⭐ Official Review [Album]: "OFFERING"/"TICKET TO RIDE" (SP-4205)

[tomswift2002]

Really we didn’t get another group non-seasonal album until 2001’s As Time Goes By. Some of the memorable tracks on ATGB are You’re Just In Love, Without A Song, Dizzy Fingers & Carpenters/Como Medley where Richard shares the lead with Karen only or others (or Dizzy Fingers was a throwback to Heather & Flat Baroque while You’re Just In Love was a throwback to Crystal Lullaby & Do You Hear What I Hear?, and the Medley was a throwback to the Now & Then Medley).

I have to wonder what Horizon, A Kind of Hush, Passage, Made In America, Voice of the Heart & Lovelines would’ve sounded like if there had been one piano track by Richard on those albums if he didn’t want to do a vocal. I think the inclusion of Dizzy Fingers or You’re Just in love on MIA would’ve made a difference and maybe the opening of side 2 would’ve had more impact if You’re Just In Love led off that side that it did with I Believe You.

I still kind of surprised that I’m the 80’s to 2000’s, Richard didn’t include new instrumentals on the numerous compilations that were issued. That would’ve been interesting to have picked up a new compilation CD and find a new Richard instrumental. Or the odd new vocal.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

But compared to the rest of the album, Something In Your Eyes really didn’t represent the album musically either. SIYE was more traditional Carpenters with non-electric instruments, whereas the rest of the album had that 80’s electronic sound to some part of each track. SIYE was more like All Those Years Ago from Veronique where it used non-electronic instruments on an otherwise electronic album.

I respectfully disagree. "SIYE" is utterly electronic. The drums are pads (courtesy of Paul Leim - those toms are a signature of his of the time) and Richard loaded up the synthesizers (definitely hear Yamaha DX-7 on this). This is not acoustic ballad. The difference is Dusty leading and that's because she had a lead voice. A&M knew they needed someone with a lead voice to introduce the album and they wisely chose this song. The orchestration was out of time with what was happening at radio in 1987 so the song did nothing. That wasn't Dusty or A&M's fault; that was all Richard.

Ed

 

[Nemily]

That's what I miss on the albums from HORIZON on (not counting Christmas). The songs are all Karen leads - very pretty - very competent - meticulously sung - but just in a somewhat "bland" setting of one after the other. Even the backing harmonies are reduced for the most part on those later albums, especially when compared to a masterpiece album like CLOSE TO YOU.

There is something similar about ‘I Have You’ from AKOH that I haven’t been able to put my finger on and I think you summed it up @Harry. IHY is so pretty and the harpist, Gayle Levant, adds such an elegant accompaniment to Karen’s sublime vocal. I think what I sense is a void. I find myself yearning for the singers’ contentment and I never find it. IMO I would love to hear this song without Karen’s duet with herself, because that is where it gets sleepy for me. This song may have had more potential with perhaps someone like Kenny Loggins doing the harmonies with Karen. That would have sweetened it up and validated that someone actually saved her day in the song (a brother and sister may not have worked here).

 

[JohnFB]

There is something similar about ‘I Have You’ from AKOH that I haven’t been able to put my finger on and I think you summed it up @Harry. IHY is so pretty and the harpist, Gayle Levant, adds such an elegant accompaniment to Karen’s sublime vocal. I think what I sense is a void. I find myself yearning for the singers’ contentment and I never find it. IMO I would love to hear this song without Karen’s duet with herself, because that is where it gets sleepy for me. This song may have had more potential with perhaps someone like Kenny Loggins doing the harmonies with Karen. That would have sweetened it up and validated that someone actually saved her day in the song (a brother and sister may not have worked here).

@Nemily - I love Kenny Loggins' voice and his music, going back to his earlier days recording with Jim Messina, and he would have been great dueting with Karen on this lovely song...

John Bettis penned the lyrics on this song just as he did for the urbane & literate "I Need To Be In Love", and while INTBIL was Karen's favorite song, IHY contains the profound lyrics that probably best describe her and her purpose here among us: "I was born to belong to the lines of a song, and make them my home".

I most emphatically agree with you about dispensing with "Karen's duet with herself" during the song. But, I can - and have - said the same thing about every other song where she did this. It was an unneeded and senseless technique. Other singers used it to cover up their lack of talent. In Karen's case it covered up her beautiful and compelling natural voice.

The only new release that I'm waiting for is one in which all of that distracting and distorting double-tracking is removed from every song where it was ever used. I want to hear the real Karen. Why would anyone want to hear anything else?

 

[JohnFB]

...and I was both wowed and disappointed in "I Can Dream Can't I" - wowed with the phenomenal production values - disappointed that the backing singers weren't Karen & Richard. But I also later "got" that it was supposed to be a replica of the old big band sound, which it mimics perfectly...

Big hit for the always highly entertaining Andrews Sisters in the late 40s, and this version with an arrangement by the great Billy May, who worked with most of the best singers from the Big Band era (I still listen to the albums he did with Frank especially) - I always felt that his arrangement here could have benefitted from a couple of slight tempo changes (slow to medium back to slow) and from a use of a combination of saxes & clarinet (Ala the Glenn Miller sound) in the middle instrumental section instead of the muted trombones - the use of the accompanying chorus was inspired, reminiscent of how outstanding songs were arranged then (so very effective and listenable with the very best female singer of the time Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers)...would love to have heard an album full of Standards arranged by Billy and/or Nelson Riddle and/,or Gordon Jenkins...

 

[crescentnoon]

John Bettis penned the lyrics on this song just as he did for the urbane & literate "I Need To Be In Love", and while INTBIL was Karen's favorite song, IHY contains the profound lyrics that probably best describe her and her purpose here among us: "I was born to belong to the lines of a song, and make them my home".

I'm sure this is talked about somewhere but can someone help me understand how Albert Hammond made his way in to having a songwriting credit on 'I Need To Be In Love'?

 

[newvillefan]

I spotted something in the Recording Resource which looks to me to be incorrect, regarding the track ‘All I Can Do’. It says that “All I Can Do” was transferred over from the original 4-track demo master as well and featured on the album ‘as-is’.

Comparing the album track and the demo on “From The Top”, they’re two completely different recordings, including the lead and background vocals. So I’m not sure if there was maybe a second demo of the track, recorded between the first demo and the finished album track that we haven’t heard.

Side by side:

 

[Harry]

^Paging Chris May...

 

[Chris May]

I spotted something in the Recording Resource which looks to me to be incorrect, regarding the track ‘All I Can Do’. It says that “All I Can Do” was transferred over from the original 4-track demo master as well and featured on the album ‘as-is’.

Comparing the album track and the demo on “From The Top”, they’re two completely different recordings, including the lead and background vocals. So I’m not sure if there was maybe a second demo of the track, recorded between the first demo and the finished album track that we haven’t heard.

Side by side:

There are two separate recordings—the 2-track they recorded in the living room (as heard on From the Top) and the demo they cut that went to Herb. The latter is the version that made it onto Offering.

In fact, I believe I wrote separate entries delineating the two.

 

[John Tkacik]

I'm sure this is talked about somewhere but can someone help me understand how Albert Hammond made his way in to having a songwriting credit on 'I Need To Be In Love'?

A few years ago, I recall seeing a "behind the scenes' video of the making of this song with Albert Hammond being interviewed. It may be located on a thread in this forum. He started writing the song and passed it along to John and Richard to complete.

 

[John Tkacik]

A few years ago, I recall seeing a "behind the scenes' video of the making of this song with Albert Hammond being interviewed. It may be located on a thread in this forum. He started writing the song and passed it along to John and Richard to complete.

The video can be found in the "Official Review" thread of I NEED TO BE IN LOVE/SANDY. (Single #20) from March 2017.

 

[Another Son]

I spotted something in the Recording Resource which looks to me to be incorrect, regarding the track ‘All I Can Do’. It says that “All I Can Do” was transferred over from the original 4-track demo master as well and featured on the album ‘as-is’.

Comparing the album track and the demo on “From The Top”, they’re two completely different recordings, including the lead and background vocals. So I’m not sure if there was maybe a second demo of the track, recorded between the first demo and the finished album track that we haven’t heard.

Side by side:

Love both versions!

In my opinion, Demo 1 has more energy in the choruses while Demo 2 has more energy in the verses.

Due to the arrangement and maybe the mix, the sound / harmony builds in Demo 1 when 'All I can do is cry over you every since you've gone away' is sung in each chorus.

Sounds great!

Both versions are brilliant, though.

 

[JohnFB]

... It's strange to hear Karen singing a wee bit flat on a few occasions, and yet I'm OK with it because of the overall warmth and strength of her vocals.

Post from 10 years ago at the start of this thread - warmth and strength, yes, and style beyond her years, but flat??? Musta slipped by me...I don't hear a flat note on the whole album...

What's especially impressive is Richard's arrangements, and also the energy they both brought to the record. That youthful exuberance and joy at being able to play around in the studio can be heard in the music, itself.

Yes, that's all over this record in abundance!

I so wish they had kept with the jazz, multi-metered sound that they use here and also on the "Close to You" followup. That was a sound that they could have continued to experiment with and blaze new musical trails, rather than falling into the more predictable hit-driven pattern that most of their subsequent albums followed.

They could have easily - but perhaps later in the mid to late seventies, when the pop luster had worn off and they needed to be headed in a new, exciting direction - they had the awesome talent for it...but did they have the health, or the ambition???

 

[JohnFB]

...
Karen is still finding her lower voice and she is enjoying drumming. Richard does fine with the arrangements.
A worthy prelude to what was yet to come.

From 2014 - yes, worthy...but where is Karen's lower voice? Drowned out by her drumming? Needing the right Keys)? Awaiting further maturity and influence from hormones? It was there, mostly, with a few rough edges, which will be worn off soon enough - like one album later...the emergence of that lower voice was to be, after all, one of the great moments in the history of singing.

 

[Harry]

Post from 10 years ago at the start of this thread - warmth and strength, yes, and style beyond her years, but flat??? Musta slipped by me...I don't hear a flat note on the whole album...

John, I'm with you. OFFERING remains a desert island disc for me. (If the island is flat however, then I won't have any mountains that I'm lookin to climb!)

 

[JohnFB]

Richard's voice is not a strength, but they were still figuring the dynamic. I like the energy of the album overall, and I am an unabashed fan of Karen's drumming. I can say here and now I do not really understand why she was pushed out of the drummer seat.

From 2014 - her drumming was masterful on this album - all the way through - with some attention-grabbing moments thrown in. She demonstrated here that she could have played on any song on any album they ever did - she allowed herself to be pushed out, gradually and partially at first, and then almost completely (probably because she didn't have the physical health and strength beyond a certain point)...

 

[JohnFB]

John, I'm with you. OFFERING remains a desert island disc for me. (If the island is flat however, then I won't have any mountains that I'm lookin to climb!)

There is no flatness on the Offering island!

Believe me, I know what a flat note sounds like - I took up playing piano after I retired at a relatively early age and ever since I've hit countless flat notes...

 

[newvillefan]

Believe me, I know what a flat note sounds like - I took up playing piano after I retired at a relatively early age and ever since I've hit countless flat notes...

Karen did sing under pitch on much of that original ‘Ticket To Ride’ (the song) recording. If you can’t hear it, you’re lucky. It’s been a source of consistent argument on this forum whether it’s there or not but I can’t even bear to listen to it and it still beggars belief it passed Richard’s quality control, even in those early days.

There’s a publication somewhere, can’t remember if official (think it is) where the description is of Karen singing “consistently” under pitch.

EDIT: It was in Randy’s book, and some discussion evolved on this point here:

⭐ Official Review - [Box Set]: "FROM THE TOP" (AM75021/6875)

Be very careful with that 40th Anniversary set. There are still tons of Chinese knock-offs of that set. I can see one up on eBay now, where if you zoom in on the picture of the disc spines, you can read the errant "Maade In America" - a telltale sign of a fake. And the eBayer is looking for a...

forum.amcorner.com

It often feels to me like there’s some kind of collective denial that she was off key at any stage ever, in order to protect her ‘perfect’ reputation. But it’s there. (There’s also a hideous off key harmony note about 7 seconds before the end of the demo of ‘All I Can Do’. I’m not criticising her at all, because she is to me the greatest singer who ever lived, but there are one or two early wobbles on record, before she mastered her craft).

I’m a singer and musician but not a musical director so I’ll leave the final word to one who is, Chris May from that thread I quoted above:

“…as a seasoned music director and arranger myself, along with Richard's personal citing, Karen's lead vocal performance was sub-par and most definitely pitchy. I won't even listen to it when choosing the track - I always start with the additional recording/remix (and subsequent remixes) from '73 which includes the updated vocal lead.”.

 

[JohnFB]

In "Carpenters: The Musical Legacy" Richard is quoted as saying that Ticket to Ride" is one of maybe only three or four songs that should have been on "Offering" - leaving aside the argument about the worth of all the other songs that he's excluding, he wouldn't be saying this about TTR if he thought there was a noticeable "pitch problem" with it & as you say he didn't object to the recording back in the day..I just listened to it again several times and I don't hear flatness. Nasally youthful roughness, yes - maybe still effected by the same cold or flu that clouded her performance on "Someday" - but not consistent flatness or being under pitch...no wonder there's an ungoing dispute about this - personally, I don't listen often to this early version much precisely because she nailed it so incredibly well on the later re-record in 73, which I love!

I guess we hear different things just as we see different things when looking at a great painting or photo...

 

[GDBY2LV]

I have to agree with Stephen on this. She’s slightly off pitch on TTR, just like she is on her 1st single Looking For Love. It doesn’t bother me though.I love the Offering album. It has really grown on me over the years. Karen at 19. Amazing! The songs are kind of raw, and not overly polished. It was the beginning of their legacy, and they had to start somewhere. The Close To You album was so different from Offering. An absolute gem. My 2nd favorite after ASFY. The only track that sounds like a cut from 1969 to me, is Crescent Noon. Still one of my favorites from that album though. I completely understand why she wanted to re-record TTR for the Singles 1969-1973. Probably 90% of the people that bought that album didn’t even notice any difference in the record. Only the die hard fans like us, and K&R.

 

[JohnFB]

I have to agree with Stephen on this. She’s slightly off pitch on TTR... Karen at 19. Amazing! ... I completely understand why she wanted to re-record TTR for the Singles 1969-1973. Probably 90% of the people that bought that album didn’t even notice any difference in the record. Only the die hard fans like us, and K&R.

Did Karen ever say anything to anyone (except Richard) about exactly why she wanted to re-record TTR, other than just that "she wasn't happy" with her vocal? Did she think she was "flat" and wanted to sing it on key, or did she simply feel that her voice quality had improved significantly and she wanted another crack at singing a song she liked a lot and now felt she could really kick the crap out of...Just like later with MCD...? She wanted to do both EVE and SOMEWHERE over too - are they flat, or just songs the mature, experienced Karen felt she could kill?

 

[JohnFB]

...

As Harry has noted many times, there's a "group sound" here which is more dynamic and less "airbrushed"; R & K just flat-out embrace multitudes--so many different vocal arrangement variations! Unlike Brian Wilson, Richard (at least at this stage of things...) likes to start sparse and build the harmonies up through the course of a song, but when he goes for it, K & R summon up moments of beauty and complexity that give the great Beach Boys meister a run for his money! (Of course, Richard had the advantage here--as great a vocal ensemble as the BB's were/are, Karen might just be the greatest backup singer ever--and much of the evidence for such a claim can be found right here!!)

.

From 9 years ago - I love this observation from Don - the bolding is mine but the astute insight is his in saying what we've known all along - and just why wouldn't the greatest singer ever also be the greatest backup singer ever?

 

[JohnFB]

Thanks for posting that, Gary. It reminds me of just how strong a writing team Richard and John were at an early age. "Someday" is just a killer Broadway show tune: you can see Karen playing the lead role in the musical with this one (wouldn't that have been spectacular!!), and Richard's orchestration (despite his misgivings with certain details) is right up there with the big guns in that song genre--a reminder of the wide-ranging influences that can be found in his music.

From 8 years ago - I've had the same thoughts about SOMEDAY as a show tune - I said so somewhere here - can you imagine her at center stage singing this? And then later in the show I NEED TO BE IN LOVE and closing with ONE MORE TIME...

 

[newvillefan]

She wanted to do both EVE and SOMEWHERE over too - are they flat, or just songs the mature, experienced Karen felt she could kill?

There’s nothing wrong with both of those songs, but Karen had a tendency to sing in quite a ‘hard’ voice on some of those early tracks, before she softened her singing style for the second album. If you don’t know what I mean, compare both the 1969 and 1980 versions of ‘Someday’ when she goes for that high note on ‘day’ at the end. The 1980 version is much, much softer and less ‘punchy’.

 

[JohnFB]

There’s nothing wrong with both of those songs, but Karen had a tendency to sing in quite a ‘hard’ voice on some of those early tracks, before she softened her singing style for the second album...

You're absolutely correct - there isn't anything wrong with either song, and she did sing them "hard" (with a rough but compelling "edge") - and her singing was softened and clarified (is that a good description?) and more resonant on the 2nd album - I would love to know exactly how that happened - did she will that voice into being, or was it just the result of inevitable, natural physical changes, or did she work on it under professional supervision, or some combination of these...how did the girl who sang a rough TTR and a hard EVE all of a sudden become the girl who could sing those clear, powerful, gorgeously rich opening verses of WOJB? It's vitally important because she became The Girl With The Golded Voice who played a big part in selling well over 100 million records - and a new, elevated standard for beautiful singing was set. And somehow this happened in 1970 when Close to You was in production...