Posted on November 3, 2009 - by Mark Zonda

Good music is made by great carpenters

Music had such a bad time in the early years of Y2k. With a failed attempt by radios to set up a new Euro-Dance empire, it was easy for bands like White Stripes to win, thanks to a couple of great videos by the coolest direction of the cut and paste generation (Michael Gondry) and a trendy look.

Just like on the very first episode of Mad Men, when Donald Draper suggest to its costumers from Lucky Strikes that any mood would have been the right one in a market where everyone was afraid to expose cigarette adverts, White Stripes had a perfect timing to do their thing when nobody did: they rocked. No matter how bad. They were just a drum and a guitar, while everybody else was lost in chiwawas and je-ne-sais-jamiroquoi. A girl and a boy playing a drum and a guitar. Look what later the cleaver Fiery Furnaces was able to do with a drum and a guitar, and compare any of their first stuff to the one of the red’n'white duo. Still this did not happen thanks to evolution.

Not sure if you were born before the ’90s, but I can’t avoid to look back at the day I was born, and feel the good and smooth vibrations of one of the most talented bands of the ’70s: The Carpenters. Guess what? A girl playing the drums and a guy playing guitar! Always carrying on their band inside the family! Karen and Richard Carpenter was for sure the top  selling American music act of the 1970s, and they totally deserved it. Heavily influenced by Beatles and Burt Bararach, maybe the winning cart of the band was Richard refining his piano skills too, working deeply on the melodic construction of their hits. And wanna know why it was a triumph? It’s quite simple! Once again Donald Draper’s Lucky Strike effect! Everyone was too buisy kicking hard on glam guitars and noise. Being “Close to you” one of their most acclaimed and diabetic masterpieces (the song also appeared even in  “Something aboutMary”, returning to success from time to time also thanks to covers like the one from Hikaru Utada) the band easily reached … “Top of the World”!, sliding a little to a judygarlesque cinnamon-discopop with country shades in late Bee Gees and Abba en vogue fashion. They had everything, they reached the top, just like Queen, that haven’t understood so many signs, faith decided to stop their promenade before even the memory of the band could got spoiled. Karen sadly left the scenes in 1983 because of a cardiac arrest. Wouldn’t their songs always supposed to be played for any broken heart in the World, anyway? It’s just a fact: Carpenters will always have a song for you.

Carpenters – “We’ve only just bagan”

White Stripes – “Blue Orchid”

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