OPO: Raspberries

(oops x-post sorry)

Drivin' Around

I like nearly everything I ever hear by them even though they're more Paul McCartney than he himself ever was.

Been listening through Power Pop Vols. 1 and 2 - how did I miss this stuff for so long? "I Can Remember" is epic!

this band is so criminally forgotten

Saw a great concert way back when: Eric Carmen (just post-Raspberries, but still doing all their hits with a crack new band) warming up for The Sweet circa "Desolation Boulevard."

"i wanna be with you" or "seemed so easy"

i've only heard the first one though, which is incredible

Anyone here heard Cyrus Erie's 'Get the Message'? Not Raspberries per se but that'd be my pick.

How about "On the Beach" from Side 3? Feels like it has about 7 parts -- including a great melancholy verse, a ridiculously optimistic chorus, a fast middle-8, and an excellent "I Want You/She's So Heavy" descending guitar pastiche with seagulls squawking in the background.

Will check that one out. Just heard this annoying cover of "Go All The Way" by The Killers and need to clear my ears.

man this band was really good

this song is sick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzX6wNjRZwI

seriously

otm

new favorite is "i saw the light"

tonight.

they have a lot of amazing songs though it's true

Usually just stick to the hits but this thread inspiring me to dig deeper. Anyway is there a thread for all-time best series of album openers because

Raspberries, "Go All The Way"
Fresh, "I Wanna Be With You"
Side 3, "Tonight"
Starting Over, "Overnight Sensation"

OK, tbh there are some boilerplate tracks buried in between the hits and the deep cuts that threaten to derail the listening experience.

their greatest hits, which is like 20 songs, is almost uniformly great

Yeah. With respect to the original albums, so far Side 3 seems to be the one for me. The big, um, wall of sound on every single track.

of their actual albums i've only heard fresh, which i thought was pretty even

Will listen again. Perhaps it will fall into place. If we close our eyes and believe it will all come true.

Love this rhythmic figure they use over and over again where the bass emphasizes the beats three four one. Kind of like a modified bolero.

Which songs have that?

"Tonight," "I Wanna Be You" right before the chorus.

Not hearing it on the last album though. Did hear a bass voice on the right channel of "Overnight Sensation" I never noticed before.

THREE FOUR ONE You looked too young to know about romance. Oh yes you did
THREE FOUR ONE But when you smiled I had to take a chance, I had to to take a chance and be with you
Tonight, I'll be with you tonight
Tonight, you'll love me too tonight

If we were older
ONE THREE FOUR ONE
We wouldn't have to be worried tonight
ONE (two) and THREE FOUR ONE
THREE FOUR ONE (= Ba-by Oh)
I wanna with you so bad
Yeah I wanna be with you

"Go All The Way" too

Please THREE FOUR ONE (=Ba-by go)

and elsewhere throughout the song

do u see?

Interesting stuff. I wonder if they got it from somewhere.

On another thread it was suggested that they borrowed heavily from The Small Faces.

I was just listening to The Beach Boys Today the other day and the chorus melody in "She Knows Me Too Well" rang the Raspberries bell. The descending part is also in the chorus of "Go All the Way."

I'm like a humungous Wally Bryson fan, btw.

OK, I did this:

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-raspberries-ecstasy-1973.html

Cool. Why does it say "tenor"? Also dominant prep chord, is that a V of V?

ahh I didn't know that, good on Wally

And ask the millions of young women who made it a staple of their coming-of-age.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 12, 2024 7:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

If you weren't a tween girl or gay when Dirty Dancing came out you don't get to shit all over it. It was life changing.

But on Eric C - I loved him so much when I was a kid. My mom bought me his greatest hits when I wouldn't stop talking about how "Make me Lose Control" was my favorite song lol. My mind was also blown when I figured out he was the singer from the Raspberries which didn't happen until I was in college listening to a power pop comp. Hell of a song writer.

I am starting to recall that back in the day when I was coming up you wouldn’t really hear them on the radio that much because they didn’t quite fit the formats for reasons discussed upthread.

I was pretty happy though when I called into my college radio station and they played “I Wanna Be With You” albeit after explaining “there was this group called The Raspberries.”

I know where I first heard or became aware of "Go All the Way". It's the song playing in Fast Times when J Jason Leigh and Damone do it in the dugout.

To me this stuff is the male equivalent of The Shirelles’s “Tonight’s the Night.”

Much closer to that than to Spinal Tap’s “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight.”

It's the song playing in Fast Times when J Jason Leigh and Damone do it in the dugout.

isn't that "somebody's baby" by Jackson Browne?

Is this one of this somebody didn’t buy the rights for the home video version things?

How bizarre.

I remember being particularly scandalized by that whilst watching John Sayles’s “Baby, It’s You.”

One of those…

It's the song playing in Fast Times when J Jason Leigh and Damone do it in the dugout.
isn't that "somebody's baby" by Jackson Browne?

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, March 13, 2024 2:24 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's my memory but i remember from the you must remember this podcast that there are like 4 distinct edits of Fast Times that are floating around, and that scenes I remember well weren't in the original movie

so the imdb page covers all of this in typically frustrating crowd-sources fashion. there were lots of tussles over music rights for home video, cable, etc., and eventually all the original music was restored, but:

1999 DVD version is completely restored and contains all of the music and scenes from the theatrical version. The entire soundtrack has been restored, including Timothy B. Schmidt's "So Much In Love", Tom Petty's "All Amercan Girl," and "Goodbye, Goodbye" which had been omitted in several other versions.

there is no such song as Tom Petty's "All American Girl," although the imdb entry refers to this repeatedly.

One time I saw Wim Wenders at MoMA MY

there is no such song as Tom Petty's "All American Girl,"

That was his obscure series of YA novels.

Lol

(xp)
…at MoMA introducing a then-newly restored The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick talking about saving some money by swapping out some songs on the soundtrack.

High point was then-still-tolerable Peter Handke getting more and more annoyed at moderator Ian Buruma, at one point responding to some question he didn’t like with “and Ozu drank too much sake!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVE-VjC_ME

More importantly, that wasn’t Damone with her in the dugout.

I come to this thread for the Raspberry strudel, it’s great.

Didn’t remember that copy of Taking Liberties in the background.

a then-newly restored The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick talking about saving some money by swapping out some songs on the soundtrack.

Supposedly the impossibility of obtaining music rights is the reason why Wenders' debut, Summer in the City, has never been released.

Anyway, if for some reason I had to Only Pick One Raspberries song, it might be "Let's Pretend". But they are probably the epitome of a band that could create a great compilation with only enough good songs for a compilation.

Fair point. Or so I used to think.

Side 3 is a solid album though

^^Probably my favorite. Also has the best artwork (die-cut, baby!).

this song from his early days band Cyrus Erie rocks so hard, extremely Who-like right down to the drums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Dtg295wVk

Too bad Jonathan Richman didn’t see fit to put the Raspberries on his graph.

#onethread!

“I Don’t Know What I Want” has that beautiful melisma from “So Sad About Us,” too (“And you’d think I was committin’ some kind of criii-i-i-ime” = “You can’t switch off my lovin’ like you can’t switch off the suuu-u-u-un”).

I’m reluctant to bring up the subject of postmodernism because people seem to have different views of what it is, but I don’t how else to talk about something that I think is key to Raspberries. They’re a very early example of music where the gesture is the important thing, much more so than whatever the content would be. They’re so much more like this than Big Star. Maybe it’s partly me, but I’ve always been less invested in, you know, whether Eric gets the girl or whatnot and more invested in things like how Wally looks rocking out. Or “OMG it’s The Who.” Stuff like that.

I think that’s really why “Overnight Sensation” works so perfectly as their signature song. They were always kind of a band about a band. It makes their dissolution kind of sad and “Overnight Sensation” really works that poignancy in retrospect.

Now that Eric has died as well. Even more so.

really very otm

great post

Jesus, it wasn't! It was the nerdy guy he was like mentoring? I clearly haven't seen it in like 20 years. Also, I think it was somebody's baby. I was getting it was GATW but as soon as I read that it felt right.

I like Tim’s post and may want to add to it, but need to get some shuteye.

In love with “go all the way”

Rolling Stone has an article about Eric’s last years.

Well-reported too.

I got the picture and couldn’t keep reading

For the curious: https://web.archive.org/web/20250119140639/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/eric-carmen-songs-marriage-death-1235230611/

Sorry, this is a better rip:https://web.archive.org/web/20250121113042/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/eric-carmen-songs-marriage-death-1235230611/

Just noticed that he seems to have lowered the keys a bit for that Raspberries reunion performance.

When Carmen was just three and a half, the Cleveland Institute of Music offered him an enrollment. (To this day, by all accounts, he holds the record as the youngest student in the 104-year history of the organization.)

Listening to Boats Against the Current now for the first time ever, I think.

An amusing minor detail in that Carmen RS piece is the revelation of the surprisingly small degrees of separation there were between him & Taylor Swift.

Actually I was wondering about that. Because I think it says that one guy was her musical director, but I always thought her musical director was David Cook.

Fave song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb0DeUzIrY0

Andrew Gold plays a guitar solo on “She Did It”? Never noticed

Okay it’s there around the three minute mark. Sounds like him. Not that long.

Burton Cummings supposedly also on this.