Friday, January 29, 2016

Carpenters to The Rescue


When things look their bleakest I can always count on Karen Carpenter to lift my spirits. I do listen to The Carpenters recordings but I prefer to play from this vintage Greatest Hits songbook I found in a St. Louis thrift store with accurate keys and arrangements far superior to the others I own (yes, I own multiple Carpenters songbooks). The arrangement of Ticket to Ride might be Richard's greatest accomplishment because the original Beatles version could easily be mistaken for a peppy pop rock song when the lyrics are obviously melancholy. Same applies to Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. But Goodbye to Love is the ultimate melancholy song and even the key change at the end is only a harmonic nod to resurrection of Oggy's spirit, when the lyrics still confirm his heart's demise. I really belong in a dark cavern far from the meddlesome trauma of love and longing.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.