Harry Nilsson

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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LCKDWN20: April Showers for Hal

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Having lost so many significant musical figures in such a short span of time, whether to covid or other causes, hasn’t exactly helped slow the playlist parade. Kenny Rogers, Bill Withers, the great Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and so many other things — they all merit playlists of their own. As does, of course, the singular John Prine, whose deceptively simple genius and lasting importance still isn’t as widely felt or recognized as it ought to be. Don’t be surprised if an entire side of a future LCKDWN20 double-LP is devoted to a personal Prine Top 5.

Yet, much as I will continue to mourn his loss too, the unnecessary death of the past week that has hurt my heart the most is that of Hal Willner, an utterly unique talent who, like Schlesinger, was an offbeat hero of mine and legions more. Whereas Schlesinger, a marvelously gifted songwriter with an uncanny knack for carving gems out of well-worn idioms, remains proof that one can steadily forge a path to music-legend status without ever being a star or even a recognizable face, Willner’s career as a producer/conceptualizer was, to me, a uniquely fractured ideal I’d give most everything to enjoy for just a month. He requires an introduction.

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