Carole King's "Tapestry"

But apart from that..... I mean Carole was a grebt songwriter...but she doesnt hold a candle to Joni or Laura Nyro....

Blue is a zillion times the album that Tapestry is....

When I feel alone and let down by love I listen to "The Last Time I Saw Richard"...and blub my eyes out!....ahem....not very manly of me ...but there ya go...

"Richard married a figure skater
he brought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolater"

....Carole King never wrote anything that grebt.

word up

But, beware: Big Statement coming! Her later single 'Jazzman' (which I only ever heard on Kasey Kasam's American Top 40 show, where from memory it reached no 7 sometime late in 1974) is one of the best of all time.

Re Gordy L: Loved 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'. Didn't mind 'Read My Mind' or 'Sundown'.

There's a guy called Cliff Portwood whose albums I have ONLY EVER seen in thrift shops, and who I have otherwise never heard of.

I think it's crap.

I do have to admit my own cringeworthy experience of a Carole King live show video I saw once, which cut to her Big Chill audience mouthing the words along to "You Got A Friend", clinging like shellshocked life-victims to a guru's every platitude. epitome of singersongwriter blahness! I thought - ha, how radical was I ? (this is the enemy?)

Carole King is on my mind though, cos "Snow Queen", in both the Roger Nichols & the Small Circle Of Friends and Carole King & The City versions, is one of my new favourite songs.

interesting parallel with Judy Henske too - both of them left their husbands for new bandmates.

After a decade of launching other people's hits, she got the itch to sing again. Bad choice. Some good songs, though.

you say this like it's a bad thing

it's a good album, really good

not neccesarily. But it's sheer ubiquity is pretty mind-boggling. I prefer The Carpenters, myself.

my mom likes this record a lot. i stole a copy of it since she hd two. i never listen to it. it's just there. i listened to it a few times when i first found it. then like... no. never.

Ned, if you're still on this thread: For chronological reference, Maggie May and It's Too Late were huge AM hits at the same time in the spring of 1971.

i'm not sure how anyone could call this rubbish?

short, sweet, tuneful songs, nice nasal voice, and that beautifully dry '70s piano-and-drums sound that i can't get enough of these days.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Sunday, March 28, 2004 9:29 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"i'm not sure how anyone could call this rubbish?"

At least sometimes, terminal rockists feel an insatiable need to flash their credentials.

Having never encountered it (to my knowledge), nothing has died since of course it never lived. The quandaries of existence set free!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, September 20, 2002 9:25 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

REALLY?

Other hypothetical Ned posts:

Having never encountered it (to my knowledge), no one has strummed my pain with his finger, so I have never been filled up by anyone's words.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, September 20, 2002 9:26 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Having never encountered it (to my knowledge), I am proud of not being vain, so yes, I do think that this song is not about me. ;-)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, September 20, 2002 9:28 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have never encountered it (to my knowledge), but I can certainly empathize with the notion of paradise being paved and turned into a parking lot.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, September 20, 2002 9:30 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sorry. Ned knows his shit, but I can't get over anyone my age not having a passing knowledge about Tapestry.

Sunny would get on to me for being a music snob right now, but fuck.

my boyfriend started playing it in the house and i was like who is this?

and then he told me. it was carole king.

I went through a huge Tapestry phase last semester. I went into a record store hoping/expecting to find it used, and I did, for like 5 dollars, and then it defined the next month of my life. J'adore.

i saw carole king in a supermarket a few years back. (no, she wasn't playing the dairy aisle). she looked good for a sixty something. late goffin/king tunes that showed up on notorious byrd brothers & head are like the pinnacles of psych pop imo. so for that she will always be classic. tapestry is alright, i can see how it got played out back in the day but that shouldn't count now.

Carole King?!?! Tapestry?!?!? O come on peeps. Carole King was a great songwriter among the ranks of Paul anka, JT and Carly simon. She was an icon in her day and everyone knew and could sing along with her lyrics no matter if it was your parents playing it or you were a teen or adult listening to it voluntarily at the time. I cannot believe that any one of you; especially you Ned, who is so savvy and knowledgeable in musicology, claim you have no remembered knowledge of her, Tapestry or her other stuff. Like manilow and anka, she has a huge catalog of songs although she herself may not have recorded them commercially herself. She wrote scads of songs that either she herself recorded or were recorded by others of her contemporary musicians. In fact, Tapestry was on the top of the Billboard charts for over 6 years in the mid '70s and won at least 4 Grammy's and was again up for album of the year in '82 against MJ's "Thriller" to which it finally lost and fell from the charts AFTER SIX YEARS. King, along with others like Neil Sedaka, James Taylor, and so many others were legendary fellows of the '70s songwriter genre. How can anyone be ignorant of this fact whether or not you're a fan? The album "Tapestry" was re-recorded in the early '90s covered by artists like the Bee Gees, Amy Grant, Celene Dion, Rod Stewart and Faith Hill to mention a few. If there wasn't some significant value to it, then I question why anyone would bother to re-record and release the same album. But this is just me, and just sayin.

I even did this one time:

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6256/tarexjpgdg8.jpg

watched tv with a cat?

</slocki>

carole is laughing at us all right to the bank. She has a steady income from music rights/royalties and doesn't have to do a thing she doesn't want to do. All this at only 66 years old. I don't know about the rest of you, but it sounds pretty effing awesome to me. My life should be so easy! <sigh> maybe in my next life. Ill be taller then too more than my current 5' 4".

i remember reading this thread the day it went up, it was not long after i began reading ilx and a while before i posted, and saying to myself, "who are these jokers".

yeah, ignorance is never a good starting point

12 Carole King Songs Every Gay Man Should Know

1. I Feel The Earth Move
2. So Far Away
3. It's Too Late
4. Home Again
5. Beautiful
6. Way Over Yonder
7. You've Got A Friend
8. Where You Lead
9. Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
10. Smackwater Jack
11. Tapestry
12. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman

this album is great.

new deluxe version about to drop, with live voice/piano demos of eleven of the twelve songs...

love this album muchly.

Like I need an excuse--I only post this 17 times a year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKTIxP54-54

Thanks for the reminder, by the way, StanM--I'm going to use this today teaching.

Here's something: it's also the 50th anniversary of her BBC show, which you can either watch piecemeal or in its entirety on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqwLrJ6QWho

So that was recorded on the same day Tapestry was released.

my pleasure! :-)

Opens here next week:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26420051/

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQHR1J9i8tI

"Locked in a vault for 50 years" sounds so much more impressive than "collected dust on a shelf in a storage room".

I wish the show were two years earlier, the actual year of Tapestry, but I'm still excited to see it. The horn section all wearing St. Louis Blues jerseys made me laugh.

"Locked in a vault for 50 years" sounds so much more impressive than "collected dust on a shelf in a storage room".

If Geraldo taught us anything about vaults it's that they raise unreasonably high expectations.

Jeez, the album even has a cat on the cover. What the fuck sort of bug crawled up ILE's ass 20 years ago?

back when the album came out it had its share of haters. they were a minority, but not a tiny one

IIRC the same group of early ILXers despised Joni Mitchell, so

I wish the show were two years earlier, the actual year of Tapestry

There probably would have been a lot less people there.

Looks great but trailer has an SNL type feeling

surely this thread should be moved to ILM ?

i have a 2cd reissue, and dont think i have ever listened to it.
so, cos of this revival i suspect it's time to dig it out

checks discogs ..
turns out i have a bit of a rare reissue

https://www.discogs.com/release/2307068-Carole-King-Tapestry

Do they still have big free shows in Central Park? I know they have smaller-stage things throughout the summer, but are those 100K+ events a thing of the past?

dont think i have ever listened to it. it's time to dig it out

I'm genuinely interested in reading the first take of anyone who's not heard this album before. If that's you, plz let us know what you thought of it.

There probably would have been a lot less people there.

For sure--you can't really have both, the moment and the massive crowd. The BBC show above would almost certainly be better performance-wise, I'm sure (still haven't gotten around to watching it).