Pros: The band has been called "The Godfathers of Power Pop Music".
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: Contains the Top 40 hits "Go All The Way," "I Wanna Be With You" and "Let's Pretend," with the Hot 100 Single "Don't Want To Say Goodbye."
Don_Krider's Full Review: Power Pop, Vol. 1 by The Raspberries
Most rock/pop music fans, if they know of The Raspberries, these days think the band was a lightweight, bubblegum outfit, or simply Eric Carmen's backup group. They are so wrong.
The band has been acknowledged as influential by artists as diverse as Courtney Love, Elton John, Axl Rose and Bruce Springsteen, among others. There currently are a number of popular bands (such as Enuff Z'Nuff, The Posies and Fastball) that openly borrow from The Raspberries sound.
This album brings together both of the band's first two albums, their self-titled debut (which peaked at # 51 in Billboard magazine, but spent a whopping 30 weeks on the charts) and its followup, "Fresh" (which peaked at # 36 in Billboard). Both albums were released in 1972.
The band brought together veterans of Cleveland's The Choir (who, as 17-year-olds, hit the charts with "It's Cold Outside" in 1967): Wally Bryson, Dave Smalley and Jim Bonfanti. The band formed in 1970. Smalley joined as a replacement (for John Aleksic) in 1971, following a tour of duty with the Army in Vietnam where, as a helicopter gunner, he had been wounded in action. Added to the mix was the multi-talented Eric Carmen, who had previously recorded singles with Cyrus Erie and The Quick, as well as recording with Oliver (Eric wrote "Light The Way" and played keyboards on the song when Oliver recorded it).
The first album, "Raspberries," first single, "Don't Want To Say Goodbye," barely dented the lower realms of the Billboard chart. Written by Carmen and Bryson, with both singing lead, the song is a masterpiece of emotion, offering an early Bee Gees vocal styling over a lovely melody.
The failure of that ballad on the charts would have killed most bands, but Capitol Records followed it up with a single that Spin magazine has voted one of the Top 100 Singles of All-Time. That single was "Go All The Way," which went to # 5 and sold 1.3 million copies.
Critics went out of their way to compare the band to The Beatles when "Go All The Way" came out (the "come on, come on" chorus reminding critics of the same line in The Beatles' "Please, Please Me").
The band's second album is generally considered the band's finest pop album (later albums would see the band stunningly become a fine hard rock band).
The album, "Fresh," features "I Wanna Be With You," an uptempo power pop track with fine vocal harmonies. As a single, it rose to # 16. The follow-up single was the gorgeous ballad "Let's Pretend," which rose to only # 35, but spent 16 weeks (yup, four months) on the Hot 100 in Billboard.
The band was appearing onstage in matching suits, much as The Beatles and any number of '60s bands as done. In an age of waist-length long hair, beards and 20-minute drum/guitar solos, The Raspberries were struggling to offer truly unique rock songs with melody and beautiful harmonies while dressed in matching clothing and wearing shorter-than-average hair.
Needless to say, the band became locked in what Eric Carmen would later call "image prison." Depending on whom you talked to, The Raspberries music was being labeled as too "soft" for the hard rock crowd and too "hard" for the soft rock crowd. Both crowds missed the point, and in doing so, missed out on the great music on the albums.
There are some brilliant tracks on these two albums, from the Beethoven-ish "I Can Remember" to the Eric Carmen as Paul McCartney tear-jerker "Nobody Knows," to the good-timey "Might As Well" and "It Seemed So Easy".
Adding to the band's sound were three songwriters (Carmen, Bryson and Smalley), each of whom sang lead, which gave the band a band in every sense of the word, just like their idols The Who, The Beach Boys and The Beatles. And drummer Jim Bonfanti can play as gently, or as hard, as Keith Moon or Ringo Starr (who were both Raspberries fans, by the way; Moon even sitting in on drums at The Whiskey in LA one memorable night in 1974).
This is a fine, 2-for-1 CD collection from the British RPM label. The cover shots are by Anastasia Pantsios of The Cleveland Plain Dealer and the liner notes contain interviews with the band members that were done by Goldmine magazine writer Ken Sharp. With this effort, you get The Raspberries two highest chartings albums and four of their seven Hot 100 hits.
Just released:
Live On Sunset Strip (Deluxe Edition of 2 CDs and a DVD recorded during the 2005 reunion tour) By Raspberries, a 2007 Rykodisc release with liner notes byBruce Springsteen and a photo of John Lennon in a Raspberries sweatshirt in the CD booklet, produced by Mark Linett and Eric Carmen: http://www.epinions.com/content_393207123588
Related albums:
Capitol/EMI's 24-bit digitally remastered CD "Greatest" by Raspberries was released in May of 2005 in the U. S. and Europe. It features all 7 of Raspberries Hot 100 singles, has 20 tracks and runs 78:53 minutes: http://www.epinions.com/content_186044681860
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