Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

Speaking of Herb Alpert, today after work I frequented my local A&P -- Super Fresh to shop for breakfasts when the foreground Muzak played "For All We Know", which soon brought back memories of a minor argument I had with my late brother. I was big on stereo magazines then (I loved reel-to-reel tape decks) and one of their typists, I think for Stereo Review (!), somebody named Semels or something, blasted Close to You with the whole length and breadth of the middle-America stereotype; every Carpenters fan voted for Nixon, pined for Tricia, wore a flag on his sleeve, and had no taste. The act was the a-Lawrence a-Welk of soft-rock pablum. It sounded plausible to a politically amoebic thirteen-year old. My brother responded in so many words, "Their music is good!" Fast forward to now and you can't think of the Carpenters without beholding Karen's untimely and ungodly death, which alone makes their tunes poignant, and sometimes a bit eerie; if they sounded a bit androidal and Karen had a few too many cute tics (like her fake Brrritish vowels) they nonetheless made touching music, perhaps no more so than this tune, the last decent song to win the Os-CAR®, from some sort of movie sitcom. If it's white bread it leaves a pleasant and haunting aftertaste, haunting enough to make us yearn for the past. If I have moved ahead in music to know there is more than one tune of this title I have not moved that far ahead of my yearnings.