Sunrise (Eric Carmen) (LP 1099 - 2001)

Eric Carmen   Eric Carmen (Vinyl, Arista Records, 1975) ***  

Eric Carmen   Boats Against The Current (Vinyl, Arista Records, 1977) ****

Eric Carmen   Change Of Heart (Vinyl, Arista Records, 1978) ***

Genre: pop/rock 

Places I remember: Marbecks Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Sunrise (Eric Carmen)

Gear costume: She Did It (Boats Against The Current)

Active compensatory factors: I've picked Sunrise off his first solo album because it's the first track on the album and it sums up his gifts well.

The Raspberries albums are all in my collection, and Eric is responsible for many of their great songs. The solo albums are different to that band's output though. The rough edges are smoothed over, sometimes too much, and he misses having strong collaborators.

That first solo album is also a bit uneven, with side one having all the hits. Great hits they are too - apart from Sunrise, side one features a couple of huge selling weepies: All By Myself and Never Gonna Fall In Love Again.

The second album, Boats Against The Current, is something of an under-rated gem in my eyes. Carmen at his rocky best - Take It Or leave It is a song that Rod Stewart would cover effortlessly, and the ballads are of his usual high quality. Plus the album hangs together better and ends with Runaway - an 8 minute epic.

Change Of Heart continues the path towards overly slick commercialism. It does contain some good moments - the title track and the cover of Baby, I Need Your Lovin' are great. Even Hey Deanie is cool and catchy (or trite and shallow depending on your mood). But all up, the album is a bit too Toto for my taste.

Where do they all belong? I didn't follow Eric into the eighties. Too slick for my money.

I set to sea on a ship called Emptiness (Eric Carmen) # 79

Eric Carmen She Did It/ Someday (Arista BL 345,  1977)

Eric had it all and he gave it all away.

The ecstasy he created in The Raspberries flamed out over a series of solo albums that produced diminishing returns. The Raspberries were a fantastic group - with Eric the Pete Ham/John Lennon of the band: rhythm guitar, great singer, great songwriter.

The eighties were not kind to him and although, yes, he had a couple of hits (Hungry Eyes from Dirty Dancing anyone?) the output and the quality dipped and then dwindled. Today he's pretty much retired and living off his royalties.

But in 1977 he still had it! Oh boy did he!

She Did It is a cool little song from the mostly excellent The Boats Against The Current album.

Hidden gem: The B side was left off Boats Against The Current but appeared on his next album, the patchy Change Of Heart. The decision pretty much shows what I mean about diminishing returns. Someday is good but not great, makes a great B side and is a worthy song but it wasn't considered strong enough to make BATC. Nuff said, I rest my case your honour. 

 

I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles...(The 'Oo)

I've reorganised my collection again and moved all the Greatest Hits compilations into their own section.

These compilations are often record company marketing decisions rather than artistic statements by musicians so I (mostly) feel justified in separating them.

There are always exceptions, though, where either the artist has an input or the collection just clicks or else the band is so great that every song is a must have. These are the ones I want to focus on. Here are some of my favourites.

The Who - Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy. When Pete Townshend reviewed the album for Rolling Stone magazine in 1971 he called it 'the greatest of Who albums'. As a celebration of 'Oo singles it is without peer. Hit after hit after hit after hit...

Favourite moment: My name is Bill and I'm a headcase (from I'm A Boy)

Neil Young - Decade. A bespoke collection from Mr Shakey himself. A perfect collection of his best moments, a lot of which were first released on this triple album!

Favourite moment: Winterlong.

The Raspberries - The Raspberries. Capitol put this out in 1991 under their Collectors Series banner and it scoops up all the hits by the best U.S. power pop band (Badfinger are, of course, the U.K.'s representative). Twenty tracks and every one delivers.

Favourite moment: Baby don't go!! Eric Carmen's heart felt cries (from If You Should Change Your Mind).

The Beach Boys - Ballads. The number of Beach Boys compilations must easily exceed the studio albums as repackaging of hits has continued throughout the years in a helter skelter fashion. Ballads contains twelve tracks and it goes without saying that all twelve are superb creations. The thematic idea of just including twelve ballads works brilliantly, much better that the Beatles' Ballads collection which had far too many tracks (20).

Favourite moment: Warmth Of The Sun captures the feeling of the warm rays in song. Everything great about the group is right there - the unique blend of voices, Brian's musical genius, Mike Love's succinct lyrics.



Mary Chapin Carpenter - Party Doll and Other Favorites. I've bought quite a few of her albums and so far none can compare to this compilation. It really shouldn't hold together as well as it does - there are live tracks, studio tracks including Jagger's weird title song and her brilliant version of Lennon's Grow Old With Me mixed in with the hits and album tracks.

Favourite moment: This shirt.



Ricky Nelson - 22 Golden Greats. This compilation is perfect - all the timeless hits from the whole of Ricky Nelson's career. Often because bands appear on different labels their career best collections fail to include all the good bits, frinstance I've not yet found a good Small Faces compilation. This one is a thorough and brilliant collection.

Favourite moment: Lonesome Town.



Lindisfarne - The Best of Lindisfarne. There are 16 reasons why Lindisfarne are an important band on this CD. Sixteen tracks is about perfect. I really much prefer a succinct CD like this to double CD bloated efforts.

Favourite moment: Lady Eleanor.



The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother. Like The Beach Boys, The Hollies have been compiled to death. I have a number of them and this is the best somehow. I think it's the sequencing of songs (it's definitely not a 'hits' collection). Again it shouldn't work - there is no chronology or even reason behind some of the selections and there are some notable omissions, instead, it's that unpredictability and depth that I like.

Favourite moment: The kitchen sink drama of Too Young To Be Married

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Every sha-la-la-la, every wo-wo-wo still shines (The Carpenters)

Greg's blog talked about the radio the other day and this got me thinking about great songs that are about the radio.

I love songs about the radio. Here are my top five:

1Yesterday Once More (The Carpenters)

(keep watching for an oldies medley)


2 Overnight Sensation (The Raspberries)

(beware the long title intro)


3 Caravan (Van Morrison)



4 Crusin' Music (The Raspberries)

5 On The Radio (Donna Summer) (it was a toss up for 5th place between this and Joni's You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio which is also great from the title on down but Donna's hystrionics won the day)
Surprised that my favourite is Yesterday Once More (The Carpenters)? I was a little bit too, because, really - the Carpenters?

Never cool, always the other side of twee thanks to Richard Carpenter's hair and shocking dress sense (and vocals!), and something of a guilty pleasure.

But they had a secret weapon. Karen Carpenter's voice. A thing of beauty it was to be sure.

The Raspberries were just a great Badfinger style Beatles influenced group (with a Who obsession as well). These two songs acknowledge how much they loved the radio and specifically how much they loved hearing themselves on the radio. I like this idea that they are also music fans (same with the Carpenter's song).

Same goes with Van the man. I love this ode to the radio - turn it up indeed!

The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same

24 Badfinger, ‘Without You’; 25 The Raspberries, ‘I Can Remember’

Although powerpop is a commercial construct, it does evoke a certain kind of song. As a sub-genre, it’s often linked to its parent - the Beatles. In reality powerpop’s only one facet of the Beatles and that’s the Paul McCartney Back In The USSR pop song facet. Macca, and The Beatles, were/are always much more than that. Nevertheless, I love the bands and songs that are often market under the ‘powerpop’ tag, even though there are often some weird groups shoehorned onto powerpop compilations – The Kinks? The Proclaimers? Buzzcocks? Joe Jackson? That would be – no, no, no, and no. But The Motors? The Cars? Electric Light Orchestra? The Records? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. What makes the difference – songs with beefy guitars, McCartney hooks, fuzzed up guitars, harmony vocals, scuzzed up multi-tracked guitars, a Ringo like drummer, riffy chords, they last about 3 minutes, no longer, and, oh, there are lots of guitars. Think Wings circa Band On The Run as the template.

All kidding aside, it is probably true that without McCartney a lot of these bands would have gone in very different directions and I wouldn’t be writing about Badfinger and The Raspberries right now. The Beatle comparisons don’t end there though.

The Beatles, Badfinger and The Raspberries were four piece bands whose resident genius was their rhythm guitarist (John Lennon, Pete Ham and Eric Carmen respectively). Both Badfinger/Raspberries recorded for Beatle related labels (The Raspberries for Capitol, but Badfinger win this battle as they were on Apple Records).

Even aside from Apple, Badfinger continue the Beatles comparison through McCartney’s (and later – Harrison’s) direct involvement. Badfinger started life as The Iveys (chosen to echo The Hollies). They were signed to Apple by Beatle roadie, Mal Evans, and were allowed to grow slowly. This was handy coz their Maybe Tomorrow album doesn’t give many hints of the greatness to come. Nor is it powerpop.

But then, along came Macca. He donated Come And Get It as a sure-fire single and Badfinger copied his lead note for note . Unfortunately, the rest of Magic Christian Music is only slightly better than The Iveys album, mainly because they rework many of the Ivey’s songs.

No Dice, however, is another thing altogether, and the first real Badfinger album on which Pete Ham shines. It contains his classics, No Matter What, Midnight Caller, We’re For The Dark and the great Without You.

In contrast, The Raspberries were one of those bands like Coldplay, Led Zeppelin and The Doors who arrived, album 1, fully formed. Who or what were they before they put out their first album? I’ve no idea. But their respective first albums –The Raspberries, Parachute, Led Zeppelin, The Doors – hit the ground running with a trademark sound. There are no awkward first albums to get the sound right as many have done, such as David Gray, Deep Purple, and Jefferson Airplane. Amazingly, The Raspberries even included an eight minutes long opus on their debut – I Can Remember.

I’ve linked these classic powerpop songs, Without You and I Can Remember, for this post because both songs deal with love withdrawn, denied or goneburger; a common theme within the powerpop world. They are great for when you want to wallow in self-pity. I even made a self-pity mix tape many moons ago and these were automatic choices. Eric Carmen has seldom done better. All By Myself is a great weepie but I Can Remember is CINERAMA in comparison.

Without You begins with I’m- resigned-to-this news that she’s left him and now he can’t live if he has to live without her. We know nothing else – apart from he let her go and she’s sad to go. It’s a little less fleshed out than Romeo and Juliet then. But this lack of information isn’t an issue in the song, because the music is so damned good. I just listen for those guitar bits that go ‘jerhuumm’ and who cares if the lyric is basically meaningless. I know, I know – I told you earlier that I’m a lyric man but Without You is a great example of the ‘less is more’ principle in the lyric department.

I Can Remember is much more expressive in comparison and things are more strung out time wise. Eric remembers the fun they had in summer, going into autumn (when she said goodbye and took off with another guy) and he’s looking forward to spring and a possible rebirth with the reappearance of the sun. But in the meantime the protagonist hurts so much he thinks he’ll die. Things get worse – he hurts more and more each day. It's still not Shakespeare though is it. No, stupid, it’s powerpop. Classic powerpop. If I wanted Shakespeare I’d listen to Aimee Mann.