Customer Reviews

Starting Over

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is refreshingly straightforward: I guess in the early 1970s there were a few who decided they liked their heads just as they were, and didn't need Brain Salad Surgery. They loved their guitars so much, they kept off that silly Ziggy Stardust glamfacegreasepaint, and made some great rock and roll.


The Raspberries were one of those bands, and on this album, the plan could not be simpler--or better: write three chord songs with melodic changes, get the distortion peddle, and crank your amp to 10. That is what this album does

This album is ice water on a hundred degree city day: simple, clear as can be and as universally pleasurable. This reminds me of early Kiss, without the affectation, but the rock in perfect tact

Get it.

Side One
1. Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)
2. Play On
3. Party's Over
4. I Don't Know What I Want
5. Rose Coloured Glasses
Side Two
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

While not a big fan of the Raspberries, I like the songs on this album. It is for sure the best of their CD's without a doubt. It's light but really good songs. If you like this band this is a must.

The Raspberries' swan song is better than it has any right to be. Swathed as it is in 70s cock-rock cliches, plodding guitar riffs, "professional" but unspectacular musicianship, and lyrics about crying and the joys of groupie-abuse, you'd expect Starting Over to be the stuff of discount bins and "Where Are They Now" TV specials. And yet...

... and yet somehow, Starting Over is actually a fine album in and of itself. The 'Berries were, after all, decidedly not a 70s hard rock band. They were a power pop band who happened to rock. Hard. In the 70s. As such, what really defines Starting Over is its unimpeachable sense of melody. Few albums are this hook-heavy, and few hooks are as good as the ones found here: "I Don't Know What I Want" and "Cruisin' Music" threaten to beat the Who and the Beach Boys at their respective games, and "Rose Coloured Glasses" is inescapably lovely. "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)" is a rollicking, joyously melodramatic mock-epic that successfully transforms vanity into glory. "All Through The Night" is so gleefully misogynistic it makes gangsta rap sound like the soundtrack to the Seneca Falls convention.

A lot of the album is a bit tossed-off, but even the weaker tracks have something going for them. "Play On" and "Party's Over" may recycle lame whitewashed rock (no 'n' roll) conventions, but at least they're fun. "Hands On You" is moronic, but in an endearing, goofy sort of way.

I wouldn't call this the pinnacle of power pop, but it certainly deserves a larger following than it currently has.

No...there is absolutely no justification anywhere WHATSOEVER for "Go All The Way." Eric Carmen was one of those..."musicians" who should've followed Keith Moon, Mama Cass, Brian Jones, Hendrix - you know the riff. But honesty is honesty, and , like I said, if you HAVE to purchase Raspberries' "product," this one is most assuredly THE ONE TO GET. The opener on side 2, "All Thru The Night" sounds EXACTLY like what Rod Stewart mutated into during HIS "pop" days, and,oh yeah, the 'berries had a new rhythm section on ths thing, too. Sadly, I can't remember the drummer's name (*It was Mike McBride), but bassist Scott McCarl was every bit the "Keith" necessary to nulify Carmen's "Mick-esque" tendencies. And his song, "Hands On You" almost will have you forgive Wally Bryson for pulling all those "tough-guy" faces he did. Yes, to reiterate, if you play the 'berries "All Thru The Nite" next to anything Rod Stewart did during the late seventies - the "subject" of the song...the rhythm guitar propelling a necessarily brief "lead" guitar...and especially Carmen's vocals (well...on THIS song, anyway)...will have you shaking your head and saying, "Wow, what wasted talent." And as you must know, "Eric" Carmen would stink up the radio later on ("All By Myself"), and Bryson would team up with the Rascals' guitarist and drummer ("Rascals"..."Raspberries"...do ya think somebody was alphabetizing their record collection and said, "Hey...?") in a group that - really - should have had an "Amber Alert" called on them, a group called "Fotomaker," a group whose album covers portrayed VERY pre-teen little girls wearing Pat Benetar-esque makeup...Your money, buy the ticket, take the ride, and all that, but "Starting Over" is honestly a Raspberries album/cd you won't have to try to hide when your "hip" friends visit...