Carpenters rare video clips

Earlier I posted a Carpenters interview with Mireille Bekooij where Richard and Karen promoted their new album at that time.
Now I found part 1 of the interview that was broadcasted a week earlier with all the hits and Richard!
Enjoy.

Great to hear that the part 1 had an interview too! : ) Interesting hearing Richard describing their typical Carpenters "sound" (13:51) and what kind of efforts he'd put into making live performances sound as close to the record as possible. Thanks for sharing, Chris!

Btw, does anybody know if the trio Richard was in (in Connecticut, ca. 01:33 into the video) had a name? :hmmm:
 
Hello Everyone, yesterday I visited a Carpenters friend of mine who lived nearby.
We talked for one hour about Carpenters music!
And the great thing, I bought some very nice things from her!

many old 70s and 80s VCC and VHS tapes containing dutch Carpenters appearances and many audio cassettes with awesome stuff!

This is all from the same woman I got the scrapbook and the scarf from.

I digitized and posted the most interesting cassette first.


Carpenters Live at the MGM Grand Hotel Las Vegas 1978!

The recording was made by the head of the Dutch fanclub who visited the concert and took many pictures.

It contains their hits and some interesting stuff like, Strike up the band (with karen singing), Thank you for the music and When I fall in love/I need to be in love.

There are many more things to come!

Chris

I found the segue between WIFIL and INTBIL to be a very nice touch. Richard is always so innovative that way.
 
They showed a clip of the Olivia special with Karen, Toni, and Tina Turner singing Heartache Tonight, on the HBO Tina documentary this evening. They said Tina wanted to be among really strong female singers on the special to get her career going again. Brilliant!!!!!
 
They showed a clip of the Olivia special with Karen, Toni, and Tina Turner singing Heartache Tonight, on the HBO Tina documentary this evening. They said Tina wanted to be among really strong female singers on the special to get her career going again. Brilliant!!!!!
Funny that you should mention Tina Turner, GDB2LV. I’ve been listening to Ike & Tina Turner all morning! I’ve just bought their two albums, ‘Come Together’ and ‘’Nuff Said’. I bought their single from ‘Come Together’, ‘I Want to Take You Higher’, back in 1974.

Lately, I’ve also been regularly listening to their albums, ‘Sweet Rhode Island Red’, ‘The Edge’, ‘Let Me Touch Your Mind’ and ‘Working Together’.

And how Tina DID get her career going again, a couple of years after the ‘Hollywood Nights’ special - US Top 10s with ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’, ‘Better Be Good to Me’, ‘Private Dancer’, ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’, ‘Typical Male’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’ and million-selling albums in the US like ‘Break Every Rule’, ‘Simply the Best’, ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’, ‘All the Best’ and the five million in the US alone ‘Private Dancer’.

Tina is a remarkable person, I believe.
 
I admire Tina Turner for retiring gracefully while she was still an amazing performer. I saw clips of Dionne Warwick performing in the last couple of years and she’s absolutely diabolical. Her voice sounds ravaged through years of smoking and she no longer has anything more than an octave left at most. Just living off the name these days unfortunately.
 
I admire Tina Turner for retiring gracefully while she was still an amazing performer. I saw clips of Dionne Warwick performing in the last couple of years and she’s absolutely diabolical. Her voice sounds ravaged through years of smoking and she no longer has anything more than an octave left at most. Just living off the name these days unfortunately.
She seems to only be work a net of 500k. Richard, by comparison is 10million. That adds a little insight.
 
She seems to only be work a net of 500k. Richard, by comparison is 10million. That adds a little insight.

Dionne's financial troubles have been well documented over the years and unfortunately she never seems to have gotten on top of them, hence the constant touring and the subsequent toll it has taken on her voice. I saw her live about 15 years ago though and although her voice was not as strong as it was in her heyday, it was still pretty good. She certainly was a terrific performer once upon a time.

That said, Gladys Knight sounded as good as she did in the 1960s/1970s when I saw her live a few years ago!
 
Dionne's financial troubles have been well documented over the years and unfortunately she never seems to have gotten on top of them, hence the constant touring and the subsequent toll it has taken on her voice. I saw her live about 15 years ago though and although her voice was not as strong as it was in her heyday, it was still pretty good. She certainly was a terrific performer once upon a time.

That said, Gladys Knight sounded as good as she did in the 1960s/1970s when I saw her live a few years ago!
I have noticed an incredible inner beauty shining from Dionne Warwick during interviews that I've seen. Or call it charisma - but whatever it is, you are really hit by it.
 
Not really "rare", but thanks to TJ Lubinsky, DC Video, and PBS, here are three of my favorite Carpenters Christmas videos that I've uploaded to YouTube.







Audio for "Merry Christmas Darling" from the c. 1984 master of Christmas Portrait (Special Edition).

Audio for "The Christmas Song" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" from The Complete Singles.

Enjoy! (I may also post "Make Me Laugh" from the Dorothy Hamill Special and/or the Karen + Christy McNichol duo. What do you all think? I know Billy Rees is doing a good job already with a lot of these obscure/rare performances that have recently surfaced.)
 
Not really "rare", but thanks to TJ Lubinsky, DC Video, and PBS, here are three of my favorite Carpenters Christmas videos that I've uploaded to YouTube.







Audio for "Merry Christmas Darling" from the c. 1984 master of Christmas Portrait (Special Edition).

Audio for "The Christmas Song" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" from The Complete Singles.

Enjoy! (I may also post "Make Me Laugh" from the Dorothy Hamill Special and/or the Karen + Christy McNichol duo. What do you all think? I know Billy Rees is doing a good job already with a lot of these obscure/rare performances that have recently surfaced.)

Hi all,

Wanted to let you folks know that I'm in the process of upscaling various videos to 1080p on YouTube... I've noticed that uploading at 480p or even sometimes at 720p leads to suboptimal compression on the YouTube side.

I also color-corrected "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" on the Perry Como Christmas Show. For some reason, a big chunk of the Carpenters' appearance on that TV special is way too saturated with reds, so the TV set was looking more purple and less blue. I tried to balance the color to not look too blue, but not to have Karen and Richard look sunburnt like they were on the DVD. :)


I hope you enjoy!
 


Although this looks identical to the Gold: Greatest Hits version on the surface, it's really clear to me that this is a totally different film transfer, and "WarmerMusicVideos" uploaded it in 1080p HD. one neat little thing--at the very end, after Karen sings "we are your friends," it fades out (almost to black) rather than stopping like on Gold: Greatest Hits.

Anyone have any information on when/where this video was first aired? Wikipedia says "Starparade" in 1977.
 
Hi all,

Wanted to let you folks know that I'm in the process of upscaling various videos to 1080p on YouTube... I've noticed that uploading at 480p or even sometimes at 720p leads to suboptimal compression on the YouTube side.

I also color-corrected "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" on the Perry Como Christmas Show. For some reason, a big chunk of the Carpenters' appearance on that TV special is way too saturated with reds, so the TV set was looking more purple and less blue. I tried to balance the color to not look too blue, but not to have Karen and Richard look sunburnt like they were on the DVD. :)


I hope you enjoy!
You have to remember that the Como special was shot on 1970’s 2-inch NTSC videotape. An old joke in the industry was “Never The Same Color” since in the analog days, especially with composite, NTSC color would drift out of synch and it needed monitoring to make sure it stayed the same. And that’s why NTSC TV sets always had a HUE control, whereas PAL & SECAM didn’t. Really, color in the NTSC system was “shoe-horned” into the already existing black-and-white signal.

Also with YouTube, for SD content, I find that I get the best results by uploading a DV-AVI (orDV-MOV on Mac) file at 25Mbps, in progressive scan, and the YouTube’s compression algorithms don’t butcher it, like they do if you upload something in the single digits (YouTube’s SD bitrate is right around 2Mbps for playback, so if you upload something right around that bitrate it’s going to get chopped up.)
 
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You have to remember that the Como special was shot on 1970’s 2-inch NTSC videotape. An old joke in the industry was “Never The Same Color” since in the analog days, especially with composite, NTSC color would drift out of synch and it needed monitoring to make sure it stayed the same. And that’s why NTSC TV sets always had a HUE control, whereas PAL & SECAM didn’t. Really, color in the NTSC system was “shoe-horned” into the already existing black-and-white signal.

Also with YouTube, for SD content, I find that I get the best results by uploading a DV-AVI (orDV-MOV on Mac) file at 25Mbps, in progressive scan, and the YouTube’s compression algorithms don’t butcher it, like they do if you upload something in the single digits (YouTube’s SD bitrate is right around 2Mbps for playback, so if you upload something right around that bitrate it’s going to get chopped up.)
This is some really good insight, thank you! If I'm not mistaken most of the US used/uses NTSC, right? Do you know what medium MYOKOM and the five Carpenters TV specials were shot on and edited on?

I will also try to upload DV-AVI at 25 Mbps. Maybe I'll have to re-up some of my content (again) and see what process works.
 


Although this looks identical to the Gold: Greatest Hits version on the surface, it's really clear to me that this is a totally different film transfer, and "WarmerMusicVideos" uploaded it in 1080p HD. one neat little thing--at the very end, after Karen sings "we are your friends," it fades out (almost to black) rather than stopping like on Gold: Greatest Hits.

Anyone have any information on when/where this video was first aired? Wikipedia says "Starparade" in 1977.

I've read accounts of people seeing the video for CALLING OCCUPANTS in movie theaters in 1977.
 
This is some really good insight, thank you! If I'm not mistaken most of the US used/uses NTSC, right? Do you know what medium MYOKOM and the five Carpenters TV specials were shot on and edited on?

I will also try to upload DV-AVI at 25 Mbps. Maybe I'll have to re-up some of my content (again) and see what process works.
MYOMOM & the 5 specials would’ve been shot on NTSC videotape (MYOMOM would’ve been on 2-inch, while the specials could’ve been shot on 2-inch, 1-inch Type-C or U-Matic)—-unless they were shot on film, in which case film wouldn’t be affected by NTSC, but film could also be shot at 30fps the close to NTSC’s 29.97 FPS, but I’m not aware of the shows using it except for certain sequences. Like in the Como Christmas show, when you get to the penguin scene, if you notice when the scene starts, Peggy’s movements get jerk for a few seconds, as if they went to 24fps and then the rest of the scene is smooth, and I think that was because the Penguins would’ve been animated on film (and they might’ve transferred Peggy’s skating to film for the compositing so that they didn’t loose quality), and that sequence might’ve been edited at 24 as a test, but when they realized the problems with Peggy, they probably continued the animation at 30fps.

But Japan also used NTSC, slightly altered, but “Live At Budokahn” would’ve been from NTSC videotape, and the videos of “Live In London” that are still around all seem to be sourced from Japanese NTSC copies, while London would’ve originally been shot in PAL and converted to NTSC for Japan.
 
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