Billboard, August 20, 1994 v106 n34 p9(2)
By Craig Rosen
With an extensive marketing plan and unlikely pairings of artists and source material, A&M Records will attempt to make If I Were A Carpenter, its modern rock homage to the brother-sister duo, stand out amid a flood of tribute albums.
The album, due Sept. 13, features American Music Club, Babes In Toyland, Bettie Servert, Cracker, the Cranberries, Sheryl Crow, new A&M act Dishwalla, 4 Non Blondes, Grant Lee Buffalo, Johnette Napolitano with Marc Moreland, Redd Kross, Shonen Knife, Sonic Youth, and Matthew Sweet. The acts offer their versions of such Carpenters' classics as "Top Of The World," "Superstar," "Yesterday Once More," and "We've Only Just Begun."
Yet the performances are not tongue-in-cheek. "If people on the record took it as a joke, as a kitschy thing, the tracks would have ended up sounding that way, but that's not what we wanted," says journalist Dave Konjoyan, who served as executive producer of the album with his longtime friend, producer Matt Wallace.
Richard Carpenter even plays piano and sings backing vocals on Sweet's version of "Let Me Be The One."
A&M will show its commitment to the album, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Carpenters' signing to the label, by issuing it in a deluxe boxed set featuring the 14 songs on seven 7-inch singles. The boxed set, like the CD, will carry a price of $14.98, but it will be released Aug. 23, a full three weeks before the CD and cassette versions. The cassette will be priced at $9.98.
In addition, the label serviced two singles to radio, although no single will be commercially available in the U.S. A single of Sonic Youth's "Superstar" and Bettie Serveert's "For All We Know" went to modern rock and college radio Aug. 11.
The same day, A&M issued Sweet's "Let Me Be The One" to album alternative and AC stations.
"We're approaching this almost like we would a soundtrack, by releasing different tracks to different formats simultaneously," says Kelly Mills, director of product development at A&M. According to Mills, Geffen will assist in working the Sonic Youth track at radio.
Redd Kross' "Yesterday Once More" and Dishwalla's "It's Gonna Take Some Time" are also slated to go to modern rock and college radio, tentatively in September and October, respectively. Mercury will work the Redd Kross single with A&M.
Modern rock KROQ Los Angeles MD Darcy Fulmer's personal pick to click is the Redd Kross track. "It's amazing," she says. "It's a radio-friendly hit."
Fulmer calls the Carpenters tribute album "a brilliant idea. I'm very impressed by the people involved in it, and it shows that people who like alternative music liked dork music when they were little, too."
A&M plans to have videoclips for the Sonic Youth and Sweet tracks completed in time for the album's release. The label also has created an electronic press kit including testimonials from the artists featured on the album, along with vintage Carpenters' footage. The video will be serviced to press and TV, but may also be released as a longform.
At retail, A&M will supply special dump bins capable of housing the tribute album and various Carpenters catalog titles. Says Mills, "We're making the catalog side generic, so retailers can choose which albums they want to put in there."
Bob Bell, new release buyer for the 350-store, Torrance, Calif.-based Wherehouse Entertainment, says the Carpenters tribute has the potential to do very well. "A lot of the artists featured are doing really well at the modern rock format, so it should get a lot of radio support, and remind a whole new group of customers how good some of those songs were," he says.
In the U.K., the cross-promotional ties will run even deeper. A new Carpenters compilation called Interpretations is set for an Oct. 3 release.
"England, Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia are strong markets for the Carpenters, where their albums are frequently repackaged and re-released," says Sue DeBenedette, director of international marketing for A&M.
In most territories, If I Were A Carpenter will be released simultaneously with the U.S. date. The international release will have a slightly different cover, with all the artists featured on the album listed on the artwork to differentiate it from Carpenters' reissues.
On Aug. 29, A&M will release a two-part CD single in the U.K. featuring the Redd Kross and Sonic Youth tracks, with the Carpenters' originals as bonus tracks.
DIGGING THE ORIGINALS
"What we're finding is that as people are listening to this record, even within the company, they're all going back and digging out the originals and going back to the source," says DeBenedette. "This could turn a whole new generation on to the Carpenters worldwide."
That goal is right on target for Konjoyan and Wallace, who discovered their mutual fondness for the Carpenters at a San Francisco Bay Area high school, even as the group was shunned by their peers for its overt commercial appeal and perceived lack of hipness.
As time passed, Konjoyan noted that several contemporary artists were mentioning the Carpenters as favorites. "That was part of the seed for the idea," he says. "I was reading comments from artists that I felt were unlikely Carpenters fans, from k.d. land and Babes In Toyland to Sonic Youth. Matt and I both felt that some people might think that was a little odd, but from our point of view it was not that strange."
When the duo conceived the idea of a Carpenters tribute album, they took the concept to A&M, the label for which the duo recorded. "It made sense," Konjoyan says. "It was the first place we went to, and they were interested in it right off the bat."
Although a few artists, including Smashing Pumpkins, were unable to contribute tracks to the album because of scheduling conflicts, Konjoyan and Wallace ended up with an impressive lineup.
Aside from the logical choices, like Sonic Youth, Konjoyan and Wallace found other Carpenters die-hards. The drummer for Bettie Serveert, for example, has a shrine to the late Karen Carpenter in his bedroom, Konjoyan says.
"One of the things our project has going for it that some of the"tribute albums" don't is that the pairing of artists and the artist being paid tribute will take some people off guard," he adds.
Sweet admits he wasn't a big Carpenters fan when he was asked by Wallace to participate. "At first, it seemed like this wacky idea, having all these new types of groups covering this music that was so hugely commercial," he says. "But once I got into it, I started realizing what many cool songs they recorded."
Sweet became so involved in the project that he requested that Richard Carpenter play piano on his track. Sweet, who calls Carpenter a musical genius, says, "Everybody was so excited when he came into it. You'd think it was one of the Beatles or something."
For his part, Richard Carpenter was happy to help. "Matthew has a very pure voice," he says. "'Let Me Be The One' works very well for him."
As for the Carpenters' impact on today's modern rock acts, he adds, "You can't be as successful as we were and not have some sort of influence on the next generation."