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Hello all,

Well we all hear quite often how Richard feels AandM didn't know how to market him and Karen, but I think it'd be interesting if we all stated our most wince inducing moment of our favourite duo.

For me, the ghastly but sublime Xmas Portrait TV special in 1978 is loaded with squirms, but we'll leave Peter Pitt and the McNichols to one side and just concentrate on K and R.

"BIG BROTHERS, KID SISTERS" - Richard, you were 32, you'd been massive with AandM for a decade. Why did this happen. I know he was out of it at this time, but Keith Richards would have refused this sketch.

And

Karen singing Santa Clause/Jingle Bells. Sorry, but when she fake tastes the cake mix and smiles, it's pretty horrific, regardless of what the hell her obsession with food is doing in the special.

Come on guys, your turn, what makes you squirm


Neil

For me it's gotta be the scene in "Make Your Own Kind of Music" when Karen plays a nurse, and she brings out x-rays of Cass Elliot (Mama Cass) that are enormous. Not done in good taste for sure.

I think every artist TV Specials from the 70s & early 80s are pretty horrible.

The TV specials are just out there – the entire show and concept of Space Encounters annoys the hell out of me! It’s just SOOO stupid…AND that’s why they’ll most likely never get an official release. Why couldn’t they get better guest stars.

The album covers are pretty bad: Made In America & Passage being the best of the best in my opinion.

I can't watch Space Encounters without fast-forwarding through it...

As for the album covers, I don't mind PASSAGE too much, but if you see pictures taken of Karen around the time of MADE IN AMERICA's release, it's pretty clear, why a photo wasn't used for the cover... And I've never understood why they chose MADE IN AMERICA for the title... I would have preferred THOSE GOOD OLD DREAMS for the title, instead...
Edited by NedNickerson, 06 August 2007 - 05:52 AM.

I've been reading my Coleman biography and some of the old reviews I found on the internet, and I'm quite interested in the problems with the Carpenter's image. I feel angry the more I learn about how they were ripped apart for being normal, clean, etc. And yet they were all those things and there is nothing wrong with that. What was wrong was the way the reviews and A&M made it seem like something to be ashamed of, even to the point that people could not admit to liking the Carpenter's music!! It's such a shame, too, because the music has more quality than so much of the other stuff that was and is out there.

Well, I'm proud to say that I love the Carpenter sound and it is my favorite of any music. Richard is a genius writer, composer, and producer, and Karen is the greatest female vocalist of all time. The people that put them down and ripped them apart should be ashamed of themselves!

As for an image gaffe, some of the early videos with them sitting on giant letters are kind of corney.

i agree with all that's been brought up..the Sp. Encounters...really dumb
the Spike Jones thing for Cl. to you on their first special, it's horrid!
The best of the specials is the one with Ella Fitz. even tho I don't like how thin of course karen is nor do I like her wearing a tuxedo.
and yet, her voice, the music seems to always be "spot on."
I like that idea of "Those Good Old Dreams" being the name of an album. They should have.

The illustrations in the NOW & THEN booklet look hideous!

Most artists don’t like the image presented by their record company.

Two of the biggest of the same time period of the Carpenters would be Linda Ronstadt and Peter Frampton. For Linda Ronstadt the sexy rock n roll image presented by Asylum Records and those “racy” photos for Rolling Stone. She hated them and tried to get them suppressed before the magazine went into print. Peter Frampton being a A&M label mate had some crappy album covers up to the Comes Alive album, and after that A&M played his looks up for the two albums that helped his fall from charts. It’s a real shame too. He made some great albums for A&M – he has said he felt like a prisoner of his looks because no one would take him seriously as a guitarist (he is the best in my opinion, he’s better than Clapton).

Those early reviews ripped them apart for their image. One couldn’t perform for Nixon and expect Rolling Stone to love your albums. Have you seen most of RS reviews for classic albums from a lot of artists from George Harrison to RC & KC. They slammed them. Most reviews from them are all about slamming the artist it seems. BUT to be fair I guess it’s hard to be critical of artist that you really like. I do see the criticism for Now & Then (my fav) and A Kind of Hush. Their cover of “Desperado” is a bit over the top – maybe a little less musical icing would have helped them out with the critics but that same production is what made them so original in the time period they came out in.

I like them a lot (okay too much ) but a lot people still say their fluff.
BUT I say a lot of people are too (Celine Dion ).

The cover of "Offering". RC's hair, Karen being a nun and that sunflower.

The portraits in "Now & Then" and the way Karen's face is cut in half on the album cover

The disco square dancing at the outer space club in Space Encounters. I think my mouth was hanging open watching that.

I bet I can think of more, but I have to go.

Space Encounters was just painfully awful.

Oh, I DO LIKE Space Encounters... maybe BECAUSE it is plain silly, it reminds me of the TV specials for children I used to watch and like when I was a kid myself. I like very much the dancing part in the space with Karen and John Davidson and then the disco fever getting everybody, it really makes me childishly happy! After the part in which the little robot sings some verses there's that instrumental bit and I don't know why I feel like crying as I watch it but I do! Besides, even being totally silly, I think the storyline is somewhat touching and beautiful: people from other planets coming to Earth to learn how to sing and dance! I believe singing and dancing are fundamental elements of the mysterious human condition, so the story feels so COSMICAL to me.

Frankly, if I have to choose a specific horrid visual moment of the Carpenters among the many ones they have, it is Richard's fault: the way he mixes the videos to the Only Yesterday video collection is quite schoking, we see a beautiful, healthy and warming Karen singing We've Only Just Begun and then we go into the severe anorexic Karen with her corpse-like face and neck from 1981 singing Those Good Old Dreams, I mean, what the hell was Richard thinking? It is almost offensive to Karen's memory set the video sequence as she has never being intensively sick. The brazilian dvd Super-Hits, which features almost the very same material of Only Yesterday takes the transition in a much softer way putting the videos in cronological order and even this way it is hard to go through All You Get From Love... and Touch Me When We're Dancing.

I never understoof that either...considering Richard bluntly said how he wanted Karen to do no disco on her solo album...yet they do lots of disco numbers in Space Encounters...not to mention, Richard's production on "Dancing In The Streets" is very disco instrumentally...

And wasn't disco pretty much on the way "out" at that time (1978), or at least on its last legs...? That special was riding on the coat tails of a passing fad...

And what about the "Goofus" skit... the worst single ever released by Karen and Richard, and Karen dancing in pigtails and striped socks... I watch it through my fingers...

LOL! Yeah - that was pretty bad.... out of all their specials I'd have to say that "Space Encounters" is my least favorite. Overall though.... I was excited anytime the Carps were on TV!

I'd say the "I Need To Be In Love" video has some really BAD moments. Some of it is cute, but some is yucky!!! Same is true of the "Mr Postman" video....
Cheryl