![]() Both ended up working in the music industry-Dave as a music journalist and Matt as a record producer-and when they first started working on the idea for a Carpenters tribute album, they ended up wrangling a disparate group of alternative artists, punk bands and college-rock crooners who all seemed to share in their genuine affinity for The Carpenters' inescapably infectious pop perfection. It was a labor of love hatched by two longtime friends, Matt Wallace and Dave Konjoyan, who bonded over their love of the exemplary music crafted by the sibling duo of Karen and Richard Carpenter. ![]() However, the story behind If I Were A Carpenter involves no winks or chuckles. As KROQ’s music director Darcy Fulmer said of the album at the time, "It shows that people who like alternative music liked dork music when they were little, too." On its surface, the idea of rowdy alt-rockers running bubbly Carpenters songs through cranked guitars and buzzy amplifiers might've seemed like nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek goof. This month marks 25 years since the release of If I Were A Carpenter, providing a nice echo of its origins, as the tribute album was initially conceived as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of The Carpenters' debut album, Offering. With its roster of 1990s alternative music rabble-rousers celebrating the 1970s clean-cut, musical prodigy duo The Carpenters, the left-of-center tribute album If I Were A Carpenter wonderfully delivers on these concepts in spades. A tribute album’s chances of hitting that sonic sweet spot are also enhanced when it follows the loosely structured (and hotly debated) 20-year nostalgia cycle-the idea that one’s generational fads of music, fashion, technology, books, slang and other cultural touchstones resurface after a couple decades (give or take) of mainstream dormancy. "My parents would have been beside themselves," he said.In popular culture, the cyclical adage "Everything old is new again" is often embodied in the form of the tribute album-an unwieldy vehicle of veneration whose success lies as much with the source material as with those interpreting it. ![]() It will be followed in January by a new album, "Richard Carpenter's Piano Songbook" in which Carpenter plays classical arrangements on solo piano of some of the duo's hits.Ĭarpenter, who once had dreams of being a concert pianist but hated practicing, said he was "immensely flattered" to be asked to make the record. "She was my sister, she was my professional partner, and she was my best friend." she just sang instantly, impeccably whether it was live or on record," he said. Richard Carpenter, who did all the musical arrangements and harmonies, is reluctant to dwell on Karen's death and prefers to focus on her talent. Their career came to a tragic end when Karen died in 1983 of heart failure attributed to complications from anorexia nervosa. They turned out 10 albums, winning fans as far afield as Japan, Norway and Zimbabwe. ![]() ![]() "Many times, right from the time that Karen and I first hit with 'Close to You,' there was so many beyond nasty, vicious things written about us," said Carpenter, 75, recalling how the music press derided their mellow ballads as square at a time when rock was the dominant force.Īfter their breakout single "(They Long to Be) Close to You" in 1970, the Carpenters had a run of hits including "Top of the World" and "Rainy Days and Mondays," won three Grammy Awards and had their own TV show. It concentrates more on the music that we made than the personal," said Carpenter from his home near Los Angeles that is packed with gold discs and Carpenters memorabilia. "It covers really from our childhood all the way through our years together, Karen and I, making music, and the legacy. Crammed with photos, posters, programs, reviews and work schedules, it is intended as the definitive story of the 1970s recording stars. Now he is telling the story his way for the first time in "Carpenters: The Musical Legacy," a book based on hundreds of hours of interviews Richard gave to authors Mike Cidoni Lennox and Chris May. LOS ANGELES - More than 50 years after "We've Only Just Begun" and "Yesterday Once More," Richard Carpenter is looking back on the California soft pop duo with his sister Karen that ruled the charts but got a rough ride from music critics. ![]()
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