Desperately Seeking A Deceitful Escape (Club)

Does anybody remember The Escape Club? They were a UK concern that had 2 US hit radio songs in the late 1980s / early 1990s that were eerily prophetic, and then they disappeared without a trace (thankfully, that, but they were replaced with much worse…). 

“Wild, Wild West.” (1988, #1) Ushered-in a new decade worshipping unabashed sensuality and rebellion (Ye old sex, drugs, & rock-and-roll trope. Yawn…). The checklist: casual sex, drugs, cop-bashing, rebellion, parades celebrating sin, etc. Sound familiar? Also, and I just remembered, the references to the number, 47, but that’s probably just a coincidence? The video featured disembodied, genderless arms and legs, which pointed to where this was all heading; I remember finding the video hard to watch. Here's an early single review. 

“I’ll Be There.” (1991, #8) Epitomized the God-ignoring, man-as-his-own-god, pseudo-spirituality of the modern era, with the dead protagonist promising to play the role of God for their still-living loved one: I’ll be there, watching you from above, I may have died, but I’ve gone nowhere. The video featured a drowned woman, who seemed to be desperately suggesting, “this is fine,” which is pretty much how sin works. I’m guessing Oprah enjoyed this one. Bonus "ugh" points for the album cover’s artsy depiction of male ejaculate. 

Tipper Gore, all is forgiven. 

Odessey & Oracle vs. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

I was having dinner with folks from work awhile back, and we fell into a parlor game of sorts, taking turns asking questions of the table. Someone asked what would we select as the topic, were we given the task of making a documentary. One person said they’d do a film about immigration policy and another dinner participant announced a documentary about himself. My documentary topic choice was related to the hype I’d been reading, around that time, about the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. Specifically, my documentary would be about how The Zombies recorded a better album than The Beatles that year. Immediately, one participant texted her boyfriend to get a better opinion, and he immediately texted back: “It’s ridiculous to even suggest Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone were more talented than Lennon and McCartney, and of course Sgt. Pepper’s is superior; it’s one of the biggest-selling albums of all time!”

Okay, so first of all, I hadn’t suggested which musical partnership was “more talented,” (incidentally, Blunstone wasn’t a principle songwriter in the group, that would be Chris White, but that's just a pesky fact…) and if album sales equal “greatness,” then the following albums are “greater” than Sgt. Pepper’s:

• The Bodyguard Soundtrack, by various artists 
• Falling Into You, by Celine Dion
• Music Box, by Mariah Carey
• Oops! I did It Again, by Britney Spears
• Backstreet’s Back, by Backstreet Boys
• Spice, by Spice Girls
• The Sign, by Ace of Base

To name just a handful. (But those aren't so much comparisons of quality than points on a graph...)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band



Just over 50 years ago, The Beatles released a collection of songs many, including my colleague’s boyfriend, consider to be the greatest rock and roll album of all time, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When it was released, it was arguably the most anticipated album up to that time. With its iconic, hot-mess of a cover photograph and almost actual-sized gatefold photo in eye-popping fluorescent colors, it turned the pop culture world upside down. Langdon Winner recalls, “The closest Western Civilization has come to unity, since the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, was the week the Sgt. Pepper album was released.

Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Recording Session, Abbey Road Studios

In every city in Europe and America the radio stations played [it] ... and everyone listened.” American radio stations interrupted their regular scheduling, playing the album virtually non-stop – often from start to finish. It occupied the number one position of the Billboard Top albums in the US for 15 weeks. Hippie cults even started looking for hidden messages in the lyrics and by playing the album backwards. In fact, the trend-chasing Rolling Stone magazine lists the album at #1 on their list of Top 500 Albums of All-Time. And by the way, it happens to be a decent album, but it’s definitely not the best Beatles album (let alone the “best album of all time”), and I’m positing, here, that one, relatively obscure (at the time...) album recorded in the same Abbey Road studio just weeks after the Fab Four left the building is head and shoulders better. That album, Odessey and Oracle, by The Zombies, turned 50 years-old last year.

Zombies Odessey & Oracle recording session, Abbey Road Studios

Odessey and Oracle was the last-gasp effort of a band widely known as a singles band, with their two, early singles going US Top 10 in 1964 (“She’s Not There,” #2 and “Tell Her No,” #6). For the next two years, the band struggled to sustain their initial chart success in the States, and their exceptional, underrated singles (“Leave Me Be,” “She’s Coming Home,” “Whenever You’re Ready,” “Is This The Dream,” etc.) failed to find a foothold on the radio. In the summer of 1967, the band made a one album, make-or-break deal with CBS Records. The budget was shoestring, so the band had no time for studio experimentation, bringing their tightly-rehearsed tunes into the studio. Serendipitously, the band was able to book time at Abbey Road Studio and followed The Lads into the studio, playing on some of the same instruments left behind by George, Paul, John, and Ringo and fueled by the extraordinary songs written by the band’s principle songwriters, Rod Argent and Chris White.

My full review of Odessey is here, so I’ll spend the rest of this column taking pot-shots at the mediocre Sgt. Pepper’s. It might be helpful to point out, here, that I’m not the only person to suggest that Sgt. Pepper’s isn’t worthy of its hype: it was voted the “Worst Record Ever Made” in a 1998 Melody Maker poll of pop stars, DJs, and journalists. Guardian critic, Richard Smith, wrote, "if not the worst, then certainly the most overrated album of all time." He also said that the "excruciating" LP was often ranked by members of the music press as the best ever due to affection for its pop cultural impact, and "not because of anything intrinsically great about the record." In 2015, Rolling Stones guitarist, Keith Richards, denounced the album as "a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties." In a 2005 BBC listener poll to determine the "Most Overrated Album in the World," Sgt. Pepper's placed at no. 7.

The Good Songs on Sgt. Pepper’s:

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: Paul McCartney’s the champ on this album, turning in the best songs, including this title track, which introduces the concept of the album: an alter-ego band in concert. 
2. Getting Better: Lightness and darkness frame this call-and-response song, with McCartney bringing the light and Lennon displaying his omnipresent violence (“I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved”). Paul’s always been my favorite Beatle, by the way. 
3. Fixing a Hole: This contemplative McCartney tune has purportedly been about addressing pain and unresolved issues in one’s life, about obsessive and relentless fans, and/or about cannabis. 
4. She’s Leaving Home: McCartney and Lennon co-wrote this song based upon a newspaper story about a girl who mysteriously left home and her parent’s resulting resentment and indignation.
5. Good Morning Good Morning: I always thought this song sounded like a children’s breakfast cereal commercial, and it turns out, Lennon was inspired to write this song by a Kellogg’s Cornflakes commercial. And also by Pet Sounds. 
6. A Day in the Life: Lennon and McCartney co-wrote the best song on the album, highly influenced by “Good Vibrations” and LSD. 

The Mediocre Songs on Sgt. Pepper’s:

1. With a Little Help from My Friends: Joe Cocker covered this song, elevating a trifle album cut into one of the greatest rock-and-roll songs of all time. But on this album, it was a throwaway novelty. 
2. When I’m Sixty-Four: Cute song; it’s a throwaway novelty. 
3. Lovely Rita: Throwaway. 

The Shitty Songs on Sgt. Pepper’s:

1. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: The most interesting thing about this song was the debate about whether it was about LSD, or was it a reference to young Julien’s artwork from school? Who cares? It’s an awful song. 
2. Within You Without You: A muddy, psychedelic mess. It’s stressful just listening to it. I hate it. 
3. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite: Like Harrison’s, “Within You, Without You,” this menacing track about a 19th-century circus poster is stressful to the ear. 

Friends, it’s simple math: Sgt. Peppers had 6 good songs on an album with 12 tracks. On the 12-track Odessey, every track is exceptional.

Zombies Odessey & Oracle recording session, Abbey Road Studios

And if you’re still not convinced, consider this: the Beatles were inducted into the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame as a result of their behemoth catalogue 13 studio albums and over 60 singles spanning 4 decades. Their output and massive success was staggering and will likely never be matched. The Zombies, conversely, were included in this elite rock-and-roll club on the strength of just 2 early hit singles and this perfect album.

Carpenters: The Complete Singles (A&B sides)

Carpenters ruled the pop charts from 1970 – 1975, and much has been written about Carpenters “demise” in the latter part of the decade, as well as Richard’s addiction to drugs and Karen’s tragic battle with anorexia nervosa, but what isn’t ever cited it this fact: despite the personal and ultimately tragic difficulties the siblings endured after 1975, the duo never stopped having radio hits during Karen’s lifetime. In fact, Carpenters had a top 40 hit on every album released between 1970 and 1981. That’s quite a run.

Richard Carpenter displayed a penchant for fussing over the duo’s recordings as early as their first album, as the first single, a cover of The Beatles’, “Ticket To Ride,” was a remixed version from the album as well as the B-side, a remixed version of their anti-establishment anthem, “Your Wonderful Parade.” A few years later, Richard also remixed the title song they recorded for the soundtrack to Bless The Beasts And The Children for inclusion in the duo’s 1972 album, A Song For You. The following year, the duo remixed a number of songs for their hits collection, Singles, 1969-1973, including the #1 single, “Top Of The World.”

In fact, Carpenters singles, including B-sides, were often different mixes from the album versions, which made singles releases by the duo all the more an event, and over the decades, fans have often bemoaned the fact that the original single mixes were not the versions included on the myriad hits collections that surfaced during the 1980s and 1990s, as brother Richard continued to tinker with, remix, and re-record parts of songs, like a painter who keeps returning to classic paintings to add another coat of color. While fans appreciated the new variations on old favorites, they missed hearing the versions of the songs they remembered hearing on the radio.

49 years after the duo started making records, super fans now have, in one compilation, the entire US singles collection, in their original single mixes, via the PBS-only, triple CD release, Carpenters: The Complete Singles. The collection was made available in the fall and winter of 2015 as a pledge gift for public television viewers. The collection includes all the legendary hits (“Close To You,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Rainy Days And Mondays,” “Superstar,” etc.), as well as the lesser-known classics (“It’s Going To Take Some Time,” “Won’t Last A Day Without You,” “Only Yesterday,” etc.) as well as some of the biggest head-scratchers the duo ever released as singles (“Goofus” and “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”). 

Listening to The Complete Singles was revelatory for me, in that it presents a more accurate depiction of the duo’s significant contribution to popular music than the run-of-the-mill hits collections did, as it offers mostly unknown B-sides as well, which often featured Carpenter’s unusual (and even peculiar, at times) compositions and showcased the duo’s artsier, edgier side. Seriously. This collection chronicles the duo’s avant-garde early albums, the trend-setting hit albums, the late-1970’s shotgun desperation albums (which always contained hidden gems), and the last few albums, which found the duo lost in post Captain & Tennille, adult-contemporary hell, barely treading water while recycling Air Supply demo rejects. 

It’s a fascinating aural journey, and the B-sides are even more revealing than the familiar singles. Some of the standout B-sides include:

Your Wonderful Parade: a Carpenter-penned, anti-establishment rant and great drumming work by Karen.

I Kept On Loving You: another rare lead vocal from brother Richard, one of his best, and another great Williams / Nichols tune.

All Of My Life: legend has it that the demo of this tune is what convinced Herb Albert to sign the duo in 1969.

Mr Guder: Another anti-establishment tune written about Carpenter’s ex-boss at Disneyland.

Saturday: I heard this recently in a regional department store commercial, and it’s still catchy as hell.

Bless The Beasts And The Children: the duo recorded this title track at the request of director, Stanley Kramer. It was included as the B-side to the Rock-and-Roll Hall Of Fame-inducted track, “Superstar” and charted as a single in its own right.

Maybe It’s You: this Carpenter-penned ballad could have been another single from the Close To You album.

Crystal Lullaby: beautiful, deep cut from Carpenters best album, A Song For You.

Road Ode: written by Carpenters band members after a concert in Carbondale, Illinois. This tune described the toll-taking rigors of life on the road and chronicled the duo’s disappointing personal lives as well as foreshadowed the ultimate tragedy that lie ahead.

Heather: a melencholy piano piece also used in an aspirin television commercial campaign around 1973.

This Masquerade: a long-time fan favorite and lost opportunity of a single.

Happy: another lost single opportunity, written by band member, Tony Peluso and long-time Carpenter collaborator, John Bettis.

If I Had You: from Karen’s unreleased (until 1996) solo album, here in a superior, remixed form.

And beyond the revelatory B-sides, here’s a list of tunes that appear in unique, single mixes:

Ticket To Ride: different intro, fun piano part (mono mix)

Your Wonderful Parade: shortened spoken intro, clean ending (mono mix)

I Kept On Loving You: clean opening and sweetened background vocals by Richard

Merry Christmas Darling: original, raw vocal

Mr. Guder: shortened version

Crystal Lullaby: clean ending (doesn’t blend into “Road Ode”)

Road Ode: clean opening (doesn’t enter with “Crystal Lullaby” ending)

I Won’t Last A Day Without You: different vocal and rockier arrangement

Please Mr. Postman: different vocal and arrangement

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town: different vocal and arrangement, completely different sax line

Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft: shortened, no DJ intro

Can’t Smile Without You: different vocal and arrangement

Christmas Song: different vocal and arrangement

Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina: shortened, deleted opera intro

Those Good Old Dreams: original vinyl mix, which differed from the CD version

Make Believe It’s Your First Time: deleted spoken intro

This is an essential collection for not only completests, like I tend to be, but also for the casual fan who wants an accurate overview of the duo’s true pop music legacy. Skip the standard hits collections (that often misrepresent the duo and/or skip essential hits and album cuts), support your local PBS station, and shell out a little more scratch for this one-of-a-kind collection.

“Mingus,” by Joni Mitchell

One summer many years ago when I was still single, two married friends of mine started inviting me to spend time with them: a lot of time. We usually had a great time: sharing delicious food and laughter: a lot of laughter. What I was slow to realize was that their marriage was ending, and I had served as a temporary balm for their pain that summer: a friendly face to provide respite from endless fights, frazzled emotions, and the agony of a marriage falling apart. I share this story because I picked up Joni Mitchell’s Mingus album that summer, at the height of our evenings together, and the music on Mingus perfectly captured the emotion of that summer: joyful, peculiar, fragile, sad, disjointed, raw, and fragmented, like a tentative conversation or an unfinished painting.

Mingus was Joni Mitchell’s tenth studio album and the result of legendary jazz bassist, Charles Mingus, contacting Mitchell through shared acquaintances. According to Mitchell’s website, Mingus “…had been introduced to her music by a friend of a friend. Mingus thought Mitchell was a gutsy artist with a sense of adventure, and he wanted Joni to consider working with him on an adaption of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets…Joni thought the idea was quite original, but after reading Eliot's work, she nixed the project, saying that she'd much rather condense the Bible. A few weeks later, Mingus called and told her he'd written six melodies especially for her, and he wanted her to write lyrics to the tunes he'd named Joni I-VI."

Mitchell states that at their first meeting, Mingus’ face “…shone up at me with a joyous mischief. I liked him immediately. I had come to New York to hear six new songs he had written for me. I was honored! I was curious! It was as if I had been standing by a river – one toe in the water – feeling it out – an Charlie came by and pushed me in – ‘sink or swim’ – him laughing at me dog paddling around in the currents of Black classical music.”

The process of musical collaboration is fascinating to me. It’s no doubt a painstaking combination of inspiration and compromise. In the early days, Lennon and McCartney composed together, eyeball to eyeball. Taupin sent lyrics by mail to John, who composed melodies and sent them back to the author for review. And composer friends have told me that when they write, they’re never quite sure when to call a song “finished.” They fuss over a lyric, a chord change, or they completely scrap an idea and start over. Composers make choices, but sometimes circumstances create a condition where choices are made for them, like in the instance of a looming deadline. Decisions have to be made. The work has to be completed and turned-in.

And for this album, time was of essence, as Mingus’ health was quickly deteriorating in 1978, as he was immobilized from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and Mitchell worked earnestly, composing words to Mingus’ melodies, hoping to complete them while he could hear the end results. “Time never ticked so loudly for me as it did this last year,” stated Mitchell. “I wanted Charlie to witness the project’s completion.” And Mitchell almost succeeded, playing for Mingus all but one finished song, the exuberant, “God Must Be A Boogie Man,” which was based upon his autobiography and was a song Mitchell suggested Mingus would have found hilarious.

Featuring only six songs (plus five tape recorded conversations with Mingus, or “raps” to provide filler) and only three of the melodies Mingus provided to Mitchell, as the other three songs on Mingus, including, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “The Wolf That Lives In Lindsay,” are older compositions by Mingus (to which Mitchell wrote new lyrics) and Mitchell, respectively. “God Must Be ABoogie Man” was composed by Mitchell and inspired by the first few pages of Mingus’ autobiography. It was long rumored that Mitchell’s experimentations with the other two new Mingus melodies were put down on tape, but deemed insufficient for the final release. Those recordings, reported either “lost” or “destroyed,” began surfacing online and remain rare collectibles for fans of both Mingus and Mitchell.

The experimental album contains just over 30 minutes of actual music. Mitchell calls the songs on Mingus, “audio paintings,” claiming, at the album’s release, to be satisfied with the final product (as well she should have been). On this album, more than any other of Mitchell’s previous, jazz-informed work, she used her voice like an instrument itself, blending her scatting with horns, bass, spare acoustic guitar, keyboards, cymbals and snares. Mingus received dismal reviews upon release, and even over time it seems to be one of Mitchell’s least appreciated albums, with Pitchfork even referring to the groundbreaking artist as, ”jazz dilatant.”

But I find Mingus enigmatic and enduring and return to it often, with my own “Mingus: Expanded Edition” compiled in Spotify, including Mingus’ original instrumental, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as well as other Mitchell tunes reminiscent of the era and of the album’s mood (“Jericho” and “Overture/Cotton Avenue,” from Don Juan’s RecklessDaughter). I also can’t help but also recognize the time capsule that was the album, as un-commercial as it may have been, it was not completely a fish out of water in the late 70’s pop music landscape, as it reflected the musical zeitgeist of a major musical movement in 1979: jazzy, R&B-inflected pop music (e.g., Boz Skaggs, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Rickie Lee Jones, Chuck Mangione, Gerry Rafferty, etc.).

The Mingus album ended a bout of writer’s block Mitchell had suffered for the previous year and was a suitable comma at the end of her 1970’s stanza. The album also ended Mitchell’s period of overtly jazzy studio albums, as the 1980’s and 1990’s would find her trying out rock-and-roll, synthesizers, adult-oriented pop, and returning to acoustic guitar basics. Mingus is full of unfinished fragments, unexpected musical turns, and mystery. Mitchell writes in her liner notes for the album, “Charles Mingus, a musical mystic, died in Mexico, January 5, 1979, at the age of 56. He was cremated the next day. The same day 56 sperm whales beached themselves on the Mexican coastline and were removed by fire.  These are the coincidences that thrill my imagination.” Thrilling, indeed.

“Passage,” by Carpenters

Richard and Karen Carpenter were, arguably, the most popular and influential North American pop music act of the early part of the 1970’s, placing a remarkable 15 top 40 singles in the first half of the decade and holding a ubiquitous presence in popular culture during that timeframe, with constant touring, television specials, guest appearances, and even shout-outs on The Brady Bunch! Seriously. The one-and-only Marsha Brady name-checked the Carpenters in the Davy Jones episode. Rock critics, on the other hand, while conceding raw talent and admitting fondness for Karen’s unmistakable vocals and Richard’s composing and arranging, universally hounded the duo throughout their meteoric success. And the reason? Carpenters were, simply put, not cool. After all, they were a nerdy brother-sister act from suburban Downey, California, and in the early-1970’s, Rolling Stone magazine cast them out of the “cool kids club.”

Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame-er, Linda Rondstadt, recently noted with dismay how Rolling Stone magazine widely determined “rock cred” and peddled a “cooler-than-thou” posture in the industry:

That was sort of the attitude of wanting to get with the hipper side. But I never bought into that. It was so competitive and all about looking down at other people and trying to trip them up and make them look bad…Rolling Stone magazine really encouraged that attitude. It was kind of Puritanism, and I never liked it.

Carpenters’ 1975 album, Horizon, a departure from their early 1970’s, trend-setting style, was thought to be the album that would finally bring credibility to the duo, the anticipation of which ironically placed them on the coveted cover of Rolling Stone in the summer of 1974. In the winter of 1974, the duo released the first single from that album, the bubbly, and, in hindsight, throwaway remake of the Marvelette’s 1961 #1 hit, “Please Mr. Postman,” which itself hit the #1 spot in January of 1975, setting the stage for the coming-of-age for the pop duo. The follow-up single, “Only Yesterday,” was released in March of that year, reaching an anticipated #4 in late May (and serving as the duo’s last top 10 single in the U.S.). And while the Horizon album was released the next month, due to label delays and possible over-confidence, the next single, “Solitaire,” wasn’t released until July and only reached #17. The Horizon album only reached #13 on the album charts, signaling the beginning of the long-term downward spiral of the duo that plagued the siblings for the remainder of Karen’s short life.

Richard and Karen rebounded by dutifully (if not mechanically), returning to the studio that winter to record their follow-up, the paint-by-numbers approach of an album, A Kind Of Hush. The title tune was a cover of Herman’s Hermits 1967 top five hit, and Carpenters’ version eked to #12 on the pop charts, further indicating a drop in the duo’s popularity, being the first lead single from a Carpenters album to fall short of the Top 5 since the group's debut, while the #33 chart peak of the A Kind of Hush album was their first Top 20 album shortfall also since their debut. The subsequent singles from that album, “I Need ToBe In Love,” and “Goofus,” both fell short of expectations in the summer of 1976, peaking at #25 and #56, respectively.

All of this set the stage for their next album, Passage, of which Richard recalls,

I was hardly surprised then, when I heard from (A&M label boss) Jerry Moss, relating his concern about relatively lackluster sales by A&M’s biggest worldwide record sellers…us.  As an owner’s eyes fall on the manager when a fine baseball team doesn’t perform as expected, so the eyes of the record company fall on the producer when a successful artist’s record sales falter. This, by the by, is the way it should be, so I was perfectly willing to let someone else take over my role; it would be a lot less work for me and, as previously mentioned (Carpenter was battling addiction to Quaaludes at the time), I was not 100% myself. The problem was, not one major producer would sign on; radio was not quite as friendly at that time to our type of sound and to be honest, my track record on the whole was a tough act to follow. Accordingly, I remained producer, but I did try to approach this new project from a different angle, hence my selection of songs for this album made Passage a bit of a departure from our previous recordings.

“A bit of a departure” is putting it mildly. This album, to my ear, is a pull-out-all-the-stops, shotgun approach to record making and smacked of desperation and audience pandering. The duo, per Richard’s above recollection, was desperate for a MEGA hit record and made an album designed to appeal to everyone, and in doing so, made an album that appealed to relatively few at the time (but was not altogether unsuccessful, as singles “All You Get From Love Is A Love Song” and “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft” both scraped the surface of the Top 40 in 1977 as well as the surprise Country Top 10 hit, “Sweet, Sweet Smile," the following Spring). 

I’ll discuss the Passage album, here, song by song:

B’Wana She No Home: This jazz-fusion opener, while featuring a fun, funky, stylistic vocal departure for Karen, was a cringe-worthy, privileged slice of oblivious racism, where the narrator barks at her paid, brown-skinned help, “Got to learn these words, and I know you will, or I'll send you right back to Guayaquil,” and “I want you to speak the English right; I want you to smile and be polite…” Ugh. Gawdawful. Of the hundreds of funky songs out there at that time, why’d they have to pick that one?

All You Get From Love Is A Love Song: More along the lines of what one might expect from a Carpenters track at that time and featuring Tom Scott on saxophone, this song was understandably pulled as the album’s first single, reaching the top 40 (#35) in the summer of 1977. This jazzy pop tune, while not one of their best-known singles, features a playful, pre-MTV music video and remains a fan favorite.

I Just Fall In Love Again: If released in May, 1978, this old-fashioned love song would have pre-dated Anne Murray’s #12 hit by one year and would have easily gone as high on the Billboard chart, if not higher. A&M Records decided not to release it as a single, because it was considered too long for Top 40 radio stations to play at the time (it was just over 4 minutes). Instead, it remained a forgotten album track. Fun fact: Carpenters also recorded another would-be hit, “Trying To Get The Feeling Again,” in 1975, during their Horizon recording sessions, but they shelved the track, not seeing its hit potential, only to have Barry Manilow’s version peak at #10 the following year.

On The Balcony Of The Casa Rosada / Don’t Cry For Me Argentina: It takes over three minutes to get to Karen’s remarkable, higher-register vocal on this orchestral tune from Evita, but Carpenter’s performance on this track is, by my ear, the definitive version of this well-known song, which has been covered by, officially, and as of 2015, everybody. I’m glad they recorded it.

Sweet, Sweet Smile: The third and final single release from Passage, this Juice Newton tune (“Queen Of Hearts,” “Break It To Me Gently,” “Love’s Been A Little Bit Hard On Me”) was intended for Newton, herself, to record, but first went to Carpenters when Newton's manager played the demo for Karen, who brought it to Richard, who noted, "I liked it immediately...now there's one that, to me, should have done better than it did…I think if someone else had done it at that time, it would have been a bigger hit." Not that the song was a complete flop, falling just short of the American Top 40 at #44 and giving the duo their sole Country hit, rising as high as #8 on the Country chart and as high as #7 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.

Two Sides: Another country-flavored tune, this particular track was a bit of a departure for the duo, as the background vocals on the verses feature a Karen duet (as opposed to their stacked vocals), something the duo initially tried on their previous album, A Kind Of Hush, with album tracks and fan favorites, “You” and “I Have You.” I suspect this song might have been a hit on the Country charts in the winter of 1977 or the spring of 1978 had it been released as a single.

Man Smart, Woman Smarter: Originally a calypso tune harkening back to the 1930’s, the duo’s funky little head-scratcher of a recording whistles, wheezes, jerks, pops, and burps (Literally. There’s an audible burp in there; I’m not kidding.). And after many years of wondering, “why this song?” I think I’ve recently landed on what might have been going on: the duo, always weary of their saccharine image (which, in hindsight, turned-out to be fairly spot-on), started pushing back (hard) against the “goody four shoes,” “Pepsodent Twins” image on which the rock press overly focused on, especially as more and more Top 40 stations ignored their “unhip” love songs. It was the mid-Seventies, after all, and the specter of Disco was rising with New Wave close behind. The Clash and The Sex Pistols released their debut albums that year, Elvis died in August, and fly-by-night acts like The Captain & Tennille had stolen the Carpenters’ pop crown two years previous by performing similarly silly (“Muscrat Love”) and/or irreverent songs (“Love Will Keep Us Together”).

I suspect songs like “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” (and “Goofus,” and “B’Wana She No Home,” and “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft”) were a strategic career move to show a less stodgy, more playful image. Bad call. And when it didn’t work (and after a stint in rehab for Richard and a shelved solo album from Karen), the siblings reverted back to formula on their follow-up album, 1981’s Made In America, and while it boasted their final top 20 hit, “Touch Me When We’re Dancing (#16), the album failed to find an audience, and subsequent singles only scraped the bottom of the Hot 100. Maybe the duo had run their hit-making cycle and (had Karen lived) were destined to spend the remainder of the 1980’s in no-hit, adult contemporary hell, only to reemerge in the 1990’s as an oldies act with a flukey hit single or two from a movie or an unexpected duet with Bryan Adams or Gloria Estafan. Who knows? Maybe they were onto something and could have had an unexpected and extended hit-making shelf life had they stuck with recording goofy songs like this one:

Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem Of World Contact Day): Released as the second single to Passage, Carpenters’ version of “Occupants” climbed to #32 and was first released by Canadian rock group, Klaatu. John Woloschuk, one of the song's writers, noted the idea for this track came from an actual event: in the early 1950’s, the "International Flying Saucer Bureau" sent a bulletin to all its members asking them to participate in "World Contact Day," where, at a certain date and time, members would collectively send out, telepathically, a message to nearby visitors in space. The message began with, "Calling occupants of interplanetary craft…"

And a groovy, silly, space-age song was born. The duo have often noted that their song was well underway well before the “space craze” of the later part of the 1970’s, recalling taking a break from recording the song to watch Star Wars the week it was released. I was 6 years old hearing this song when my sister played it for my siblings and me on her wood-grained stereo. Tony Peluso’s reprised, “All Hit Radi-ooooo!” DJ bit from the Now & Then album was hilarious to us at the time, especially the “aliens” monotone, robotic voices and the mimicked, “ba-by” that bled into the first few seconds of the song. It was a laugh riot. Who could ever think these two wacky kids from Downey were nerdy?

The framed artwork for this album hangs in my office today; it’s probably their best album cover (in a career of poorly-conceived album artwork). But beyond being the least-known Carpenters album of the 1970’s and their first album since their 1969 debut not to make the Top 40, what most intrigues me about Passage is not the calculated approach to getting a hit record, nor the daring-to-questionable song choices, but it’s brevity, at only eight songs. Were they so burned out and second-guessing by then that they couldn’t add two more songs to make ten? Probably. 

To wit, a tender, unreleased track from the Passage sessions, “You’re TheOne,” an exquisitely performed ballad (and a potential 1977 top 40 hit) that finally surfaced on the 1988 CBS made-for-TV Carpenters movie, reiterated the questionable artistic choices the duo was making at that time, further exposing the fact that, in 1977, all was not well in Carpentersville. With “You’re The One” being brushed aside, one has to wonder what other lost gems might remain in the vaults? The relative failure of this album led the duo limping through the sessions for their unexpectedly triumphant (and essential) Christmas album the following year, and after that, a career free-fall from which they never recovered. Nevertheless, the album holds some of the duo’s most imaginative performances, Karen was still in terrific voice, and Passage is, unquestionably, the most adventurous album the group ever recorded.