Category Archives: books

Karen Carpenter solo album, and Little Girl Blue book

I was never a fan of The Carpenters. Yes, like any other kid growing up in the 70s I knew their songs, but I was a punk, and before that, a Sparks, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Be Bop Deluxe, Blue Oyster Cult, Bowie, Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, Kiss, Tubes, Hawkwind, Stooges fan – not a Carpenters fan. But recently I discovered the solo record from Karen Carpenter, and then read Randy Schmidt’s book ‘Little Girl Blue – The Life of Karen Carpenter.’ I love that album, and can’t believe it was never released until 1996, years after her death.

cover of Karen's 1979 solo album In 1979, while her brother Richard was side-stepping the limelight to get his act together from pills and stuff, Karen Carpenter recorded her self-titled solo album with Phil Ramone as producer. She tried many different styles of music on the album, including disco. The first half of 1979 was THE time for mainstream acceptance of disco, but July 12th was the moment that disco died, killed by Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, where insecure rock fanatics demanded that their sound come back into favor again. Sadly, the record companies listened, and the tide changed almost overnight, bring rock back into dominance. Even though only a few tracks had that sound, Karen’s solo record became one of many casualties of the ‘disco sucks’ movement, which reminds me of today’s Tea Party movement.

the cover of Little Girl BlueUntil Randy Schmidt’s book, Karen’s story had been somewhat marginilized. Saying “Karen starved herself to death and died from anorexia” over-simplifies as much as saying “Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours is about the hiker that cut his own arm off when he got trapped.” Though both statements are true, the complexity of both situations were infinitely greater.

If you want to know what complexities contributed to Karen’s situation, read Little Girl Blue. It is a worthy read. For instance, even of you knew that Karen was a drummer and drummed in The Carpenters, who could imagine that Hot Rod drum king Hal Blaine drummed for them in the studio, and said about her “We had an instant professional love affair because she knew everything I’d done” (see page 58 of Little Girl Blue).

Let’s talk about the CD. The record starts off with Lovelines, which is 5 minutes of bliss. It has a disco-ish feel, but ultimately has a ‘Karen’ feel – she makes the sound all her own. Two other tracks on the CD that have the same basic sound are My Body Keeps Changing My mind and Guess I Just Lost My Head

The album has lots of somewhat melancholy tracks, such as If We Try, Make Believe It’s Your First Time, and especially the last two tracks, the cover of Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years, and the closer, Last One Singing The Blues, which (though entirely different sounding than) reminds me of Donna Summer’s Last Dance.

In between the two extremes (the upbeat disco-ish tracks and the melancholy ones) are tracks in several different genres, all interesting, and all unprecedented in her back catalog till this point. Still In Love With You is a rock track with a Southern feel. All Because of You is a ballad carried by her incredible not-perfect-but-all-the-more-perfect-for-that-fact voice, which cracks like a whisky soaked angel. If I Had You and Remember When Lovin’ Took All Night sound the most like Carpenters tracks to my ears, with Queen-like thick multi-tracked background vocals.

Many hipsters have championed Karen Carpenter is years past. The person I think of most is Kim Gordon, who wrote Tunic (Song for Karen) on Sonic Youth’s 1990 album Goo. In 1994, Karen’s label (Herp Alpert’s A&M Records) released the If I Were a Carpenter compilation, though no one covered anything from her solo record (Sonic Youth covered Superstar, a song originally performed by Bette Midler). This is not too surprising, as the solo record was not released till 1996, though I imagine that fans had found grey area pressings of it for years before that.

Dennis Lehane event at The Coolidge 11/5/10

Yesterday I went to see Dennis Lehane read from his new book Moonlight Mile at The Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline MA. The event was hosted by Brookline Booksmith and lasted an hour. He read a chapter from the book for the first ten minutes, then took questions from the audience. People asked interesting questions. Many of the questions concerned writing techniques, which led him to give us a special insight when he answered the last question of the day.

The last question concerned how alcohol played in to his writing technique, as he mentioned several anecdotes during his talk, which took place in bars. He told us that since there were obviously many aspiring writers in the audience (based on the questions we had asked), he would give us some truth. He said that he meets many people in “Key West bars” that tell him they are writers too, and talk about ideas they have for stories. But these people never actually write. His nugget of ‘truth’ for us was that if we say we are something, we have to DO that something. So, if we say we are a writer, we have to actually write regularly. He said that writing is a skill that has to be practiced daily, and worked at. I liked this insight, as it applies to most anything in life: it’s not enough to say or think something, you have to actually do it to make a difference.

When it came my turn to ask him a question, I asked his if he had ever read Wendi Lee. She is an author that wrote a five book series between 1994 and 2002 that took place in Boston, whom I had thought of over and over again when I first read ‘A Drink Before The War,’ the first in Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie/Angie Gennaro series. Her books were really enjoyable. I like that the action in Wedni Lee’s books consists of small things instead of big bombastic events. For instance, the big climax in one of the books involves someone running her car off the road and denting the side. While that may not sound like much, has anyone ever done that to you? If someone did, I’ll bet it would be a huge event in your memory from that day forward. One reviewer on Amazon calls ‘The Good Daughter’ slow and historically inaccurate. I live in Boston and found the descriptions of The North End top be very accurate, and I never found any of her books to be slow.

Wendi Lee is obscure. It seems like no one knows about her. Dennis Lehane did not know about her, but I can’t wait till he does read her. I’ll bet he enjoys the series. Wendi Lee’s character is Angella Matelli, and she is a bit like Angie and Patrick combined. Dennis said that those two characters represented two sides of his personality, and that Bubba Rogowski was like their dog, someone who would do anything for Patreic and Angie, with no morality or conscience.

You can find the Angela Matelli books at Amazon. At the time of writing most of them sell for one penny used, so I’d say give them a try. The first one in the five book series is The Good Daughter. If you want to find out more about Wendi Lee, I found this MacMillan author’s page for Wendi Lee that has her photo, and a fan site from the UK that has a Wendi Lee section. Somebody posted the last novel in the series to googlebooks, so you can read Habeas Corpus online there.

Karen Carpenter solo album, and Little Girl Blue book

I was never a fan of The Carpenters. Yes, like any other kid growing up in the 70s I knew their songs, but I was a punk, and before that, a Sparks, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Be Bop Deluxe, Blue Oyster Cult, Bowie, Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, Kiss, Tubes, Hawkwind, Stooges fan – not a Carpenters fan. But recently I discovered the solo record from Karen Carpenter, and then read Randy Schmidt’s book ‘Little Girl Blue – The Life of Karen Carpenter.’ I love that album, and can’t believe it was never released until 1996, years after her death.

cover of Karen's 1979 solo album In 1979, while her brother Richard was side-stepping the limelight to get his act together from pills and stuff, Karen Carpenter recorded her self-titled solo album with Phil Ramone as producer. She tried many different styles of music on the album, including disco. The first half of 1979 was THE time for mainstream acceptance of disco, but July 12th was the moment that disco died, killed by Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, where insecure rock fanatics demanded that their sound come back into favor again. Sadly, the record companies listened, and the tide changed almost overnight, bring rock back into dominance. Even though only a few tracks had that sound, Karen’s solo record became one of many casualties of the ‘disco sucks’ movement, which reminds me of today’s Tea Party movement.

the cover of Little Girl BlueUntil Randy Schmidt’s book, Karen’s story had been somewhat marginilized. Saying “Karen starved herself to death and died from anorexia” over-simplifies as much as saying “Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours is about the hiker that cut his own arm off when he got trapped.” Though both statements are true, the complexity of both situations were infinitely greater.

If you want to know what complexities contributed to Karen’s situation, read Little Girl Blue. It is a worthy read. For instance, even of you knew that Karen was a drummer and drummed in The Carpenters, who could imagine that Hot Rod drum king Hal Blaine drummed for them in the studio, and said about her “We had an instant professional love affair because she knew everything I’d done” (see page 58 of Little Girl Blue).

Let’s talk about the CD. The record starts off with Lovelines, which is 5 minutes of bliss. It has a disco-ish feel, but ultimately has a ‘Karen’ feel – she makes the sound all her own. Two other tracks on the CD that have the same basic sound are My Body Keeps Changing My mind and Guess I Just Lost My Head

The album has lots of somewhat melancholy tracks, such as If We Try, Make Believe It’s Your First Time, and especially the last two tracks, the cover of Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years, and the closer, Last One Singing The Blues, which (though entirely different sounding than) reminds me of Donna Summer’s Last Dance.

In between the two extremes (the upbeat disco-ish tracks and the melancholy ones) are tracks in several different genres, all interesting, and all unprecedented in her back catalog till this point. Still In Love With You is a rock track with a Southern feel. All Because of You is a ballad carried by her incredible not-perfect-but-all-the-more-perfect-for-that-fact voice, which cracks like a whisky soaked angel. If I Had You and Remember When Lovin’ Took All Night sound the most like Carpenters tracks to my ears, with Queen-like thick multi-tracked background vocals.

Many hipsters have championed Karen Carpenter is years past. The person I think of most is Kim Gordon, who wrote Tunic (Song for Karen) on Sonic Youth’s 1990 album Goo. In 1994, Karen’s label (Herp Alpert’s A&M Records) released the If I Were a Carpenter compilation, though no one covered anything from her solo record (Sonic Youth covered Superstar, a song originally performed by Bette Midler). This is not too surprising, as the solo record was not released till 1996, though I imagine that fans had found grey area pressings of it for years before that.