music: Carpenters, and no apologies

Close to You: Remembering the Carpenters on PBS. I remember my Dad's friend dragging him in to hear "Ticket to Ride" and forcing a copy on him. It's an incredible debut record, I listened a lot to it and many subsequent albums. It's my parents' music, but it gave me the love of vocal harmony (in Yes and beyond) and appreciation of high-value production. The way they highlight certain instruments and the hi-hat and tom-toms, while bringing in washes of overdubbed harmonies on choruses. And throughout, Karen Carpenter's fantastic, deep voice, drenched in a blue deeper than melancholy. I know Bones Howe produced some of the later records, I'm not sure who produced particular ones. (Where's the IMDB equivalent for music?!)

I was amazed and almost repelled by Tony Peluso's screaming fuzz-tone electric guitar solo in the middle of "Goodbye to Love", which shows how sheltered my musical horizons were. He's too modest in the documentary, that was the genesis of the power ballad.

"I'll say goodbye to love, no one ever cared if I should live or die"
"Think I'm gonna be sad, She's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care"
"After long enough of being alone, nobody knew the pain I was going through"

Categories: music, Carpenters