newvillefan
I Know My First Name Is Stephen
This ^^^ is exactly how I was feeling the morning of October 8, 1996, waiting for the postman to deliver the solo album by mail order. Would it actually arrive or would there be some sort of notification that A&M had had second thoughts (again) and withdrawn it? I honestly remember thinking that. But no, the postman rang the doorbell and delivered it into my hands around 9.30am, right on the day of its release. I rushed upstairs to my room, unwrapped the cellophane, lifted the (mint green!) disc out of the jewel case, put on my headphones, lay on the floor and pressed play...
••••••••••••
Interlude: I'd heard the first batch of solo tracks on 'Lovelines' in 1990 and had immediately fallen in love with them. They stood out from all the other songs on that album as a total breath of fresh air - and many friends and relatives I played them to said the same. Here was sultry, sexy Karen. Not what I'd been used to in the past - and I loved the sound. It was like someone had rejuvenated her and brought her into the 1990s. Two more tracks followed on the box set a year later, that I loved just as much. The minute I saw the '1979' date on the rear cover and read Richard's "from the sublime to the disco with this catchy period piece" comment, I knew this was more solo material. Now we had six tracks. Then in 1995 came the Yahoo group bootleg tape, with the rest of the material sounding like Karen was on helium and singing at 1.5x the usual speed, because it had been copied countless times, degrading the overall quality to the point where they were virtually unlistenable. I was nervous...the sound quality was awful and it was impossible to gauge what the production values were like on the rest of these tracks. I remember wondering whether that's why the album had been shelved and that the ones I'd heard on 'Lovelines' only sounded that good because Richard had slaved over them to complete them from their awful-sounding, unfinished state.
••••••••••••
...anyway, back to my bedroom floor. As soon as I heard the opening drums of 'Lovelines', I knew this wasn't going to be a simple cut and paste job from the 1989 Carpenters album. The intro was longer, the mix was different and Karen's voice didn't sound as 'present' on that particular track. It didn't bother me too much - I was just relieved that all the other tracks I'd heard on that dodgy cassette tape were also in amazing , sparkling stereo quality and when I read the liner notes, it became apparent they had been finished all along. Up to that point, we had been led to believe from various sources that the album was never completed, and that this was the reason it had been shelved. Yet here was Phil Ramone telling us in the liner notes that the song selections, mixes and everything else were exactly as Karen has approved them. I have to say, one emotion I remember feeling was of being duped, and cheated on Karen's behalf.
Regarding the artwork and photography that we have discussed so much on this thread, I remember looking at it thinking it was dire, but not caring too much, because I was far more interested in the liner notes and the prize that was inside.
I've left a track-by-track commentary on several other threads so I won't repeat it again here. Suffice to say, I've still got that original CD and it's still an album I can put on any time and enjoy immensely. Was it her greatest musical moment? Of course not. But the fact it's all her, that she sounds great, that she poured her heart and soul into it and that the tracks still hold up today, makes it just as special to me almost thirty years on as it was the day I first heard it in its entirety.
Last edited:
). Great times that we still reminisce about now, even though they were 20 years after the original era.
