Flashback Thursday (Holiday Edition) – Raspberries

Since tomorrow is a holiday I decided to post early.  In other words I was busily procrastinating before heading into work (or rather swimming in as it has been raining that much lately).

I was thinking about music that meant something to me when I was in high school, since I spent the beginning part of the 70’s finishing my required education and the latter part in college. The summer I got my driver’s license there was a song on the radio that I really liked, despite its pop style and slick production that hearkened back to the 60’s British invasion. You see, I was in a rock band at the time but the other guys in the group were more into heavy metal like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. My tastes were far more eclectic, liking The Who, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer but also giving a listen to metal.

I guess I liked Raspberries because of the song Go All The Way, which peaked at #5 on Billboard, had a driving beat and power guitar licks that immediately grabbed attention to the song. I was reminding of the song when I finally got around to watching Guardians of the Galaxy. The song is on the soundtrack. Also the band was from Cleveland, across the state from where I lived, but still Buckeye-land. I bought the album, which I recall had a scratch and sniff sticker on it that smelled of raspberries and made the entire record store smell of raspberries because you really didn’t need to scratch in order to get the scent. I insisted on learning the bass lines for the hit song and though my band actually agreed to learn the other parts as well we never performed it outside of rehearsal.

To this day I associate the song with the summer of ’72 and a girl I liked very much, who was in my driver’s education class in summer school. Though my interest in her went unrequited except that we spoke to one another from time to time, she impressed me enough to model a character in one of my books after her, as writers are won’t to do. Also I met another girl later on that summer and we did have a relationship for a while, though she was younger and really most of her interest in me was that I was a Junior and have my own car to pick her up in the morning, drive her to school so that she didn’t have to ride the bus with all the other ‘losers’ . It’s funny how we associate people and so many things with the songs we listened to way back when.

Raspberries featured Eric Carmen (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, bass and piano), Jim Bonfanti (drums), Wally Bryson (lead vocals, lead guitar) and Dave Smalley (lead vocals, rhythm guitar and bass). The band signed with Capitol Records after a bidding war amongst labels.

On stage the band wore matching outfits an similar hairdos, long of a throwback to the sixties bands from Britain they emulated. Although the group released four albums, Raspberries, Fresh, Side Three and Starting Over and had some success with singles, Go All The Way was their biggest hit. They struggled with creative differences and disbanded in 1975. Member joined other bands while Eric Carmen went on to a successful solo career.

#70sMusic #Raspberries #EricCarmen #GoAllTheWay