Bloggerhythms

Today is the 40th anniversary of Karen Carpenter's unfortunate passing.  Last year, Bloggerhythms re-ran one post of a three part series on guilty pleasures in which I wrote that my number one guilty pleasure of all time was Karen Carpenter's golden voice. In it, while acknowledging their god-given talents, I lamented that the brother and sister duo should have used their gifts to make better music than the bubblegum pop they frequently pushed into the upper reaches of the Top Forty. Proving my point is a YouTube video of Karen Carpenter singing standards with the great Ella Fitzgerald in 1980 on one of the siblings’ TV specials.  The video easily suggests that the greatest album never made was The Carpenters Sing and Play the Great American Songbook . (The fact that they never recorded these songs while Rod Stewart did four times makes me want to cry.) The show clearly indicates that by this time Fitzgerald's age had taken its toll on her voice and Carpenter uses the ...

As part two of a three part series originally posted here in February 2008 I wrote about my all time top ten guilty pleasures with a statement that my number one choice would be receiving its own separate post. I'm bringing it back today - inspired by a tweet I stumbled upon by "Morning Joe" Scarborough that you can see below. The original article and links to the other posts in this series follow immediately after the tweet. This album reminds me of my parents more than any other. I listened to it countless times in my mom & dad’s car. One of many reasons I love this album and was just never cool enough to think the Carpenters were uncool. Always loved them. Always will❤️ pic.twitter.com/Q3DsRcTb2I — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 7, 2022 One of the Twentieth Century’s most beautiful female singing voices belonged to the late, golden-voiced, balladeer Karen Carpenter. She was the more famous half of The Carpenters , the brother and sister duo who had a...

Sometimes you attend a concert to absorb a great musical experience where the performers are true artists and you can fully bask in the glory of their stellar vocals, songwriting, or musicianship. Then there are the times you go to a show just for a good time that is steeped in nostalgia. Former Top 40 hitmaker Peter Noone, and his 21st Century version of Herman's Hermits , played at the cozy Sellersville Theater on Sunday and they definitely fall into the latter category. Noone and his four mates entertained an almost totally baby boomer crowd with tons of hits from their 1965 to 1967 stateside heyday plus a bunch of covers from other band's catalogs from the same era, the highlight of which was a very nice version of The Dave Clark Five's ballad, "Because." Also on the set list were a couple of "B" sides. Right before Noone sang "The End of the World," the flip side of "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am," he said it was his favori...

PART THREE OF THREE Why is it considered acceptable to love some songs and artists but embarrassing to love others? The correct answer to that question is that there should be no answer at all. Taste in music, as in all of the arts, is totally subjective. Why else do such diverse genres as chamber music and gangsta rap both exist? Do you have better taste in jazz if you prefer Wynton Marsalis to Kenny G? Are you on a higher intellectual plane if you prefer Pavarotti to Bocelli? Are you a really a cooler dude if you prefer Pearl Jam to Bon Jovi? So what gives one musician credibility while another is thought of as a joke? Sometimes an artist's reputation is born from the words of the musical press who almost to a man fancy themselves to be the arbiters of good taste. Regional preferences often play a role too. If you're from Alabama and you like Toby Keith that's cool, but if your a Keith fan from Greenwich Village your taste in music will definitely be sneered...

PART ONE OF THREE Perplexio, the owner of a blog I read regularly named The Review Revue , recently challenged me to post an article listing my favorite musical guilty pleasures after he recently posted his personal Top Twenty . Wikipedia accurately defines the term "guilty pleasure" as follows: "A guilty pleasure is known as something one considers pleasurable despite it being mainly received negatively or looked down on by a majority of society. References to guilty pleasures are often used in terms of the arts and entertainment, such as music, film, and television and other aspects of popular culture." My number one all time guilty pleasure will be covered in a separate article as Bloggerhythms first post in February. So keeping Wikipedia's definition in mind, here, in the approximate chronological order I discovered them, are nine of my top ten guilty pleasures. Herman's Hermits Lead singer Peter Noone (Herman) and his band were part of the ...