Anyone read this?

Banner years
There's a large banner of Karen on the side of a building in New Haven, CT. If you click on the link, there's a picture of it and you can zoom in and read it. It's a pretty good little synopsis of Carpenters achievements. The article says the banners have a pretty short lifespan of several years due to weathering. It says most banners are already about 6 years old and cost about $500. I hope they will replace it when it's become too worn.
 
Banner years
There's a large banner of Karen on the side of a building in New Haven, CT. If you click on the link, there's a picture of it and you can zoom in and read it. It's a pretty good little synopsis of Carpenters achievements. The article says the banners have a pretty short lifespan of several years due to weathering. It says most banners are already about 6 years old and cost about $500. I hope they will replace it when it's become too worn.
She wasn't really solo so I agree with others that they should have pictured them as a duo. They could have used the well known duo shot from the cover of the Yesterday Once More LP that would have gone well with their deco theme on the banner.

It almost looks like that banner photo was taken from this image.
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This is worth re-reading, thankfully Richard Carpenter is persistent:
"One of the only musicians who has said publicly that he was informed about the destruction of his masters is Richard Carpenter of the Carpenters, the star ’70s pop duo. But Carpenter says the admission — by a staff member at UMG’s catalog division, Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) — came only after multiple inquiries and because UMG was forced into it: Carpenter had booked time at a mastering studio to work on a reissue for the label, and the tapes he requested for the session hadn’t shown up. “They didn’t let me know,” he told me last week. “They really didn’t want to get me on the phone to give me this news.” In a deposition given in a negligence suit brought by UMG against NBCUniversal, its landlord at the backlot vault, a former executive for the record company testified that Carpenter’s persistence and “concern” about his masters in the aftermath of the fire had been a subject of consternation among UMG officials.
Source:
Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire
 
Could anyone share it? I got the completely pointless error message451: Unavailable due to legal reasons”. Something to do with the UK being in the European Union :thmbdn:
Here you go, Stephen...


Joel Goldenberg: Carpenters' Now and Then


Before we get started on this week's album, I have to recommend an online blog on the rateyourmusic.com website by someone named Schmidtt.

The extremely long blog, which runs about 20 pages, takes Rolling Stone magazine and the Rolling Stone Record (Album) Guide books for not only the inconsistency of their reviews (rating an album badly in the magazine, well in one record guide, and then badly in the next book), but also the incoherence of some of the earliest (probably drug-induced, man) writings, some very misguided reviews, and how publisher Jann Wenner wrote excessively sycophantic evaluations of albums by artists who were also his friends. For instance, after a group of reviewers trashed and mocked Bob Dylan's puzzling Self-Portrait double album, Wenner praised it in a subsequent issue. And then there was that five-star review of the Who's vastly inferior It's Hard album in 1982, which even the group didn't like.

In contrast, book co-editor Dave March took a buzzsaw in the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide to some artists that were praised in the 1979 guide, also co-edited by him.



The list is a hoot, and it can be seen at rateyourmusic.com/list/schmidtt/rolling-stones-500-worst-reviews-of-all-time-work-in-progress/.

And now to our featured album:

•••

In the 1970s and 1980s, FM 96 (as it was called then) had a program that, to the best of my memory, was called Prime Cuts. My father used to tape the show on cassette — as far as i can recall, they would play all or nearly entire albums. The result would be rather low-fi.

One of the earliest albums he taped was Carpenters' (not The Carpenters) Now and Then (1973), which was a unique LP in the recording history of siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter. Side 1 was individual songs, which showed a growth in sophistication in production, song choice and Karen's vocal style. Side 2 was nostalgic (the Then of Now and Then), starting with the hit Yesterday Once More, and continuing with a newly-recorded medley of well-known oldies.

When I used to hear the cassette more than 40 years ago, the low-fi sound gave the entire album an almost haunting quality, and some of that has carried on to my higher-fi listening today, which I will tackle in my song-by-song review.

Sing — This was originally written for the children's show Sesame Street, and thus Carpenters' version is cited as proof the group was bland, especially with the addition of a children's chorus, which in itself makes many rock fans gag. I don't mind the song, and I admire Richard's and Karen's fantastic harmonies.

This Masquerade — The group's rendition of the much-covered Leon Russell song is my favourite of those I've heard, and is one of Richard's most sophisticated arrangements. They should have recorded more songs like this, as I will make even clearer in the fourth song entry.

Heather — A gorgeous instrumental, and another peak for Richard Carpenter's arranging skills. I found it even more haunting on the low-fi cassette, massive hiss and all.



Jambalaya — Richard has been quoted as regretting that he and Karen recorded goofy songs. This Hank Williams song is not goofy per se (that was Goofus on their 1976 There's a Kind of Hush LP, and several others), but their approach was and, to me, it was a waste of valuable LP space.

I Can't Make Music — Back to the sublime. Karen sounds wonderfully vulnerable here. One of my top Carpenters favourites.

Yesterday Once More- Perhaps my favourite Carpenters song, you can sense the increased assurance Karen and Richard have in their respective roles. However, the LP version lacks parts (most crucially guitar) that the 45 RPM single has. The single is superior.

The Medley — Karen's vocals on songs like The End of the World (Skeeter Davis), Our Day Will Come (Ruby and the Romantics) and even the very light Johnny Angel (Shelley Faberes) make me wish she recorded those songs in their entirety rather than bits for a medley. Richard's vocals on Fun Fun Fun (the Beach Boys), Dead Man's Curve (Jan and Dean) and The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (Bobby Vee) are the best he has performed — his voice was too thick on previous recordings — but the instrumental backing is too smoothed out for my taste.

And, finally, I love guitarist Tony Peluso's playing, but his role as the obnoxious DJ made me want to... but, of course, that was probably the reaction desired by Richard and Karen.

The album ends with a brief reprise of Yesterday Once More, sung in a slightly different key, and with much echo, to good effect.
 
They could have used the well known duo shot from the cover of the Yesterday Once More LP that would have gone well with their deco theme on the banner.
That would have made much more sense. Very nice Karen was recognized but in this case, there's no good reason to not have just featured the duo together in the picture and name on the banner.
 
takes Rolling Stone magazine and the Rolling Stone Record (Album) Guide books for not only the inconsistency of their reviews (rating an album badly in the magazine, well in one record guide, and then badly in the next book),

To be fair, there's nothing wrong with this. The reviews were written by different people at different times. Or, if the same critic wrote about the same album twice, maybe he gained new insights with time and repeated listening.

I mean.... I didn't like most of the Close To You album when I first heard it, and now it's one of my favorites. I have lots of albums I can say that about. Sometimes taste takes time.
 
Thanks for re-sharing, Murray! Not sure what I did wrong when posting it the first time. I’m apparently losing it!
Rest easy, A&M Retro, you're definitely not losing it! :) You posted the link to the article just fine (thanks for sharing it!), but for some reason, the webpage was blocked in the UK. I posted the text of the article so that Stephen, and other UK members could read it.
 
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