Starting Over [Import]

Raspberries | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 7, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Rpm Records UK
• ASIN: B0007736Y8
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,272 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)

2. Play On

3. Party's Over

4. I Don't Know What I Want

5. Rose Coloured Glasses

6. All Through the Night

7. Cruisin' Music

8. I Can Hardly Believe You're Mine

9. Cry

10. Hands on You

11. Starting Over

Editorial Reviews

UK reissue of the power pop act's third album, originally issued in 1974, packaged in a digipak with original artwork. RPM. 2005.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the great lost rock 'n roll albums, April 26, 2005

By 

JR Hercules (Somewheres, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starting Over (Audio CD)

Maybe sensing that their days as a band were numbered, the Raspberries dropped the white-suited goody-two-shoes bubblegum act and produced their best (and final) lp, 1974's "Starting Over". This last hurrah is a vague concept album about the hopes and realities of being in a rock 'n roll band, from Eric Carmen's determination to create an immortal hit record (the hit, "Overnight Sensation"), to Wally Bryson's jaded-but-humorous "The Party's Over". The Raspberries don't try to sound like wholesome pop idols on this one: "All Through the Night" has Carmen coldly mocking and tossing aside a groupie, and the drunken Beatles' campfire of "Hands On You" is no less sexist (but no less entertaining). The finale title track bursts with melody, but Eric Carmen deliberately torpedoes any chance of commercial air-play with the opening line "I used to be so f***ing optimistic". This wasn't the same "scratch-and-sniff" album-cover Raspberries from before.

The Raspberries also come up with three terrific tributes to their 60's pop idols: "I Don't Know What I Want" is a neat, very Who-like teen-angst rocker (great Keith Moon-style drumming, btw); "Rose Colored Glasses" is a beautiful, unusual psychedelic ballad, recalling the Beatles but not sounding derivative; and "Cruisin' Music" is a sensational Beach Boys' pastiche that surpasses the earlier and better-known "Drivin' Around". It's a great Beach-Boys takeoff, right up there with the Beatles' "Back In the USSR" and the Cowsill's "Indian Lake".

"Starting Over" is one the "great lost rock albums" of the 1970's.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historic yet almost forgotten, December 17, 2010

By 

R. Gallihugh "Album lover" (Sterling Va USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Starting Over (Audio CD)

RollingStone magazine raved about this album in 1974. John Lennon, a big Raspberry fan visited the studio while this album was being recorded and some say provided some minor help in the recording of "Overnight Sensation"). It has always been said Lennon's comeback song "Starting Over" was a nod to his high respect for the Raspberries.
No doubt this band was doing the right things at the wrong time. The music from this (and all of their albums) was great power pop at a time when the public was over the 60s power pop. Even Rundgren who made his name by putting out great power pop (ie (band)Nazz, (song)"Couldn't I Just Tell You") by 1973 (album Todd) moved to the progressive times of the early 70s.

Raspberry fans Bruce Springsteen and John Bon Jovi never forgot the impact of this band, and you shouldn't either.

As you listen to this album you will hear the early power pop of the 60s (ie The Who, The Beatles), the Rubber Soul sound, and the future of Power Pop/Rock Pop in the late 70s early 80s. You can see how this style of music was moving forward.

In the 70s The Knack, Cheap Trick, The Romantics, The Cars, all went forward with the ground work from the Raspberries and provided the basis for the New Wave years.

And this album was both the high point and end of that early 70s work.

How influential was this band? Well, attendees at the Raspberries reunion concerts on the 2004-05 tour were folks like Rick Springfield, Jon Bon Jovi, Little Steven Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Paul Stanley of Kiss, Gilby Clarke of Guns 'n' Roses, Kyle Vincent, with members of Blondie, Fotomaker, The Romantics, The Go-Gos, The Bangles, The Runaways, The Sex Pistols, Survivor and dozens of other acts. And Bruce Springsteen wrote the liner notes for their Live reunion album.

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect End to a Perfect Art Form, March 4, 2011

By 

Edvis (Parts Unknown) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Starting Over (Japanese Mini-Vinyl CD) (Audio CD)

End of the golden era of rock (1968-1973), methink. Nothing new came after this. These guys put their own brand on androgyny, and that look plus the music make for a really interesting dead end. This album got a great review from Rolling Stone but the record-buying public (including me, at 14) ignored it and the boys broke up within the year.

I haven't figured out yet how to characterize what came next, but Bad Company comes to mind -- and I did buy that stuff, aimed as it was right at my 14-year-old style set. The quality really started to suffer after this, and everything became a parody (see: Van Halen.). This is what happens when the largest mass audience in the history of Western Civilization has to start working for a living.