The Raspberries - Live on Sunset Strip [CD/DVD] (CD)

All Music Guide

The Raspberries' history was a study in joy mixed with frustration a wellnigh perfect powerpop band who, through a combination of bad timing, record label lethargy and personnel and personality conflicts, never quite lived up to their commercial promise, leaving behind three great albums and a fourth that was not as good, for a total of about threedozen stunningly worthwhile songs. And one thing that they never did do at the time was a live album, this despite the sterling accounts of their concerts, which were borne out in some of their surviving television clips. The exmembers must've looked on with astonishment as the band started getting written about as one of the most lamented losses of the 1970's, and their albums (especially the first three) soared in value on the collectors' market. Musical and personal differences, coupled with singer/principal composer Eric Carmen's successful postband pop career, all conspired to rule out any kind of serious reunion until the end of the 19...90's, and then that was delayed a while longer. And it's taken till 2007 from a 2005 gig at the House of Blues in Los Angeles to get this longawaited document of the group in concert released to the public. This reviewer's heart literally skipped a beat when he saw it, tempered by the fact that a lot of latterday reunions of this type don't amount to much more than going through the motions of impersonating their youth for the participants. But the right participants are here, Jim Bonfanti on drums, Wally Bryson on lead guitar, and Dave Smalley on bass joining Carmen (playing rhythm guitar and some piano) with a minimum of the usual extra help you often see in shows like this one female harmony singer and a very unobtrusive keyboard man, but the core of the sound and all of the leads are the quartet's work. The voices may have darkened in tone ever so slightly but these guys can still sing their hearts out and play their asses off (and that goes double for Bonfanti on the drums); and whether it's "I Wanna Be With You", "Tonight", "Nobody Knows" or any of the other band originals that they must've played a thousand times, or renditions of the Who's "I Can't Explain" or the Searchers hit "Needles And Pins", they sound like they're putting 102 into it. The harmonies are all there, with no studio retraces or overdubs that are obvious, and everyone gets represented well the crowd can heard chanting "Wally Bryson" at one point, and he and Dave Smalley get their songs in; indeed, Smalley's "Should I Wait" and Bryson's "Come Around And See Me" and "Last Dance" are all unexpected highlights of a set that is pretty much filled with great moments the only place where the band fails in what it does is on the harder rocking numbers such as "Party's Over"; an artifact from their flawed fourth album, in which they tried to toughen up their sound, this and one or two other numbers show the Raspberries trying to be a hard rock band, something they never really were very good at. But those lapses don't detract from the overall value of the 21 song doubleCD set. This reviewer would still love it if, say, a professionally recorded 1971vintage Raspberries live show were to surface someday, but it's unlikely that such a live recording would capture the playing as well as this doubleCD set does, the power and impact of the bass as well as the two guitars, Bonfanti's drumming, and those stillsuperb harmonies. The set is accompanied by a booklet that's mostly devoted to song lyrics, and therein lay the only flaw that this review found, small stray inkblotches over some of the words. The deluxe version of this album features a bonus fivesong DVD of live performances from the same show that comprised the audio release here Eric Carmen is very much the focus, as the five songs featured are all written and sung by him; but the producers do their best to give Bryson and Smalley some good moments on camera. Bryson handles that doublenecked guitar like he was born with it, while Smalley is an intense figure on the bass, breaking that stoicism when he throws in his harmony singing; and Jim Bonfanti looks like he's enjoying it all behind the drum kit. The only complaint here is that one wishes the whole set had been released on DVD. - Bruce Eder, All Music Guide Read more Less