I think davey said a lot of what I'm straining to articulate.
And yet I'm compelled to use more words to potentially say a great deal less (or much of the same, at any rate).
I'm generally pro-Raspberries/pro-70s Eric Carmen. I included a track in my "70 greats from the 70s" list last month. Of all the music I've made in the past 35 years, one of the more regarded tracks is a Raspberries cover (I don't feel good or bad about this reality, it just is what it is). And, yes, I have kicked myself routinely for nearly 20 years for not seeing them when they briefly reunited (all evidence and testimony suggests that it was far better than it had any right to be). The fact that I couldn't be bothered to attend feels like a symptom of some complicated and ambiguous feelings.
Using the term "ersatz" as derisively as I often do (to say nothing of the term "power pop"), I should theoretically hate an artist like Carmen/an enterprise like the Raspberries, and yet...here we are.
He's not Bob Dylan, he/they never made a
Pet Sounds, a
Radio City, a
Pretty Ballerina/Walk Away Renee, etc. - but, there's riches there. "Curate's egg" is probably about right (mind you, I generally feel that way about Todd Rundgren, despite him - at his best - generally having inarguably greater depths). I can handily muster more positive words about EC than I can for, say, Jeff Lynne. Even though, like a lot of artists I generally frown on, the argument COULD be made that Carmen came fairly close to specializing in building these little miniature ships in a bottle out of second hand materials. I was listening to
Fresh Raspberries this morning, and my wife said "What is this - Wings?" (knowing full well that it was the recently deceased Carmen). That a sudden gratuitous "Penny Lane" trumpet fanfare ("I Reach for the Light") answered her made us both laugh in acknowledgement of the underlying issue.
And yet - uneven albums/careers and undeniable pastiche aside, there's something there. "All By Myself" is epic (and it seems downright academic to attempt parsing out whether or not it's REALLY that much more maudlin than my 20 favorite Beach Boys ballads). And those crunchy, concise, punchy, powerhouse Raspberries singles ("GATW", "I Wanna Be With You", "Ecstasy", "Tonight") hit a certain sweet spot that I'll seemingly always have.
There's this bit on one of the classic Simpsons episodes (presumably season 3-8) where the family is watching a parade with automated lifesize figures, and Marge (pointing to the sophisticated electronics) says to Homer "SEE? That's why YOUR robot didn't work." My best friend and I used this phrase constantly both to address things that were effective, special, etc. as well as things that seemed lazy, stock, half-assed, perfunctory or worse.
I would argue that Carmen's best robots ABSOLUTELY worked.
I remember either he or engineer/producer Jimmy Iovine narrating on Facebook many years back that there was some frustration with the sound of 'Go All the Way' and Carmen was frustrated enough by the sort of "insufficient impact" that he wanted to keep it off the album. Engineer Shelly Yakus (wisely fearing that all parties involved would be very sorry if the track got shelved) stayed late/came in early and SLAMMED the track through this limiter/compressor, giving it its trademark "oomph!" and sufficiently impressing the song's creator and producer. They used it on every rocker from that point forward (you can hear it on all the tracks I mentioned upthread), until...apparently - because it was broken/malfunctioning in some way - the studio sent it out for repairs and it never worked the same again (evidently, the "mojo" had been a byproduct of the mechanical failure).
I love his voice in this period, I think a lot of the melodies are spun gold, and that original band (especially drummer Jim Bofanti and guitarist Wally Bryson) is fucking bad ass (even a ballad like "Let's Pretend"*...I was listening this morning, and there's all these unexpected "risky drum fills" in the second chorus). The backing vocal arrangements speak for themselves.
Is the overall template "A dash of Who, a dash of Beach Boys, a dash of Beatles?". Yeah, I suppose it is. Buying that 1976
Raspberries' Best comp (assuredly rushed out by Capitol to 'capitolize' [sorry] on Carmen's #1 hit "All By Myself") for pennies when I was 20, I was struck by (and even able to more or less decode - in all my abundant youthful naivete) the sort of undeniable formula of taking the harmonic tension and release of those early charisma and energy forward Beatles numbers like "Hold Me Tight" and "Please Please Me" and adding a LIBERAL dose of hormonal teenage longing and putting it all through a sort of state of the art early 70s hard rock machine...I think every song on the first side would answer to this very specific description. And yet...I'm MORE than okay with it. I almost wish they had more songs that did
this exact thing. I mean, a lot of us love
Singles Going Steady, but...it isn't necessarily brimming with wild variety.
**Now is not the time or place to talk about my 45 collection (though, of course, these tracks all sound stunning on this format), but I've always been so super into this sleeve/premise/goofy gambit. I wonder if anyone won the car? I wonder if anyone dared to cut up their sleeve (there's a detachable entry form on the rear)? Also, the track is sped up a full semitone for the single version (presumably in an effort to make the group sound younger/the track to sound a hair more exciting). There's a general patented crassness there that I should be resisting, but...50+ years later now just seems endearing to me.
So, right. Raspberries/Eric Carmen. Complicated, for sure (can I possibly get out of this thread without actually discussing "power pop"?). But, at best, pretty ballsy and wonderful. I feel like all those records I've kind of decided on as "my place" (Friday On My Mind, Ballroom Blitz, My Sharona, Saturday Night, maybe Walk Away by James Gang)...that kind of spring-loaded, triumphant, high impact, energy-forward, wiry, guitar-based, hard bubblegum..."Go All the Way" is about as great as that kinda shit gets.