Carpenters "The Nation's Favourites" compilation coming in the UK

I've just caught up with it and without any adverts it was about an hour in length, so am thinking it had an hour and thirty minutes slot in the schedule. I was surprised that it followed something as big as 'X Factor' and ITV clearly saw it as something that would be popular and worthy of primetime.

Just caught it (thank you ITV), and I thought it was one of the best things done on the Carpenters I've seen in years. Some snippets of new footage (outtakes from the "All You Get From Love" video!) and pictures I've never seen before. It does give one hope that someday maybe some of the complete concerts available (UK, Japan, Australia, Holland) will be remastered for DVD or Blu-Ray. I'd take that for the 50th.

It amazes me sometimes that here in the States critics sometimes still give the side-eye to the Carpenters and their "image" and their soft music (i.e. the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stuff and the Terry Gross/NPR "corny" lines) yet in the UK (and Japan) the Carpenters still treated without a trace of irony as master musicians and huge stars. Pretty much all of the best Carpenters documentaries since the nineties (and there have been several) have come out of Britain. Good for them.

I was a little surprised at some of the choices (including number one, which I never think of as the "best" Carpenters song or even in my own top 5). It was a very British-centric list, and I guess I should have expected that. We've talked on these forums on how "It's Going to Take Some Time" is something of an old shame for the Carpenters (their first post-"Close to You" song to go out of the top 10 and one they never performed in concert or talked about) and "Jambalaya" didn't even get a single release in the U.S. and both were on this list.

I thought the same about Richard being 'done' with interviews, which is why I cynically thought this would just be rehash of past interviews. Richard is looking pretty good but you can tell that it still upsets him to talk about Karen, but if he lives to be 100 I'm sure that won't change. Time is a great healer that's true, but it doesn't heal completely something as deep as Karen's death.

It is definitely worth a watch as the progamme makers weaved in other tracks as well as the 'top 20' which worked really well. There were also a lot of good contributors.

As others have said, I am not sure how this 'top 20' was voted for but it was still worth watching.

I was very heartened to see Richard (he looked very good). I too thought he was "done" but clearly that may only be about releasing new material. Clearly, he is still willing to talk about the Carpenters legacy, which gives me hope for him doing something for the 50th. I've seen complaints online over the years about how Richard seemed rather unemotional during the 80s when discussing Karen, but it seems to me that with every interview he gives as the years pass you can see and hear the pain of her loss even more keenly. Usually its the other way around. I think that speaks volumes about Richard and about Karen as a person and their relationship (those who are close to their siblings will know what I'm talking about. In addition, when you hear people who knew her like John Bettis, Paul Williams, Petula Clark, Joe Osbourne, Hal Blaine, Frankie Chavez, Herb and Jerry and even the guys from Klatuu with their signed Passage album from KC and RC, speak about her, its as if she hasn't really been gone for over three decades, but it was "only yesterday" (if you pardon the pun). That's the sign of a strong indelible "star" personality.

I did like they didn't harp on the disease, even though it had to come up (along with the Sue Lawley interview) just to tell the story, and thought the editing talking about her death while a young and healthy (Bob Hope Show) Karen sings "A Song for You" was well done.

Sometimes I get a little upset in these documentaries when they always have to open it telling us how brilliant RC is and how he created the Carpenters sound and how he made the Carpenters happen (as if we didn't know), and then I realize they have to do that because they are going to spend the next hour literally gushing over Karen Carpenter. In a way I think Herb and Jerry were right that it was a shame that Karen "never realized how great she was" but on the other hand I wonder if back in 1982 (before her passing) people around her or in the music industry or media, understood that either. It's only now when we see the influence of her voice on other singers and the impossibility of re-creating the Carpenters "sound" without her, that we get it. When Richard says at the end that Karen was "a really good person, a very nice person, and just so incredibly gifted, and even though she lived only 32 years, her voice will live forever", I have to think she (and anyone else) would be pleased. That's a heck of an epitaph.
 
I've seen complaints online over the years about how Richard seemed rather unemotional during the 80s when discussing Karen, but it seems to me that with every interview he gives as the years pass you can see and hear the pain of her loss even more keenly. Usually its the other way around.

I've noticed that in recent documentaries as well. It seems like it touches a raw nerve with him more now than it did in the years immediately after her passing. Who knows, maybe he was still in shock relatively speaking during those years. Grief is a strange thing.
 
After channel 5's pretty bad ventures in the last 2 years I was dubious about this ITV doc. . . .but I loved it. It snapped along, was well edited, new footage both archive and for the doc. . .I learnt new things (not something that happens often). Only thing is, I'd have liked the running length maybe another 20 minutes as we rarely get to hear more than 5 seconds of a track uninterrupted.

Aside from that, very good. . .and Richard seemed relaxed, probs coz it was virtually all about the music, not the disease/image, . . and he looked great, more like 50 than 70.

Laters

Neil
 
I enjoyed seeing Jim and Andrea Corr of The Corrs talking about Carpenters and their influence upon themselves. One of the things that attracted me to The Corrs was their use of sibling harmony - exactly that which first attracted me to Carpenters. Someone on the discussion board for The Corrs mentioned that the totality of their participation was all of six seconds, but actually they had a number of short segments during the full show.
 
I have yet to view this show, but, I am curious:
Richard continues to "downplay" There's A Kind of Hush
while praising Touch Me When We're Dancing ?
Musically speaking, I prefer the former to the later.
Arrangement-wise the group Bama released their version in 1979,
and Richard's arrangement is not so disparate from that earlier version,
whereas Hush has Richard's imprint all over it.
I believe it is more a psychological barrier--one song portending the decline,
while the other single being the "comeback" song.
My two cents--more was going on to sabotage their career in the mid-late 70's
than simply the recording/releasing of There's A Kind of Hush.
Yes, it's a remake, but many of their songs were remakes, so why downplay Hush ?
 
I have yet to view this show, but, I am curious:
Richard continues to "downplay" There's A Kind of Hush
while praising Touch Me When We're Dancing ?
Musically speaking, I prefer the former to the later.
Arrangement-wise the group Bama released their version in 1979,
and Richard's arrangement is not so disparate from that earlier version,
whereas Hush has Richard's imprint all over it.
I believe it is more a psychological barrier--one song portending the decline,
while the other single being the "comeback" song.
My two cents--more was going on to sabotage their career in the mid-late 70's
than simply the recording/releasing of There's A Kind of Hush.
Yes, it's a remake, but many of their songs were remakes, so why downplay Hush ?

I'm with Richard on this one. Touch Me is a classy, sophisticated return to form for them, as was reflected in its chart position. Gorgeous arrangement and I think it's got Richard's stamp on it, from the strings to the vocal arrangement.

Hush sounds tired and listless by comparison, like the album it came from. I also think of all the songs they could have chosen to cover, this was a pretty uninspired one.

I was quite disappointed that Touch Me only scraped in at #20. I'd have put Hush or It's Going To Take Some Time in that slot.
 
Thanks for the link, Newvillefan !
I'm half-an-hour in and already I am struck by one thing:
Is it me, or, are John Bettis and Richard Carpenter both
"downplaying" how truly great a pop song
"Only Yesterday" is ?
 
Very nicely done.
After completing this very well done program, I am struck with Hal Blaine's comment:
"When Karen Carpenter died in 1983 it was the end of an era."

I concur.
 
I have yet to view this show, but, I am curious:
Richard continues to "downplay" There's A Kind of Hush
while praising Touch Me When We're Dancing ?
Musically speaking, I prefer the former to the later.
Arrangement-wise the group Bama released their version in 1979,
and Richard's arrangement is not so disparate from that earlier version,
whereas Hush has Richard's imprint all over it.
I believe it is more a psychological barrier--one song portending the decline,
while the other single being the "comeback" song.
My two cents--more was going on to sabotage their career in the mid-late 70's
than simply the recording/releasing of There's A Kind of Hush.
Yes, it's a remake, but many of their songs were remakes, so why downplay Hush ?

MIA seems to be Richard's favorite album (or one of them). Not surprisingly since it is very much a "Richard Carpenter" production. "Touch Me" hit the top #20, after a three year break for the C's, and showed they still had it. AKOH was the beginning of the great decline. He has downplayed or disregarded much of the other latter-day Carpenters work (due to his sleeping pill issues probably) and I don't think he thinks much of the AKOH album (and has basically said that two of the tracks "Goofus" and "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" were mistakes to record). On this I tend to agree with him. I'm not a huge fan of "Touch Me" but in terms of overall production, performance and arrangement it is one of the best things they did post-Horizon and it is the best overall track on MIA.

On the other end "A Kind of Hush" even though it went to #12 is just sorta blah. I think the music critic commentator on the show (blanking on the name) sort of explained my own problem with it. By that time the Carpenters had such a solid catalog of hits that was all the public wanted to hear so they were recording covers of songs that were already monster hits less than a decade before - and NOT making them any better. In the later 70s, under Weintraub, they had turned into a touring band just playing covers of other people's hits, their own old songs and shtick like the Grease medley.

In this "A Kind of Hush" was the greatest transgressor in that not only was it the first (and therefore in A&M's eyes the strongest) single off the LP but they named the whole album after it! If you are going to have this song be the "face" (for lack of a better term) of the entire album, then it should be great, or at least comparable to the Hermit's Hermits version. But it's not. It plays like album filler and yet was the most important song on the LP (especially marketing/sales wise). Richard's own thoughts can be found on the Gold liner notes (according to wiki): "...In hindsight, however, even though our version was a hit, I wish we'd never recorded it. Here are three reasons why: (1) The original was, and is, perfectly fine. (2) Our foray into the oldies should have ended with the medley featured on side 2 of Now & Then, 1973. (3) The use of a synthesizer in some of our recordings has not worn well with me, on this track, or just about any other track on which I used it."

Sometimes, I disagree with Richard's many regrets and feel that had Karen lived he would not have them (i.e. downplaying his role in Christmas Portrait or his complete loathing of the TV specials which she seemed to enjoy making) but in this case I think he's absolutely right on the problems with Hush. I'm surprised it went that high on this list - I guess the Brits think more of it than Americans do.

Thanks for the link, Newvillefan !
I'm half-an-hour in and already I am struck by one thing:
Is it me, or, are John Bettis and Richard Carpenter both
"downplaying" how truly great a pop song
"Only Yesterday" is ?

Given how OY was Richard and John's admitted attempt to just manufacture a radio hit, maybe they don't have any emotional attachment to it (despite the fact it was indeed a hit)? Compare that to the very personal "I Need to Be in Love" which seems to be not only Karen's personal favorite, but a favorite of John and Richard's still, even though it was a disappointment on the charts.
 
Thanks for the link, Newvillefan !
I'm half-an-hour in and already I am struck by one thing:
Is it me, or, are John Bettis and Richard Carpenter both
"downplaying" how truly great a pop song
"Only Yesterday" is ?

You're welcome :)

I thought that too. Almost as if they didn't rate it amongst their singles and yet, in my book, it's one of their best.
 
Why is it that after you watch these kind of specials it makes you want to buy the CD when I already told myself I wasn't going to purchase it. :sigh:

I really enjoyed watching this one, still an odd top 20 list and postman is #1? I didn't realize it was that popular in the UK. It seems they used a lot of the ITV footage rights. I saw one still concert photo b/w of Karen when they were discussing her low 75' weight drop. I have never seen that one before it was at about 35:43 into the program. I don't think this program will ever reach the U.S. since it's pushing the sale of the UK CD.
 
Enjoyed the programme but dissapointed in richard's reaction to "only yesterday",as it is one of my favourite carpenters songs.my top 20 would be quite different with " your baby doesn't love you anymore","trying to get the feeling again"and "a song for you" as well as "happy" I'd have in mine just for starters.
 
I do have a few questions:
(1) When was Richard Carpenter interviewed for this Program ?
As, he looks and sounds quite different from the Perry Como DVD extras.
(2) Has Klaatu listened to the entire Album Passage ?
As they refer to the Album as "Passages" in this program.
(3) Again, the Postman Video: In the 40th DVD he states that he wasn't smiling
due to the equivalent of motion sickness on the rides.
However, that is no longer brought up. In this program it is his unhappiness with
the "image"---how this video of Postman plays on the image problem--but, really
the image did not become a "problem" until after this video was shot. (That is,
a problem in the sense of faltering sales and chart positions for the duo).
(4) Richard was all smiles in 1973 for the Robert Young/Sing TV spot. And,
goes on to say how A&M were resistant to the song (bad for image) and, yet,
he championed its recording and release.
 
In this program it is his unhappiness with
the "image"---how this video of Postman plays on the image problem--but, really
the image did not become a "problem" until after this video was shot. (That is,
a problem in the sense of faltering sales and chart positions for the duo).

When he talks about their image problem, he's referring to all the album covers and promo pictures from 1969 up to that point. I think his point is that Disneyland, yet again, was too cutesy pie and whiter than white for them.

It brings to mind his comments during the interview for the documentary "The Carpenters' Story: Only Yesterday":

"To this day that thing is still in print thankfully, I mean because it's a good album, but it is one crappy cover"
 
Gotta say, having actually seen Karen's black SL in person, it was a little eerie watching the B-roll clip of K&R on the A&M lot with Herb Alpert, with the SL parked in front of the studio door in the background.

KAC Collage 4.jpg
 
Just watched this - of all the documentaries, and I think I've seen all of them, this might be the best. Doesn't have as much detail on their early career, but a great rundown of their hits. Richard looks great, you would think he might get tired of being interviewed for these, but he still seems happy to do it. Well done, ITV. A little surprised at no. 1, but it was their biggest worldwide hit.
 
Thank you so much, those of you who shared links! Thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. Heavy on music, lighter on tragedy.

I appreciated hearing their peers, from the 70's through current, commenting on how much they love and appreciate the Carpenters legacy. Much to my surprise (judging from the kind of press they got in the 70's) their legacy lives on, with current singers.

I agree that Richard Carpenter looks great. Still that sadness behind his eyes.
 
Official Charts Midweek Sales Flash: Wednesday, September 7

"Country duo Ward Thomas' LP Cartwheels is currently No.1 in the Album chart, ahead of Jamie T's latest album Trick.
At No.3 is The Carpenters with the Nation's Favourite Songs,
while last week's No.1 Barbra Streisand moves from 1-4.
The No.5 position goes to new entry A Day To Remember with their album Bad Vibrations.
In the Singles chart, last week's No.1 Chainsmokers feat.
Halsey's Closer is still at No.1 followed by last week's No.2 Let Me Love You by DJ Snake feat. Justin Bieber."
Source:
ww.musicweek.com/digital/read/overnight-news-from-around-the-world-thursday-september-8/065896
 
In 5 hours we should have the official UK 100 released for this week. . . .rather excited actually. . . .the more sales of this baby in the UK, the more likely Universal might consider that some special 50th anniversary release would be financially viable.
 
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