There was a bus trip to Jay in 1978, to an away football game. We’d smuggled a cassette recorder and a bulky, homemade speaker aboard. Once we rolled out of the parking lot, we hit play and began blasting Robin Trower Live and Fresh by Raspberries (no definite article, either) on the ride up. Me and my friends were the only ones who appreciated the tunes. But man, oh man, did we love Raspberries (Trower was pretty good, too).
The Raspberries were a 1970s thing.
Too Rolling Stoned.
It wasn’t our fault that most of LHS has no taste in early 70s rock, or for that matter, something other than the AOR schlock that got played to death on the radio at the time. I was always happy getting a steady diet of the kind of power pop that Eric Carmen and the boys put out from 1970 to 1975. Raspberries weren’t obscure by any means: they had hits—but like so many bands from that era (think Big Star’s #1 Record,) their record company never quite got the marketing and distribution ironed-out.
On Tuesday afternoon, after yet again being reminded that I no longer have a son, I had to find a way to get through that time between noon and 7:00 when I leave to tutor. For some reason, this is always the tough part of the day.
WFMU has been a musical friend for a long time, dating back to 2004 and happier times. It’s amazing that this freeform, community radio mainstay has managed to survive in a world where corporations have sucked most of the life out of music-making, extracting value that should be distributed mainly to the artists who craft the product, but alas, capitalism is ruthless in terms of leaving all but few artists out in the cold. Actually, that’s always been the way it’s been for most bands, although it’s worse now than ever before.
I have a stable of personal favorite DJs, all of them volunteers, who I return to weekly, marveling at their ability to craft diverse playlists. Many of them have been with ‘FMU for more than a decade.
Depending on my penchant on a particular day, I can click on their program guide, and three hours of music curated by a human being (with real musical tastes) becomes available. It’s restorative knowing that there are still places where humans rather than computers decide what gets played.
An archived show from last fall by Todd-o-phonic Todd featured Raspberries and a five-part interview with the band’s leader, Eric Carmen. Being a longtime fan, this was like heaven, if heaven is a place where you are surrounded by music that offered up something more than corporately-choreographed tunes like Taylor Swift’s greatest hits.
Hearing selections from across the band’s all-too-brief history, coupled with Carmen’s astute observations, recollections from the past, and some musical “inside baseball” that music geeks like me never grow tired of, provided a needed tonic for my afternoon blues.
Hard to pick a favorite, but this one always reminds me of when life was simpler and my problems were centered in male, adolescent angst and whether or not my acne was under control.
“Overnight Sensation” wasn’t their biggest hit, but the song always spoke to my own wish of being “bigger and better” than I was. And the term “overnight sensation” often gets applied to bands and artists who have a hit, the connotation being that they just stepped from the shadows into success. In most cases, “overnight” often means years of slogging it out in the back of a van, playing small venues, schlepping merchandise and being forced to schmooze with another group of fans in a different town who say and ask the same things. Back in the Raspberries’ day, you rode the endless PR merry-go-round machinations of radio interviews with DJs at the local station where you were playing that night. Then, “when your hair’s combed right and your pants fit tight, it’s gonna’ be all right,” and something clicks and you have that “hit” you’ve been looking for. This song captures the aspirational element of playing music as well as any song out there. Yes, overnight indeed!
I found a live version of the song, done during a Raspberries reunion tour during the mid-2000s. I actually think this was from the two NYC shows they did, but I might be wrong. Carmen was looking good and the rest of the band, slightly older and seasoned, sounds fine.