leadmister
Well-Known Member
About a year ago, I started delving more deeply into the solo sessions, starting with the solo album. I have to admit it wasn't always my cup of tea and I considered it to be a half-assed effort by Richard to just be like, "Meh. There it is. Now get off my back about it." Accepting that most decent albums have some sort of cohesive theme between tracks, I found the selections on the 1996 solo album release to be disjointed and a general mess. So I set about to evaluate other possible track orders and combinations.
What started with a single album imagining ended with a double album. I found that the 21 available tracks could be reasonably separated into 2 categories - Rock and Disco. I came up with a rough concept of Vol 1. being called Karen Carpenter YOLO (You Only Live Once) for the Rock album and Vol 2. being called Karen Carpenter DOLO (Disco Only Lives Once). It provides continuity of themes beginning with titles and ending with genres. I applied light remastering and cross faded a couple tracks into one, then burned them onto discs and lived with them in my car on the way to and from work for a few weeks. What I ended up with is an extremely viable and pleasing way to get all of those tracks out there should Richard decide to pull the trigger on that part of the catalog.
Anyway, here's what I came up with for track listings:
Karen Carpenter YOLO
1. Still In Love With You
2. Jimmy Mack
3. All Because Of You
4. Something's Missing (In My Life)
5. Making Love In The Afternoon
6. I Do It For Your Love
7. Truly You
8. Make Believe It's Your First Time
9. Still Crazy After All These Years
10. Last One Singin' The Blues
Karen Carpenter DOLO
1. Remember When Lovin' Took All Night
2. My Body Keeps Changing My Mind
3. Don't Try To Win Me Back Again
4. It's Really You
5. Guess I Just Lost My Head
6. If I Had You
7. If We Try
8. Lovelines
9. Keep My Lovelight Burning
10. Midnight/Love Making Love To You (Cross faded these to deal with the abrupt ending after Midnight and because I though they went together surprisingly well)
The album cover idea I came up with is a picture of Karen from those sessions that I rotoscoped, which is my profile avatar. With the tracks arranged into a double album, and with each half being themed appropriately, I found myself enjoying every one of these tracks from the solo sessions immensely, and I still play them from time to time. There is quite a bit of merit to many fans' claims that there was a lot of good material recorded at that time and if done right, it could have been a successful release. Needless to say, I am now a big fan of her solo work.
What started with a single album imagining ended with a double album. I found that the 21 available tracks could be reasonably separated into 2 categories - Rock and Disco. I came up with a rough concept of Vol 1. being called Karen Carpenter YOLO (You Only Live Once) for the Rock album and Vol 2. being called Karen Carpenter DOLO (Disco Only Lives Once). It provides continuity of themes beginning with titles and ending with genres. I applied light remastering and cross faded a couple tracks into one, then burned them onto discs and lived with them in my car on the way to and from work for a few weeks. What I ended up with is an extremely viable and pleasing way to get all of those tracks out there should Richard decide to pull the trigger on that part of the catalog.
Anyway, here's what I came up with for track listings:
Karen Carpenter YOLO
1. Still In Love With You
2. Jimmy Mack
3. All Because Of You
4. Something's Missing (In My Life)
5. Making Love In The Afternoon
6. I Do It For Your Love
7. Truly You
8. Make Believe It's Your First Time
9. Still Crazy After All These Years
10. Last One Singin' The Blues
Karen Carpenter DOLO
1. Remember When Lovin' Took All Night
2. My Body Keeps Changing My Mind
3. Don't Try To Win Me Back Again
4. It's Really You
5. Guess I Just Lost My Head
6. If I Had You
7. If We Try
8. Lovelines
9. Keep My Lovelight Burning
10. Midnight/Love Making Love To You (Cross faded these to deal with the abrupt ending after Midnight and because I though they went together surprisingly well)
The album cover idea I came up with is a picture of Karen from those sessions that I rotoscoped, which is my profile avatar. With the tracks arranged into a double album, and with each half being themed appropriately, I found myself enjoying every one of these tracks from the solo sessions immensely, and I still play them from time to time. There is quite a bit of merit to many fans' claims that there was a lot of good material recorded at that time and if done right, it could have been a successful release. Needless to say, I am now a big fan of her solo work.