Anyone read this?

I have been trying to locate as many newspaper articles (from online digitized archives) as is possible-
without benefit of an academic library; but, I can not "save" them to my computer (without paid subscription).
However, the 'free' articles I can read online. And, let's just say that Carpenters' were hardly treated with respect (USA, in general).

Now, that being said, here is the (short) text from The Abilene Optimist, April 20,1973:
" If you did not attend the Carpenters' concert , then in all probability you missed the concert of the year. Richard and Karen
demonstrated that they are more versatile musicians than their albums would have you think. A major part of the program
was devoted to the great rock and roll hits from the 50's and 60's and the duo performed their current hit "Sing". The
Carpenters were an improvement over their 1971 visit here."
 
The UK's Record Mirror, 5 January 1980:
Top 100 UK best-selling Albums of the 1970s
Carpenters:
#6 The Singles 1969-1973
#72 Horizon
#76 Now & Then
 
Some more figures (from soundscan era):
As of 2005, Yesterday Once More (double cd) sold approximately 2 Million copies.

And, The Singles 1969-1973 spent a total of 125 weeks on the British Charts.
 
This from an interview( transcript) from USA Today, January 2005:

INT:I know you produced an album for the late Karen Carpenter. What is your favorite recollection of working with her?

Phil Ramone: I think the best part of the relationship was her incredible drive and passion for music.
Her perfectionism was also unique to work with. I think she had one of the most wonderful voices to hear across a microphone.
 
The UK's Record Mirror, 5 January 1980:
Top 100 UK best-selling Albums of the 1970s
Carpenters:
#6 The Singles 1969-1973
#72 Horizon
#76 Now & Then

That's very interesting. The Singles album was an absolute monster seller here in the UK. 17 weeks at #1 and it was still on the charts into late 1975. A pretty good achievement to have one of the Top 10 best sellers of the entire decade. What were the five albums above it in the list?

The Close to You album, whilst never breaking into the Top 20, also spent ages on the charts and re-appeared in the Top 50 in both 1973 and 1974. Maybe it got a sales spike whenever a new album was released? Seems quite random otherwise!
 
Rumbahbah, here is the information you requested:
Source:http://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=53464&p=1264545&hilit=uk+1970s+carpenters#p1264545

1) Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel
2) Greatest Hits - ABBA
3) Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield
4) Greatest Hits - Simon & Garfunkel
5) Saturday Night Fever - Soundtrack
6) The Singles 1969 - 1973 - The Carpenters
7) Arrival - ABBA
8) The Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd
9) Grease - Soundtrack
10) 40 Greatest Hits - Elvis Presley
 
News Story from Wisconsin: http://www.wisconsingazette.com/music/hep-girls-who-can-hit-still-face-discrimination.html
Written by Bill Lamb, Contributing writer
Saturday, 14 June 2014
Smith was one of many legendary female drummers interviewed by author Angela Smith for her new landmark book Women Drummers: A History From Rock and Jazz To Blues and Country.
After the success of that project, her publisher asked her to look into Karen Carpenter’s position as an influential drummer in pop and rock music. While doing the research into that, Smith learned about the challenges women drummers face. So she pitched the publisher about turning that discovery into book. He loved it, and the project began.
Smith said Karen Carpenter, of the pop duo The Carpenters, once beat out John Bonham of Led Zeppelin to be named best drummer in a Playboy reader’s poll. Bonham was incensed, but jazz great Buddy Rich rallied to her side, saying Carpenter was one of the greatest drummers he had ever known. Musically, she always considered herself “a drummer who sang.”
 
Perhaps appropriate, today: http://somethingelsereviews.com/2014/06/15/casey-kasem-1932-2014-an-appreciation/
"This morning the king of radio hosts Casey Kasem passed away at 82 years old, and those who were raised on his distinctive, flawlessly executed voice are bound to feel a sense of loss. Knowing for several months now that he was living from day-to-day and his time was nigh, it didn’t really register in my consciousness that the man who lent his voice to chronicling — and indeed, contributing to — pop culture has some significance in my own life.
But now that he’s gone, there’s a reflection that I’m processing as I write this. Several of us here at SER love to celebrate any artist, any music that became part of the soundtrack of our young lives. Whenever we hear one of these old songs, it instantly transports us back to that time and conjures up the same old feelings and a pining for the days when life was so uncomplicated. I think they have a word for that: nostalgia.
Kasem never made music, of course, but with his weekly American Top 40 shows, he was pop music’s tour guide. Even when his did those schmaltzy “long distance dedications,” he was reminding us that even the fluffiest of pop tunes carried real emotional weight with people, and I can’t argue with this message he championed about the power of music. He often included interesting facts about the artist whose single he was about to play, too. In the age before the Internet, that served as a valuable resource for learning something about the musicians behind the music beyond magazines, even if those stories were packaged into extended intros.
Like hearing a classic Spinners, Carpenters, or Chicago song, it’s damned near impossible to hear his voice even in my mind without thinking of all the things associated with my life when I heard it during his heyday. And that includes watching Saturday morning cartoons in the family den and hearing Shaggy shouting out “zoinks!” during a Scooby-Doo episode, since Casey voiced that character.
That’s why though Casey Kasem was occasionally the target of mockery, much like the Carpenters and Chicago, there’s no denying that for people who grew up in America during the 70s, 80s and 90s, he became part of their cultural upbringing. I’m sure that most of us felt that ultimately it was enriched because of him.
A golden voice is silenced, but only in the here and now. It will forever continue to speak with assuredness and a sense of comfort within our collective memories. We’ll keep our feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars, Casey."
 
GaryAlan, thanks for furnishing us with this very nice tribute to Casey Kasem. And the Carpenters fittingly get a plug in this eulogy.

Casey, thanks for the memories... Keep reaching for the stars...
 
Very sad to hear about Casey today. He was a true original. Most of the A&M Corner folks probably also know that Casey was Karen's neighbor in Century City (he lived just below her). Lastly, he was also a groomsman at her wedding in 1980. He will be greatly missed.
 
Very sad to hear about Casey today. He was a true original. Most of the A&M Corner folks probably also know that Casey was Karen's neighbor in Century City (he lived just below her). Lastly, he was also a groomsman at her wedding in 1980. He will be greatly missed.

I did not know either of those facts, A&M Retro. Very cool!! I love how much new stuff I continue to learn from the folks on this board. Thanks for sharing that.

And yes, Casey will be missed. His sign-off, "keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars," has always been one of my favorite sayings.
 
This is a small bit from India, they are unabashed regarding Karen and Richard's music:
Gift hunting guide for your dad
Ria Lawrence, TNN | Jun 15, 2014, 12.00AM IST
Funk up his playlist
"If your father is a music buff, he is bound to like this one! Make sure you include classics from the yesteryears,
especially the one's he likes (Read: Dire Straits, Eagles, The Carpenters, The Beatles).
Not only does this show the amount of effort you put in to mix and compile your pop's favourite music, if you add
a personal touch to this idea, you could make it very special and thoughtful. If he's heavily into music,
you could even buy him a new guitar or instrument-case."
Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...g-guide-for-your-dad/articleshow/36555560.cms
 
Carpenters mention from India, today:
Source-- http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/yesterday-once-more/article6141920.ece
"...and rattled off my other favourites… Yesterday Once More,
My friend Devarati had the latest LPs courtesy her sister who lived in the U.K.
I particularly remember the bright red sleeve with Richard and Karen Carpenter on it.
It was a double album called Yesterday Once More.
It had all the lyrics printed on the inside cover.
We soon knew them by heart and sung our lungs out."
 
Paul Williams and career-defining moments:
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guit...lliams-on-13-career-defining-records-602377/1
"The song placements started tentatively, but in 1970 the team of Nichols and Williams scored a smash with The Carpenters’ We’ve Only Just Begun (written initially for a bank commercial). And the hits kept coming: With Nichols, with other collaborators or on his own, Williams’ songs dominated AM radio throughout the ‘70s, with acts like Three Dog Night and Helen Reddy turning his compositions into gold and platinum. In 1976, Williams’ co-write with Barbra Streisand, Evergreen (Love Theme From A Star Is Born), hit the trifecta, earning a Grammy, a Golden Globe and an Oscar.
Surprisingly, Williams only called a hit once: Rainy Days And Mondays. "I remember going to the studio and hearing it for the time and thinking, ‘Oh, my God, that’s a smash,’ he says. “But a lot of times I was wrong. I have a whole bunch of songs in the drawer that nobody ever listened to all the way through that I was convinced were absolute monsters.”
We've Only Just Begun:
“It had all the romantic beginnings of a bank commercial. Tony Asher, the great lyricist who wrote God Only Knows with Brian Wilson, had been asked to write a song for The Crocker Bank. Tony broke his hand while skiing and decided to pass on the job. He recommended Roger Nichols and me. It was, forgive me, our lucky break.
“The Crocker Bank contacted Roger and me about the commercial they wanted to do: a young couple getting married, they get a kid, they kiss at the wedding and the reception, and they drive off into the sunset. ‘There’s not going to be any sales pitch,’ they said. ‘It’s like a little movie’ – what we would now call a music video. And at the end, it was going to just say, ‘You’ve got a long way to go. We’d like to help you get there – The Crocker Bank.’
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to write a bank commercial. This is crap. I don’t want to do that – I’m a rock and roller. I may look like this little mush ball, but I’m an edgy street guy.' Which, of course, I wasn’t – a sentimental fellow then, a sentimental fellow now.
“But Roger said, ‘There’s a creative fee, so let’s do it.’ We wrote the song and wrote the commercial. The first two verses were for two little commercials; we put them together and finished the song, just in case anybody would record it. I was thinking, if anything, we’d get an album cut out of it.
“There was no way in the world that song was ever going to be a commercial hit; you couldn’t get further away from what was commercially happening at the time. When the Carpenters recorded it – when I sing this on stage, this is what I say about it: ‘And then an angel sang it.’ When that angel sang We’ve Only Just Begun, it literally changed our lives.”
Much More at the link above.
 
Generally, not a fan of tribute acts, but found this interview interesting:
Karen Carpenter act Laurie Briggs on top of world as she finds her own voice
Source: http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/Kare...-world-finds/story-21286529-detail/story.html
"it was not easy – Laurie says the duo's music was "so intricate" that they took six months to record the backing vocals before embarking on tour, backed by four months of rehearsals in a church hall in Leeds.
One of the most surprising things over the years, Laurie says, was the reception in Toronto, Canada, after some pre-performance nerves about taking the show to North America.
"I got a standing ovation there, I nearly fainted when they stood up," she said.
"I do it for the love of the music and for as wonderful an interpretation as I can."

Taken the show to countries including China – where, Laurie says, audiences knew "every word" to the songs – Hong Kong and Russia.
She has also taken to songwriting:
This Time Around, a Carpenters- inspired number, attracted the interest of Doug Strawn – a Carpenters' collaborator – when she emailed it to him on a whim.
"He was one of the original members, someone who went with them from practicing in a garage through to flying around in Lear Jets," she said.
"He loved it so much that he contacted me, and said he'd love to arrange the backing vocals. I nearly died at the thought of one of the original Carpenters working onmy track."
Though the plan did not proceed, having got tangled up in industry red-tape, she is keen to write further songs.
 
Carpenters Worldwide iTunes Performance | Last update: 2014-06-27
Album: Carpenters: Gold - Greatest Hits
#51 Philippines
#103 Vietnam
#120 Cambodia
#148 United Arab Emirates
#159 Singapore
#168 Hong Kong
#189 Ireland
#194 Malaysia
Album: Carpenters Gold - 35th Anniversary Edition
#118 Cambodia
 
It certainly would be interesting to see the download data, I agree, Arthowson.
However, I am unable to access such detailed information from the kworb.net website which lists
these worldwide charts.
Needless to say, Carpenters are still on the charts somewhere in the world.
Carpenters
from 1969 to 2014 is quite a chart run.
 
Huffington Post:
Pledge to Remember the Ones We've Lost
Posted: 06/30/2014 1:18 pm EDT
In part:
As a child I often heard "Sing" by the Carpenters on old Sesame Street videocassettes. I would sing along, imagining I was hitting the notes with my mismatched outfits and platinum blonde hair. Little did I know that I was singing along to a song written by a woman who became the face of anorexia nervosa -- and its ultimate consequence, death."
"....and Karen Carpenter lived lives in the spotlight that will forever allow their memories to be engraved in our hearts."
"Substance abuse and eating disorders are both mental illnesses. We are prone to blame the sufferer, to dwell in ignorance and shame those who suffer.
We forget that lives are lost, we forget that families mourn each day.
The nation mourns when we lose great talent, but we do not mourn when we lose the unknown."
More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/temimah-zucker/pledge-to-remember-the-on_b_5540752.html
 
A Carpenters' mention in the NY Daily Post:
"Some of the cast of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” are Americans, some are not, but they all have something important in common:
They’re time travelers who come to the United States in 1973 to save us all from plaid pants, Richard Nixon and the Carpenters.
It’s not their fault they failed.
"
Source:http: //nypost.com/2014/07/01/an-all-american-movie-guide-for-this-holiday-weekend/
 
Article://www.dailyprogress.com/starexponent/opinion/columnists/to-a-dying-friend-you-know-who-you-are/article_37f09a4c-0105-11e4-abcd-0017a43b2370.html
Kaaren Lynn Ray is the Director of a Youth- mentored program teaching Empowerment, Right Relationships, Non-Violence Deep Community Leadership skills.


"The voice was unmistakable; warm and silky smooth. Sound moved effortlessly; gliding seamlessly forth. Nearly fifty years later as a seasoned professional singer, voice consultant/ coach, I still remember the ease first exhibited by this youngster. I can recall my three singing sisters and I listening to her recordings, emulating her sound, and embellishing great melodies with homegrown intricate harmonies. For hours on end this brother- and- sister -duo impacted our family music-making.
Maybe we first saw them as two fresh-faced talented innocents on the Ed Sullivan Slow during the 1960’s. It was quirky yet amazing to see a female accompany herself on drums. Her brother seemed to supply her with a seemingly-never-ending flow of melodies and unobtrusive harmonies. It was refreshing to see both breaking stereotypes while we watched and listened. She was simply the girl- next- door with that gorgeous Mezzo Soprano voice ebbing through her. Strong, lean female arms underscored and punctuated the melody and lyrics emanating from her drummer’s trap set.
In my teens, I was already a serious classical singer; immersed in rehearsals and performances with the newly -formed Choral Arts Society of Washington. My father and others chauffeured me, initially the youngest soprano in the professional choral troupe, to Constitution Hall and later Kennedy Center. Already studying with a fine Washington voice teacher, I was impressed by the natural beauty of that other Mezzo Soprano’s warm, rich, velvety voice. We were both March 1950 babies, 12 days apart, and both native-born Southern Californians.
Years later, I wept when she died. I knew she’d been ill for a while and learned with alarm about the little- understood partnering illnesses that she was battling. After nearly 20 years of delighting in her voice, I was deeply upset that Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia had claimed her from our midst!
How could someone so talented slowly starve herself to death over a period of almost two decades? How could dieting to stay thin go so awry? What had been in this young singer’s mind and subsequently as a young married woman? How could this tragedy have been avoided? Where was prevention/ the right kind of support?
I continued reading about the disorder when something occasionally appeared in the press. But direct exposure to the disease came a few years later as a Pacific Rim, colleague wrestled with her hidden demons and later not-so-discreetly as she became my housemate. I learned through horrendous personal experiences that forced me to confront her as I took vital care for my then- twelve-year-old daughter.
As Karen and Richard Carpenter moved on and off of the popular music billboard, Karen’s distinctive voice and Richard’s distinctive songs graced and indelibly marked the easy- listening music world of the Baby Boomer generation. However, Karen imprinted us far beyond the music. While many gullibly and mindlessly played-follow-the leader, swallowing the fashion trends and downing the antidotes for getting thin or enhancing beauty, she was slowly dying. The popular culture’s obsessions on maintaining hazardous beauty standards were helped by billions of dollar of economic investments. Ethics don’t apply where money is involved.
Anorexia and bulimia, as partnering diseases, cross all age, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic boundaries. Large- eyed waifs like sixties iconic stick figure Twiggy, later hollow- cheeked, smudge-eyed, Katie Moss and other mannequin- like- runway models, raw-boned dancers, actors sports figures, cheer leaders and other celebrities and wannabes are the norm. Fad dieting consuming energy/diuretic pills, booster drinks, synthetic sweeteners, smoking and toking to curb healthy appetites, are the norm. Normal? Yes. Healthy? No There’s a big difference!"
in July, SIPPP! begins investigating “We Are What We Eat”.
Whether overtly overweight or secretly malnourished, eating disorders are rampant. They spell imbalance/ addiction. This column will highlight youth leadership contributions in raising pubic awareness and education about eating disorders. Help support while learning!
 
A Carpenters' mention in the NY Daily Post:
"Some of the cast of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” are Americans, some are not, but they all have something important in common:
They’re time travelers who come to the United States in 1973 to save us all from plaid pants, Richard Nixon and the Carpenters.
It’s not their fault they failed.
"
Source:http: //nypost.com/2014/07/01/an-all-american-movie-guide-for-this-holiday-weekend/
Oh, man, I hope there's not a Carpenters dig in the new movie. :sad:
 
Short, but sweet:
BEFORE IT WAS COOL: 5 CLASSIC ALBUMS THAT FORESHADOWED THE RISE OF INDIE
JUNE 25, 2014
"#2: Carpenters, Close To You
I can’t think of any other band that underwent the same journey as the Carpenters. In the 70′s they were seen as one of the defining artists of mainstream soft rock. Karen and Richard Carpenter’s squeaky clean image and fairly unadventurous music made them a band for the square crowd. In the words of John Fogerty, “If you’ve got three guys out on the ballfield and one of them started humming [a Carpenters song], the other two guys would pants him.” But throughout the 90′s and 2000′s, a massive critical reevaluation befell the band, as Karen Carpenter was recognized as a great vocalist and a number of hip indie bands like Sonic Youth came forward and named the Carpenters as an influence. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how the quiet, mellifluous music of the Carpenters was a touchstone for the twee movement, and the indie genre as a whole."
Source: http: //noahliebermanmusic.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/before-it-was-cool-5-classic-albums-that-foreshadowed-the-rise-of-indie/
 
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