A&M Records Highlights: Carpenters

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Like so many other platinum acts from A&M Records’s pre-rock catalog, the Carpenters struck me even from a single-digit age as featherlight schlock, inescapably omnipresent (especially in the ‘70s) but instantly dismissed by Gen X’ers (I’m one) who had yet to grow out of ironic hipster attitudes toward everything straight-laced and square.

Some of you surely remember as fondly as I do how that outlook changed dramatically for the better via the 1994 compilation ‘If I Were a Carpenter.’ At the height of grunge, here was an earnestly sincere salute to all this sterling popcraft we’d never properly appreciated.

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A&M Records Highlights: Sergio Mendes

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Because I’m not a boomer who came of age in the ‘60s, I neither fell for these cross-pollinated charmers as a swingin’ sophisticate nor first became aware of Brazilian music via the global smash — Stan Getz & João Gilberto’s ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’ with aloofly dreamy vocals from the late Astrud Gilberto — that put the beguiling sound of bossa nova on a wider musical map.

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Christine McVie Deep Dive: ‘Rumours – Live’

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Those kindly following my sporadic deep dive into Christine McVie’s legacy will recall I pressed pause on that series a month ago, after revisiting Rumours and its alternate edition. Chronologically speaking, it made a lot of sense to wait on this just-released 2LP memento, captured during the first of three nights in August ‘77 at the then-Fabulous Forum, a sort of homecoming for the gone-platinum group.

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A&M Records Highlights: Herb Alpert

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You might understandably wonder why I didn’t start my #TuesdaysWithJerry series saluting the late great Jerry Moss with this (or any) twofer from his A&M partner Herb Alpert and his long-running outfit the Tijuana Brass Band. After all, it was Alpert’s desire to release albums independently that led to the label’s formation in ‘62 with the emergence of his surprise hit ‘The Lonely Bull.’

How can any survey of A&M’s past begin anywhere else?

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A&M Records Highlights: Burt Bacharach

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Like so many other milestones from the early A&M Records catalog, these records were always a reach away in my pre-digital childhood home — yet rarely were they played. I’ve always put their neglect down to the instant antiquity of ever-changing styles.

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A&M Records Highlights

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Music moguls have rarely been as monumentally influential as Jerry Moss was. Last week’s loss of the M half of A&M Records — Herb Alpert, the A, is still kicking at 88, the same age his partner reached — rises to a level of recognition reserved for legendary scene-shapers such as Mo Ostin at Warner/Reprise or Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic. Like those fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Moss was a crucial titan with a decades-deep effect on careers and stylistic shifts.

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Christine McVie Deep Dive: Bob Welch’s ‘French Kiss’

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To re-address @jldrueke’s question: Yes, I am including this one in my Christine McVie deep dive, for reasons some fans automatically know while others will learn below. That said, I’m not so sure I’d consider Bob Welch’s solo debut a truly bizarro follow-up to Rumours, as Jeremiah suggests.

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Christine McVie Deep Dive: The Alternate ‘Rumours’

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Yes, I’m still insisting the alternate versions of Fleetwood Mac’s most popular albums (‘75-‘87) are worthy of individual assessment amid this deep dive into the discography of the late great Christine McVie.

When it comes to the rough-cut mirror-image of Rumours, though, many of the truly illuminating session gems are only bonus bits on the ‘Super Deluxe’ edition of this blockbuster. Fortunately for fans unwilling to splurge or incapable of spending so lavishly, those tracks are streaming as well.

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Christine McVie Deep Dive: The Alternate ‘Fleetwood Mac’

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I suspect you may have some questions.
‘Wait … didn’t you just write about this album a month ago?’
Yes. Well … sort of. In a way. But also … no, not really.

‘Is that a different cover? I don’t remember Mick looking like that, or staring directly at the camera.’
Your memory serves you well. This is the ‘alternate’ version of Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled ‘75 breakthrough.

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