When Lori and I consolidated all our earthly possessions 37 years ago so we could move into an apartment in Bethesda with our friend Suz, we were down to clothes, a few pots and pans, books, records, a rocking chair, a stereo, and a waterbed. The library looked exactly like what you’d expect from two English lit majors: shelves of paperback novels, two dog-eared copies of Ulysses, and a pair of Riverside Shakespeare anthologies nervously awaiting the decision that would doom one of them to a life-sentence of obscurity on a dark shelf at Second Story Books. The stereo with beer-stained speakers was the same one that had survived high school and accompanied me to college. The expansive six-crate record collection was exactly as I’ve described in previous posts: priceless and growing by the week. Depending on who you ask, you will hear conflicting stories about why so few Dibble records were chosen to co-mingle with the Collins collection. Lori will tell you that I heartlessly purged her vinyl in a gesture of complete LP dictatorship. Not true. I simply enacted a relocation program that was beneficial to all. She got to keep Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Karla Bonoff’s debut album, Walk Under Ladders by Joan Armatrading, The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett and Bobby Sherman’s Greatest Hits. The rest were relegated to a box in the back her childhood closet in Ohio and quickly forgotten. Actually there was a sixth record that made the cut: a neglected and forlorn copy of the long out of print first album by The Raspberries. I say neglected and forlorn because the record had no sleeve and the scratch and sniff sticker that had once adorned the cover was long gone. Although, if you held the album to your nose and took a big sniff, the faintest whiff of raspberry was evident.
I snagged The Raspberries because I recognized it for the gem I had neglected to purchase myself when I had the chance, and I recognized the massive teenage hormonal hit that kicked off side one and had been all the rage on Cleveland radio in the early 70s when the airwaves were just beginning to make the transition from AM to FM. In 1970, The Raspberries became the preeminent purveyors of American power pop by ably channeling the soaring harmonies, sweet melodies and perfect mod sensibilities of The Beatles, The Who, The Small Faces and The Hollies like no other band on this side of the pond. Rising from the ashes of two other notable Cleveland groups; The Choir and Cyrus Erie, The Raspberries enjoyed a disappointingly short, but musically influential and fruitful career that spanned four years and just as many albums. The band’s string of hits was propelled by Eric Carmen’s McCartney-esque songwriting, and tight musicianship from the rest of the band who were equally comfortable playing piano-driven ballads or riff-rocking power pop. Unfortunately, tensions arose that even two new “berries” on the band’s fourth album couldn’t alleviate, so The Raspberries called it quits in 1975. Carmen would go on to forge a successful solo career with mopey “soft rock” songs like his No. 1 US hit, “All By Myself,” but nothing he did on his own had the same allure for me as the magical marriage of melody and harmony created by The Raspberries.
When it comes to the sweet melody of our marriage Lori, I still stand by the script that we co-authored for our life together, and exchanged 34 years ago, today. And if that script had a soundtrack, one of the songs would have to be "I Wanna Be With You" from The Raspberries second album, Fresh. Happy Anniversary, Lori!
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