Mic drop: The 2024 RIP thread for musicians

I hate posting on this thread, because I hate the whole sensibility of it. Thought about fucking this off and starting an individual thread anyway, Eric Carmen deserves a helluva lot more than being buried inside a running thread, but I'll play nice.

I remember the first time I picked up a Raspberries CD in the early 90s. The only band I knew of at the time who made "power pop" in the sense I knew it at the time was Badfinger. I wanted to hear more music like them, so I did a bit of research and fixated on Big Star and the Raspberries.

The only Raspberries song I knew of at the time was "Go All The Way" and I knew I wanted to hear a lot more of that. It's one of the best singles ever released, I think anyone who's heard it knows this to be true. I also knew some of their other stuff was praised in various rock books I read at the time, but they were not critical darlings either. And they certainly weren't heard on the radio beyond "Go All The Way". Still aren't.

So I wasn't sure what to expect when I got that 20-song CD. I didn't love every song on it, Eric definitely lets his mawkish freak flag fly, but the power pop ones, which comprised about half the album and the majority of the second half of it, were like nothing I'd ever heard.

That hooky hard rock was like cocaine to me. I did some more exploration and realized most of the good songs were on their last two albums, "Side 3" and "Starting Over". I wanted those albums SO bad, but they weren't released on CD at the time. I'm not sure they ever were.

Years later, I was able to acquire both (via streaming, and now, on wax) and they are masterpieces, especially "Starting Over", which is in perpetual photo finish with Big Star's "Radio City" as the best power pop album of all-time.

The Raspberries' influence is criminally overlooked. Without the Raspberries, there are no Cars, Cheap Trick, the new wave power pop era, quite a few 80s college bands, the 90s power pop revival and so on. All can trace their path back to the Holy Trinity of Power Pop, the three aforementioned bands.

Carmen's late 70s solo career, where he really let his mawkish side run rampant, fucked up his reputation. Most people would never know the man who recorded "All By Myself" also made the hard power pop of the Raspberries.

As BYH noted, "Make Me Lose Control" is an exception. I didn't like it back in '88, but I'll admit now, that it's basically what a Raspberries would have sounded like in the 80s ... at least in their softer mid-tempo Beach Boys mode.

Anyway, the Raspberries have become one of my all-time favorite bands. Power pop itself is probably the genre I've spent the most time on going down its back alleys. I am varied in what I listen to, but there is nothing better than when a band nails a power pop song.

And few, if any, nailed them quite like the Raspberries did.

I would consider this song my second favorite in every genre of all-time, only behind "Tumbling Dice" by the Rolling Stones. This is perfection on wax.

RIP Eric Carmen. Your music meant a lot to me.

 

Let me be your Raspberries gateway drug!

Everyone in the band sang/wrote, and there's some doozies by the rest of the Raspberries too, but here's a few other Eric-specific choice cuts in power pop mode.

Of course ...

Could have included "I'm A Rocker" from "Side 3" as well.

That last one hits. Probably the one time Eric combined his mawk side with his rock side and made it work.

Seriously. Get your hands on "Starting Over". Absolutely brilliant album.

 

One last indulgence. Perhaps the most mawkish song the Raspberries ever recorded, but man, I love it anyway.

There's a demo of this on Youtube which is remarkable.

 

You shouldn’t have played nice. This thread, I thought, was for lesser-knowns. This guy definitely is worthy of a thread. Cleveland TV news shows are acting like the pope died.

 

CJ Snare, the lead singer of Firehouse, died Friday night of colon cancer at just 64 years old. A solid band that had a pretty good two-album run bridging the end of hair metal and the start of grunge and then had one of the unlikeliest hits of the '90s with "I Live My Life For You," which hit the top 30 in 1995. RIP CJ and everyone, get yourselves checked.

 

I came over here to see if anyone would mention Snare's death on this thread; I should have known it would be you, BYH.

In retrospect, Firehouse was a band that made Nickelback seem almost gritty, but, like you, I really enjoyed the first two albums. "Don't Treat Me Bad," "Reach for the Sky," and "Overnight Senation" were among my favorites.

Last time I think I heard them was at my cousin's wedding a couple of years ago. The DJ played "Love of a Lifetime" for the bride and groom's first dance. Just for context, my cousins was a drummer in a local heavy metal band in the late '8os, so he was into that kind of music like I was. He says Guns N Roses actually opened for his band once, and he claims to have the concert flyers to prove it.

 

The Firehouse/Firehose confusion was unfortunate.

 

In college, I was friends with a guy who was huge into the alternative scene. I always told him I loved the new Firehose song, and then I would start singing a Firehouse song. He hated that.

 

Let's see those flyers!!!!

As for Firehouse, they were never anything more than they presented themselves as...a solid no-frills hard rock band. Been a long time since I heard "Hold Your Fire," but I don't remember them adjusting their sound at all to try and fit in with the times in 1992. If anything, they went softer to get that final top 40 hit a few years later. They also weren't big enough to warrant universal hate, a la Nickelback. If you hated the genre, you probably mocked Firehouse. Otherwise they just flew under the radar...but did well enough to keep playing and touring 30+ years after their biggest hits. Pretty good career and they had three of the four original members the entire time. (Not to speak of the band in the past tense, but if they've been this stable this long, I doubt they keep going after this terrible news)

 

A terrific band that came around three years too late. Bill Leverty is a hell of a guitar player (the solo on Overnight Sensation holds up to Nuno's best stuff) and CJ's opening wail on that tune...GODDAMN.* I still listen to the first two albums and have a Maxell cassette with a Z-Rock concert broadcast of theirs.

*and he could hit it live, too

 

I was going to shit on Firehouse as some second-rate hair metal band, but I listened to that solo and it was good. Nothing I would listen to, but not some of the dreck from that era.

 

Here I was thinking my brother was the only person ever to dance to Firehouse at his wedding. I’ve been making fun of him for almost 30 years about it.

In the interest of full transparency, the songs I danced to at my weddings have probably aged even worse.