The Raspberries
L'il Bit O' Gold (Rhino 73016)

Here's a CD that would never be released these days. 25 years into the CD era, the music business has found every conceivable way to screw consumers, whether it be through best-ofs that leave off one key track, or pointless reissues of reissues, or what have you.

Back in 1988, though, things weren't so cut and dry. Most companies hadn't figured out what the hell to do with the new format, and others, like Rhino Records, embraced it and sought innovative ways to use it to better serve the consumers.

The Li'l Bit O' Gold line was short-lived, yet produced at least this one masterpiece by The Raspberries. If ever there were a group that only had four good songs, it was The Raspberries (if there were another it was Badfinger). This CD gives you all of 'em, essentially everything you'd ever need by Eric Carmen's power-pop band and nothing you don't.

For a long time, this was the only Raspberries CD available, and better yet, it's a CD3. Now there's an un-mined comedic reference. Sure, it's easy to get a crowd roaring with a reference to 8-track tapes, but how about something like this, from a nonexistent teen comedy about two struggling musicians trying to get a record deal in 1988: "Yeah, me and Kip are real excited, 'cause the label wants to put out our CD3."

For the scarily prevalent percentage of the populace that was born too late to appreciate this dead format, CD3 was a 3-inch CD that could be fit into a regular CD player by means of an adapter … essentially a 45 in reverse. (If you don't know what a 45 is, well, let's meet in an Internet chatroom sometime, baby!)

Actually, I'd say the failure of this format was too bad – in some ways I really liked it from an aesthetic point of view. Imagine, had it taken off, CD singles as we know them would be much smaller, in proportion to their content. It preserved the thrill of "singles" as they used to be known in the vinyl era, and it's not surprising that Rhino was spearheading the innovation.

Sure, it was kind of impractical, but it was fun! Too bad no one ever got the chance to have a sleepover party with a bunch of teenage girls and a box full of the most recent pop CD3s! (Anyone willing to simulate that experience with me online is instructed to meet me in the aforementioned Internet chat room.)

Ahem. The Raspberries were sort of a halfway house between the Beatles and Shaun Cassidy, full of shameless pop chord progressions, swoony harmonies, and lots of teenage love 'n' lust lyrics, all of it put across with Eric Carmen's wonderfully grating voice, seemingly invented for the teen idol market.

"Go All the Way," "I Wanna Be With You," "Let's Pretend" and "Tonight" are basically the same song, each one ostensibly about "true love" but really about "gettin' some," almost to an offensive degree. In fact, it still sort of depresses me to think of how many teens felt compelled to give up their virginity because of songs like "Go All the Way," but at least it's not as bad as Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night."

With the Raspberries, the comic nature of the songs, driven by testosterone yet awash in estrogen, somehow excuses the meaning, and it all boils down to good pop: power chords, "yow!"s, fuzzy/jangly guitars, and some of the tightest pop drumming around. Twelve minutes of frenzied teenage expressions of lust, a postpubecent Archies paving the way for Cheap Trick and perhaps even them Backstreet Boys.

This CD provides the same fuzzy feeling people used to get from favorite singles, and even if it's outmoded by now it continues to do it for me.

Of course, good luck tracking this down. I suppose whatever Raspberries Greatest Hits CD is currently available would do just fine, though it's hard to argue with a tiny disc that packs the maximum punch with no skip-over tracks. Take it away, Mr. Carmen: "One, two, three, FO!"

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Review by Jo Ann Glans