OPO: Raspberries

Yeah, it seems like Star really loved this band.

I imagine Capital was greasing the wheels pretty heavily, but it is interesting--if one didn't know any better, by looking at those mags, you would think the Raspberries were as big as the Stones, Bowie, Alice etc.

I don't think they really had a song that clicked after "Go All the Way," although you would think any of them - "I Wanna Be with You," "Let's Pretend," "Tonight," "Overnight Sensation" - could have. Maybe they just didn't fit in enough.

Metal Mike Saunders wrote a piece on Raspberries for a late '80s called Swellsville that I wish I still had. One of the things I remember about it was him talking about Raspberries having the courage to open for Blue Oyster Cult at some Chicago show in '73 even though it wasn't their crowd.

Off the top of my head I’d say that maybe at the time things had to signify as either more rock or more pop and they were trying to split the difference which had gone out of fashion. But this is just pure speculation on my part.
Xp

Never knew that Bruce Springsteen and Max Weinberg were pretty serious fans until I just read about it on Wikipedia.

maybe at the time things had to signify as either more rock or more pop

Yeah, you would think, but then "Go All the Way" did pretty well. Maybe signifying as pop, I don't know. In any case, they weren't able to follow it up.

Maybe they were too formulaic! "I Wanna Be with You" does that same thing, too, with a 6-bar verse and 16-bar chorus! To me, they are formulaic in an awesome way.

Yeah, to me too, but I don’t always have my finger on the pulsebeat of young America, as has been demonstrated on a few occasions.

In other news, listening to a few tracks on this Pop Art Live album and not hating it. Don’t know how many actual Raspberries are on it, but it sounds like Eric singing and the rest sends pretty faithful to the classic sound.

Apparently it’s the classic lineup. *takes a breath*

Beatles and Who covers too

https://omnivorerecordings.com/shop/pop-art-live/

From 2004, released in 2017.

Another date from later in the tour had been released as Live on Sunset Strip.

maybe at the time things had to signify as either more rock or more pop

I think this is it. They remind me of Badfinger in a way because they'd do some hard rock/boogie stuff on their albums, as if to prove they weren't just a pop band, and the hard rock/boogie stuff was almost completely worthless.

Yeah, when I wrote that I was even thinking of Badfinger occupying similar territory but getting a pass for the reasons you describe.

They had enough power just doing the Carmen pop-rock tunes. "Tonight" could be the New York Dolls or Kiss.

From that reunion tour, on Sunset Strip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07lZSp9yQ-M

(xp) Absolutely, why bother trying to sound like Humble Pie or something.

Something else presumably from that reunion tour, this time with proper video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07lZSp9yQ-M

Aargh, sorry, forgot about the cut and paste problem when you try to paste a video after the original one you hit. Hang on a sec.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XUGbW9hpKk

Okay, Jim seems a wee bit uncomfortable trying to play Michael’s fills on “Overnight Sensation” but otherwise this reunion stuff sounds really good.

I like this description here:
http://ericcarmen.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7870-jim-bonfanti-or-michael-mcbride/#comment-92126
mikes "refrigerator falling down a flight of stairs" style

But maybe he got more comfortable with it later in the tour, that was from the first night. As is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhpgjGYIYjk

One more video, from later in the tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ErtYeBJS4

This starts off with some annoying stuff from the interviewer but Eric has some great stories to tell: https://observer.com/2017/08/eric-carmen-raspberries-pop-art-live-interview/

Part of me wants to go on the Burt Bacharach poll thread and stir things up by saying Eric is just as good a songwriter, better even, but that’s not quite my style right now.

I successfully chased you guys off the thread, the same way Eric chased the other guys out of the band.

We are here to support you.

Go all the way, man!

Eric is good and inventive, but he's no Bacharach.

Perhaps I would rather say I prefer the more modest but solid and consistent achievement of someone like Eric to the hits and misses of the other guy.

Perhaps if I had to watch Cilla Black sing "Let's Pretend" I would feel differently.

Okay, just looked up what Eric said Brian Wilson told him about falsetto voices and apparently it’s true. I mean not that I would doubt Eric or Brian but sometimes misunderstandings arise.

Yeah, that's news to me, too!

what'd he say what'd he say

Carmen has no falsetto and Wilson said this is true for all true tenors.

That’s what is said in the interview. Think that the more correct version of the statement is something like “baritones are more likely to be good falsetto singers than tenors,” apologies for the Internet pedantry.

So here's my little Raspberries-adjacent story from a couple of months ago:

I had been looking to buy a Strat, and saw one for sale on a local Northeast Ohio gear sell/swap/trade group on Facebook. The seller, Randy, was about 40 minutes away from me in Painesville, OH. (Just west of where I went to high school in Perry, OH.) I drove out to look at it, we agreed on a price, and I bought it. We were chatting throughout the transaction, and he mentioned that he was going to use this money for a new Gretsch to use in his band, The Choir.

"Wait," I said. "The Choir? Like, 'It's Cold Outside' The Choir?" He said it was, and it turns out he was Randy Klawon, brother of The Choir founder Danny Klawon, and that the two of them went to high school in Mentor, the next city over, with Wally Bryson, Jim Bonfanti, etc. Randy joined The Choir a little later originally but played with them on and off over their various reunions and incarnations.

I then asked if he knew a guy named Artie Peeler, another local musician who is good friends with Wally Bryson. He said yeah, he'd known Artie since high school as well. Artie used to date my aunt Debra, and when I was first learning guitar in the 80s he taught me some tricks like different chord voicings and Keith Richards's open G tuning. And to complete the small world circle, he knew Wally's son Jesse, who used to front a Cleveland band called Rosavelt back in the 90s. My band at the time played a couple of shows with them.

Here's a video of Bryson and Peeler at a local bar last Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WZaddldaaU

Cool! Thanks for the story and the video.

no votes for "i don't know what i want"? amazing song

That's such a great story, Eliza!

"I Don't Know What I Want" is indeed amazing; it even quotes "I'm A Boy"!

Apparently, Eric Carmen was a stone Who fanatic -- he called that song his "love letter to the Who" -- and his pre-Raspberries band Cyrus Erie once opened for the Who in Cleveland in 1968.

Yeah, he talks about how term Power Pop was originally used by Pete Townshend to describe what The Who was doing but the term ending up really sticking to The Raspberries, which was fine with him.

Also, this is interesting:
http://www.ericcarmen.com/eric-interview-03.html

Forgot that Wally Bryson was in Fotomaker, which band I can’t recall ever having listened to.

Probably did hear a radio promo for them and definitely saw the album in ye olde brick and mortar record stores.

Surely Pete Frame did a Family Tree for this stuff.

* checks book * dang, no

https://www.facebook.com/raspberriesrock/posts/wally-bryson-may-26-2018-if-any-guitar-players-ever-wanted-to-know-how-to-play-t/1744151732329195/

Also, from that interview I posted yesterday:

I was a little bit in the dark initially about how this was all going to work and at one point Ringo I think could see that I was stressed. Simon and I were going to accompany him to a show while we were in Atlantic City that he was supposed to go to, and I arrived at his room first and he said something like, "I sense a bit of the perfectionist in you." *Laughs* "Not unlike Mark Hudson."