Raspbernie

Wow, another great and thoughtfully written thread, LC. And I also appreciate RCT’s insight. For me, the choice can only be a tie. I love them both too much to choose.

Happy Birthday, CD. On another note, I do not own a single CD that I play because I no longer have any device that can play one. I do have CDs as collectibles, of course.

I always considered "Boats" to have an undercurrent (pun intended) of optimism...because it does. This bit is and will always be optimistic: But tomorrow, we'll run a little bit faster Tomorrow, we're going to find what we're after at last Feelings that we left in the past There's romance in the sunset While this bit certainly puts a negative spin on the hope: We're boats against the current til the end But what, in fact, is optimism? Being hopeful about the future? Yes, indeedy.

Maybe so, Lew. NGFILA is essentially ABM—another piano ballad, same Rachmaninoff theme, same lyrical idea. To a casual listener, it solidified Eric as a weepy ballad writer.

Great writing, LC. "Runaway" is Eric at his composing best—if that's a sentence. I never get tired of hearing it. All 8+ minutes of it.

I never heard of that one!

Not the answer…but I love this girl’s je ne sais quoi. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmdLIFCDFoM/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The Broken Hip 🤪

Couldn't disagree with you more.

Lew, is your head still spinning from the whole Ticketmaster fiasco? Not that great live?!? No high notes?!? The whole thing falls apart when Freddie steps away from the piano?!? Sure.

Queen has an incredible catalog of great GREAT songs. Here's a hidden gem that most people have never heard, yet is one of my absolute favorites. Spread your wings, baby.

I gave this answer to a query on Facebook about the limiter used on the intro to "Go All The Way": Ken Sharp and I spoke to Raspberries engineer Shelly Yakus, who told us: "There was a new piece of equipment at the Record Plant, a Roger Mayer limiter. What it did was compress the sound of whatever you fed into it, changing its sound to something completely different. They tried this limiter over and over on artist after artist and every time they tried it, no result close to acceptable was generated. "We nicknamed it ‘Oscar Meyer,’ because you put music in one end, and it was so brutal in changing the sound, that we used to say we got hot dogs out the other end. The sound of the limiter was so violent that we couldn’t find anything we could use it on. So when ‘Go All The Way’ didn’t work and they were going to take it off the album, I told Jimmy [Ienner], ‘You know we’ve got this very, very exciting limiter. "It doesn’t work on many things, but I have a feeling it’ll work on this song.’ I put ‘Go All The Way’ through the limiter and it came alive—like what you heard on the radio. Jimmy and I looked at each other and said, ‘Man, this thing sounds like a #1 record!’ "‘Go All The Way’ went from not being on the album to a hit by passing it through that limiter. The limiter had settings on it from one through ten, so if you needed eight and a half, you couldn’t get it, and that was the problem with it. Most music needed a number in between the pre-set numbers to make it work. Well, ‘Go All The Way’ happened to be the same tempo as the attack and release of the limiter. Because the limiter wouldn’t work for any other song, we sent it back to the factory to modify it so that we’d have more control. When the limiter came back, it never made the same sound.” —from "Eric Carmen: Marathon Man" Then I did a quick search on the limiter to see if I could find a photo of one that seemed like it could be the model used on GATW...and lo and behold, I found the holy grail...what might be the ACTUAL limiter used at the Record Plant to being the intro to "Go All The Way" to life. This looks to be the actual component: The description says it's from Studio A, and Raspberries recorded in Studio B, so I guess they lugged it over at Shelly's suggestion. Anyway, check out the photos. You can clearly see the switches match up with Shelly's description of ONLY having settings from one to ten. Pretty incredible piece of recording history. Should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. According to the listing, it sold for $13,470 five years ago...so maybe the buyer had an idea just how special this piece of equipment was! https://reverb.com/au/item/11866606-crazy-rare-roger-mayer-rm-57-stereo-compressor-from-the-record-plant-in-nyc-modded-bra?fbclid=IwAR2eKe8ktzaMgHqG6C81OjeqygbBgfpRHRs0wP354o_7l0EmV6LX8hj5G30

I'm guessing Jeff Lynne copped the idea for that opening riff from this equally great riff, no?