. I loved that photo, too. And I had seen the cover of 'Ticket to Ride' in a record store.Never thought the Cover of this Album was particularly bad. Now, in looking at credits on Covers, the art direction usually includes
Roland Young.
Here is an article in Billboard October 1973 pertaining to issue of Album Artwork:
Billboard »
it is the awful gray color
What is not known, and I have yet to read, is how Richard feels about the
Horizon Cover/Artwork.
Could it be that --since the Album sold many Millions of Copies--Richard bases his opinion on (again)
Sales of the Album. In other words, if the LP had not sold so many millions, he wouldn't think twice about
that cover (Close To You). I believe the cover of that LP has virtually nothing to do with the later 'image' issues.
(2) Horizon--as we know, peaked at #13 in the USA.
What Richard could have emphasized is how great the entire Horizon package is,
not that they "...looked p..... off...."
He seems to harbor--for whatever reason--a negative outlook on the entire Horizon album !
Listening to Love Is Surrender--from the Sweet Memory,By And By, Set:
And, reading the resource information here, it states that "reverb" was added,
can someone with better ears than I, describe to me where this reverb has been added ?
By the By, I actually quite enjoy the song as (re)mixed for this collection.
I must confess--after listening to
Love Is Surrender
on both The Essential Collection and the Sweet Memory disc,
I am unable to hear any "reverb" in the lead vocal........
Reverb is absolutely dripping on Karen's lead in the remix. Richard always does that when he remixes. He also makes the bass (kick) drum more pronounced. I'm assuming his objective with the lead vocal is to make it less "mono-sounding" but I don't get why he felt the need to give us more kick drum. It rarely sounds good. In truth, I like very few of his remixes.
I'm guessing that my understanding of the meaning of the word "reverb"
as applied to the recordings is wanting !