Carole King's "Tapestry"

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.

Aw yeah. People be goin' crazy an' shit when that Carole King drops. Sheeeeit.

the first post is perplexing, carole king is obv great.

Carole talked to Obama supporters in my town today. I reported on it. I asked her a question about the difference between campaigning in 2004 and in 2008. Then I had her sign my copy of Tapestry because i'm a music reporter, not a news reporter.

you are the coolest

Well Tape....share for pity's sake. Waddid you ask specifically and waddid she say specifically. She's a Dem, I used to rep her and her kid Louise Goffin who was involved and had kids with a Oscar winner, Steve Gaghan, but that's another story.

Do tell....

You lucked out, TS. The only celebrity I saw campaign there in '92 was Fonzie standing on a tree stump in Peace Park.

(And Al Gore too, on the quad.)

she sang You've Got a Friend with the crowd

mccain was here yesterday

he ate ribs or some shit and then left

She came to my hometown four years ago, campaigning for John Kerry in the Iowa Caucus. At a meet-n-greet prior to her talk & brief performance, people were getting records autographed, invariably "Tapestry". I was standing in line with a copy of "Writer", my personal favorite, and when she saw me like five people away, she stopped in mid-sentence, looked at the record and said, "Duuude!" Then she was very cool about taking a break to talk songs with me & my daughter for a couple of minutes.

Anyway, Tapestry classic, Carole King classy.

Fuck the (mostly British) haters, I had a cassette version of Tapestry and played it in my car all through late high school. She sings in the perfect register for me to squack along since I have one of those dusty alto voices, and "Smackwater Jack" is my karaoke stand-by.

"Home Again" makes me cry every time, like clockwork, and "Where You Lead" firmed my resolve to someday throw my lot in with the man of my heart and fit my dreams to his. Which hasn't quite worked out and chances are I'd stab him with a grapefruit spoon in that scenario but hey, I was 17.

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).