Eric Carmen: His recordings have sold 50 million records
Written: Mar 06 '05 (Updated Oct 18 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Top 5 hits: "All By Myself" and "Make Me Lose Control."
Cons: Poor CD booklet. Nothing new among the songs.
The Bottom Line: Top 40 hits: "All By Myself," "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again," "Make Me Lose Control," "Change Of Heart," "She Did It" and "Sunrise."
Don_Krider's Full Review: All by Myself: The Best of Eric Carmen by Eric Car...
Eric Carmen recently rediscovered that it's still fun to sing songs of teen lust and sexual abandon even if you've hit middle age.
Raspberries:
In the Fall of 2004, Eric reformed Raspberries with the original recording lineup (besides Carmen, his bandmates Wally Bryson, Dave Smalley and Jim Bonfanti returned to the group).
This lineup of the band parted ways in 1973 (though Carmen and Bryson stayed with the band until its final breakup in 1975). The current tour is the first in more than 30 years for that original lineup.
The band did two quick sell-outs at the House of Blues in Cleveland in November and December of 2004, followed by a sell-out show in Chicago in January of 2005. That fist show, November 26, 2004, sold out in four minutes, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
Apparently things are going nicely: Raspberries will play a number of venues in 2005, including the Coors Amphitheater in Denver in July of 2005 and a two-night stand at B. B. King's club in New York City that same month. A live DVD culled from the tour is planned. Details are at EricCarmen.Com and Raspberries.Net .
Eric Carmen, Yesterday And Today:
At 55, Carmen could still pass for a guy 30 years younger, despite a change in the color of his hair that fits a man of his age.
Now married and with two children, Eric lives in the Cleveland, Ohio, area he grew up in.
Eric Carmen has scored 20 Billboard Hot 100 Singles since 1972 as a performer (seven as a member of Raspberries in 1972-74 and 13 more as a solo artist).
Toss in the sales from four Raspberries' albums, six solo albums, the "Footloose" soundtrack (he co-wrote "Almost Paradise") and the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack (he performed, but didn't write, "Hungry Eyes"), and the songs he has written that have been covered by other artists, and Eric can safely claim sales of 50 million recordings worldwide.
Among the artists to record Eric's songs are Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra, Frankie Valli, The Bay City Rollers, Shaun Cassidy, John Travolta, Michael Damian, Sheryl Crow, Jewel, Olivia Newton-John, Tom Jones, Patti LaBelle, Peter Cetera, John Turrentine and many others.
Still, Eric Carmen, when mentioned by name, makes most people scratch their heads --- some wondering if he isn't that fat kid on "South Park" (that's "Eric Cartman" folks) or if he isn't the Christian pop singer known as "Carman" --- when the name of "Eric Carmen" is mentioned.
Play the hits, and people remember, sometimes, but Eric's last hit singles were in 1988, when both "Hungry Eyes" and "Make Me Lose Control" went Top 5, so you need a long memory to remember Eric's last hit (kids born in 1988 are 17 years of age now! --- I suddenly feel old).
To sharpen those older memories of Carmen's solo career, the folks at BMG in England have issued a 17-track "greatest hits" collection. Yeah, another one, folks (there's several on the market already).
This CD:
"All By Myself: The Best Of Eric Carmen" is a nice collection of Carmen's solo hits from his years on Arista Records (1975-80, 1987-88). Among the 17 tracks are some unusual choices, which is a nice change of pace.
Missing are Carmen's solo hits for Geffen Records and RCA. None of his tunes from his Pioneer Records Japanese studio album "Winter Dreams" from 1998 (reissued in a shorter form in 2000 in the USA as "I Was Born To Love You").
His Raspberries' hits, recorded for Capitol, are also missing in action on this set (but Capitol will release yet another Raspberries' "Best Of" set in May of 2005, but with no new tracks).
The songs on "All By Myself: The Best Of Eric Carmen" were remastered from the original master recordings, so the sound quality is very clean and clear.
The 17 tracks are all good choices, even if limited to his Arista catalog, but using the single version of "Boats Against The Current" rubs me the wrong way (a perfect piano and vocal tune on Carmen's 1977 album of the same name, Clive Davis added angelic female voices to the title track when it was released as a single and destroyed the song's impact --- the evidence is here).
The 8-page CD booklet has some nice photos, but the liner notes are usually wrong (to the point of wrong titles for the albums the writer is discussing!).
Still, it's the music that counts, and there's a generous 76:11 minutes of Eric Carmen's music on the CD "All By Myself: The Best Of Eric Carmen."
This New Zealand import is sold at a number of online retailers, including Amazon.Com (not to be confused with other, shorter CDs with "All By Myself" also in their titles, so order carefully).
Recommendation:
A good pick up to complete a collection. A great buy if you're discovering Carmen's music for the first time (or realizing for the first time who, or what, an "Eric Carmen" is).
Should appeal to Beatles, Beach Boys, classic rock and power pop fans. Nice equal balance of ballads and rockers, a rarity on a Carmen "hits" CD.
The tracks:
"All By Myself" (the short, single version which hit # 2 in the USA in 1976; later covered by Celine Dion), "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" (# 11 in 1976), "Hey Deanie" (later covered by Shaun Cassidy), "Make Me Lose Control" (# 3 in 1988), "Change Of Heart" (# 19 in 1978) and "She Did It" (# 23 in 1977).
"It Hurts Too Much" (# 75 in 1980), "No Hard Feelings," "Boats Against The Current," "Sunrise" (# 34 in 1976), "I Think I Found Myself," "Nowhere To Hide," "Take It Or Leave It," "Someday," "Love Is All That Matters," "Last Night" and "Run Away."
A few unusual gems:
"Last Night":
A standout track from Carmen's self-titled debut album for Arista in 1975, "Last Night" sounds as fresh and vibrant as ever --- a kick-in-the-butt, richly melodic power pop tune, full of fast power-chording, lovely piano and the best harmonies this side of The Beach Boys.
I've always loved this tune, which may now sound dated in its lyrics, which mention the late Johnny Carson and Carmen's love of cigarettes. Still, it packs a punch, and try not to sing along as it plays (a song that should have been an A-side single but never was).
This is Carmen's any-guy tale of waiting for the phone to ring and pretending that your lover's failure to call doesn't bother you.
Carmen's lyrics, as always, are intelligent and creative (and, yes, I was 18 when this came out and Eric Carmen seemed to capture my feelings perfectly at the time):
"I think I'll stay at home tonight / just play some records / and catch up on some sleep / sometimes I like to be alone / I've been so busy / maybe someone will drop by / ... / I waited for the phone to ring / and when it didn't / I turned on the Carson show / I lit another cigarette / and dialed your number / but there was no one at home / ... / I walked across the street / to the drugstore and I bought a magazine / then I came back home / and read it through / last night when I went to bed, I was lonely / last night when I went to bed, I was so blue..."
"No Hard Feelings":
No, it's not about his sex life, but Carmen's "No Hard Feelings" was written by Carmen at the urging of Raspberries' producer Jimmy Ienner (who also produced Carmen's first solo album) and is about his band Raspberries, which existed for nearly five years ending in 1975 and scored such Top 20 hits as "Go All The Way," "I Wanna Be With You" and "Overnight Sensation."
Backed by Cleveland band Magic and former Raspberries' drummer Michael McBride, this is one of the few hard rock tracks recorded by Carmen as a solo artist. Carmen is Roger Daltrey of The Who here, screaming "let me out" by song's end as he recalls the frustration of being in a Beatles-inspired band that the critics loved but which the general public pretty much ignored to death:
"We was young / and still believed in 'A Hard Day's Night' / but no one seemed to understand / that there was no relief in sight / the company man / he's got his nose glued to the charts / he says the record's doin' fine / but now the group is fallin' apart / I hope there's no hard feelings / 'cause there isn't anyone to blame / ... / well we was locked in image prison / waitin' for that break / we was raped, reshaped and tryin' to escape / caught in a rock and roll time warp / ... / critics ravin' 'bout our album / but we're making fifty cents / ... / I gotta get out / lemme out, lemme out..."
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
On the web:
The official Eric Carmen website: http://www.ericcarmen.com
The official Raspberries website: http://www.raspberries.net
Related reviews:
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
Released in 2004, a Collectables Records Eric Carmen collection for the USA, which is also called "All By Myself" but has only 10 tracks: http://www.epinions.com/content_147186945668
Carmen's bandmate in both Raspberries and Cyrus Erie, Wally Bryson, and Wally's son, Jesse Bryson (ex-Rosavelt), with friends, deliver great sounds on The Bryson Group's 16-track CD "Dry": http://www.epinions.com/content_177981263492
And, believe it or not, I used to write short reviews, as in the case of the Rhino Records re-issue of 1975's Arista "Eric Carmen" album (which featured Carmen's "That's Rock 'n' Roll," a tune covered by Shaun Cassidy for a million-selling single) that I reviewed in 1999: http://www.epinions.com/musc-review-2A40-33C7F7A-385486BE-prod4
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