Song Review: "Goodbye To Love" or Researching the Fuzztone Guitar of the Brilliant Tony Peluso

 Goodbye To Love

Remastered "Goodbye To Love"

https://youtu.be/qxpaqN56KQw?list=PLF1B9927F68CFA46C

The amazing guitar of Tony Peluso 

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   So last night (11/16/2020) I'm reviewing an artist sent to me via the wife of a rather well-known NY underground figure.  The first track nicked from a traditional gospel tune ("This Little Light of Mine ((Let it Shine,") along with a waterfall of influences the artist slips into his work.

    The fellow shares the same love of Lou Reed that I do...indeed, the album sounds like a lost Reed album - but I intentionally downplayed the Velvet Underground references in my review. (See this week's Medford News Weekly for those etchings.)  Sure enough there's a sizzling guitar      a la...of all things, The Carpenters????

Bring in guitarist Tony Peluso of Mark Lindsay solo (lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders)

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    As a musicologist with respect in my world that I certainly don't get in Medford (or  as one of my lawyers pointed out, the Native Americans saying the stature of a man is found in the power of his enemies which, for me he noted, was off the charts.  Yeah, I have evidence that ex Mayor McGlynn is obsessed and fixated with me. How sad, for Mikey...) Well at 1:25 in this song from Karen and Richard you'll find the late Tony Peluso's guitar blasts for the Pablum Duo (the opposite of the Dynamic Duo) blasting them into the history books.  Karen's sickening sweet voice the antithesis of Janis Joplin, the woman who understood the eloquence of ripping the universe wide open with a single note.  

     Richard Carpenter's composition and demand for Peluso's guitar-work, certainly a reflection of Joplin's phenomenal instrument (listen to her rendition of "Trust Me" to have her give you the SECRETS of that universe) is pure genius. Indeed, Richard Carpenter himself claimed not to be a lyricist, but the lyric upon which he initiated the tune is amazing in its simplicity.

     As Michael Pound on YouTube's comment section notes, the solo at the end was quite often faded out prematurely by the Middle of the Road stations of the day. 

     The art of an exquisite pop tune I explain in my writings on record production.  At 3:57 Richard Carpenter expanded the radio pop tune as much as he could.  The 7:25 of Richard Harris' "MacArthur's Park" was unheard of at the time, Top 40 radio being a world of as many advertisements that one could fit in an hour..."MacArthur's Park" was the equivalent of three songs (more if you consider the 1:58 of the Box Tops' "The Letter.")   The Carpenters had the ear of the radio programmers, and lots of help from A & M records (yes, I had a meeting with the two top executives of A & M out in Los Angeles, both now deceased, but I digress...) and though this song charted high in America and the U.K. it was the soft rock stations who failed to send it to #1...because of...the guitar solo!

  

     What is truly bizarre in a weird syncronicity (or abusive advertisers) is the Noom weight loss commercial prior to "Goodbye to Love" on YouTube where a woman talks about losing 30 pounds, akin to having the state of Oregon talking about legalized heroin on a Janis Joplin YouTube as Karen died of weightloss and Janis died allegedly of a heroin overdose.  My sources, though, informed me that a famous biker group allegedly killed Joplin...her death far more mysterious yet equally as ugly as Ms. Carpenter's) ...but people today won't put two and two together.   What remains is the art, and those smart enough to stay away from the inside details of how the art came to be can enjoy the work much more efficiently.

"Good art is like music, it should be enjoyed not dissected"
Perry Mason, 11/11/61  S5 Ep 9 The Case of the Posthumous Painter

    

        Being a musicologist is tougher than one can imagine, because we have the compulsion to dig deep into how masterpieces were created. Often there is the bad along with the good in the story behind the song, but not always.  Sadly for Joplin, and Carpenter, the end came too soon and didn't justify the means...it only made the product far more popular in the eyes of the world.

     That being said, though I couldn't stand the Carpenters as a teenager, it is that guitar solo, and the sublime production, and the amazing choir of voices, that puts "Goodbye to Love" in my Top 200 of songs...and lets me appreciate the Carpenters catalogue as substantial for the audience it sings to.

        

Remastered "Goodbye To Love"

https://youtu.be/qxpaqN56KQw?list=PLF1B9927F68CFA46C

michael pound 11 months ago

one of the greatest lead guitar solos, and often chopped short , against all the laws of art. never want it to end.