Welcome to Mulberry Panda 96, your one-stop shop for music-producer sleaze.

Thanks to Blogger's behind-the-scenes "Stats" feature (it hasn't always been there, has it?), I can find out which search-engine queries bring people here. My favorite so far is "'david gates' and 'producer' and 'sleaze.'"

Hey, the man from Bread ain't no sleaze. Or maybe you know something I don't about his business ethics and/or personal life, searcher. I'll allow you that Gates put a particularly innuendo-licious line in "If," but it took Telly Savalas's 1975 cover of the song to coax the sleaze out of its soft-rock shell.

If you're not sure what line I'm talking about, read this excerpt from Lester Bangs's review of The Best of Bread for Rolling Stone (May 24, 1973):

But the real payoff is side one, all those mellow yellow David Gates love ballads. "Make It With You" is the Seventies strawsippin' successor to "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It still melts my heart into a puddle of treacle. And that's because I'm treacle, not Bread; they're honchos!

... And they got plenty of sex in their songs too, don't let nobody tell you they're puds when they hit ya with lines like: "And when my [love for] life is running dry / You come and pour yourself on me." Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Now read these posts from last year that I recently rescued from their "draft" prisons (Lester Bangs shows up again, as does a much more juvenile sexual reference):

12/17: authors and other fools
10/10: I like your style, CyborgQX38.
9/24: My face is an open book.
8/2: Before Columbine, there was RoboCop 2.
8/1: Lisa Simpson's (imaginary) wedding day
6/11: Help us, Roger Ebert. You're our only hope.

These Carpenters never performed any miracles.

I'm listening to the Carpenters' second album, Close to You (1970), right now, which I checked out from the library. (By the by, why isn't the RIAA taking on libraries in court? They're music-pirating enablers. But only if you can get your computer to actually recognize and load their scratched CDs, of course.) You know what? The Carpenters are no Bread.

Bread has songs like "Baby I'm-a Want You," "Make It With You," and "Sweet Surrender" that make me nostalgic for a time I never knew: the early '70s. And Beatlesque songs like "Daughter" make me realize how smart and reliable David Gates, James Griffin, and company were as musical craftsmen, while tracks like "Fancy Dancer" show that Bread could eliminate the soft from soft rock on occasion and deliver on that front as well. It's not their fault the heavier numbers didn't make it onto the radio. They were studio musicians, songwriters for hire, and producers before they came together to form Bread in the late '60s, and their experience and earned confidence come through in their music. You're in good hands with Bread.

Just as the Carpenters are no Bread, Chicago is no Bread, either, although Chicago would probably be offended by that statement, because I bet they think they rock much harder than they actually do. "Hard Habit to Break" almost rocks at one point, but that's because Bill Champlin sounds like he's popping a few capillaries when he sings "I'm addicted to you, baby!!!!" From what I've heard, most of the guys in Chicago were addicted to something that resembles baby powder. But not Peter Cetera. He was too mellow and blond for that. But if he was surrounded by cokeheads on endless tours throughout the late '60s, all of the '70s, and the early '80s, can you blame him for finally leaving after 18 years to pursue "The Glory of Love" and the glory of a paycheck that didn't have to be split a dozen ways? Children generally leave home at 18. Cetera had earned the right to grow up, move away, and pursue an adult (contemporary) education.

The Carpenters didn't do themselves any favors on Close to You covering songs like "Help!" and "Baby It's You" in the most Muzak-y way possible. The songs on the 1994 tribute album If I Were a Carpenter, which my ex-girlfriend had in college, are ten times better than any song on Close to You, especially Matthew Sweet's cover of "Let Me Be the One." Actually, I do like "(They Long to Be) Close to You," but that's partly because singing the waaaaaah-ah-ah-ah-aaaaahs in the song with a complete lack of subtlety is too much fun to pass up.

I'm not going to make an anorexia joke here, but I do think it's safe to say that both Karen and Richard Carpenter would've been wise to add Bread to their musical diet.

Blythe Danner should've married David Gates.

In his review of Babyface's new album, which comes out today, AllMusic.com's Andy Kellman wrote, "Covers albums tend to be dashed off as a way to fulfill an artist's last remaining contractual obligation to his or her label. However, Playlist is Babyface's first release for Mercury, following 2005's Grown & Sexy, and he put a lot of heart and soul into the material, all of which connected with him as a youngster listening to '70s AM radio. Most of the sources are anything but cool: James Taylor, Jim Croce, Dan Fogelberg, Dave Loggins, and Bread. (Then again, Bread were sort of like the Coldplay of their day.)"

That's an intriguing statement. I wonder if Bread was really that big in the early '70s. Or maybe Kellman means that although Bread was extremely popular in their heyday, no one wanted to admit how much they liked them.

In my opinion you're not a pussy for liking soft rock—you're a pussy for hiding behind the protective glass of "guilty pleasures." There's no such thing. Surrender now and watch an episode of CSI: Miami with me. We'll even turn up the volume.

Telly pours it on.

I've gotten too YouTube-happy here lately, but while searching for a two-disc Bread compilation called Retrospective earlier today, I ran across an intriguing customer comment: Telly Savalas's cover of Bread's "If" was a number-one hit in the UK in 1975.

Whaaaaaaaa?! As a soft-rock fan and Me TV nut (more on that later), not to mention an admirer of William Shatner's spoken-word covers of songs like "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," I have to hear this version!

Or see it. The video below demonstrates that if you're going to sleaze up lyrics like "And when my love for life is running dry / You come and pour yourself on me," it helps to pause after the word "come." And it doesn't hurt if you're sporting an open shirt and gold chains and smoking a cigarette while staring at a vacant female face.

Sorry, Telly, but you're too macho to ever be a real soft rocker. You're accustomed to taking what you want, whereas soft rockers are generally polite creatures who timidly ask women if they can take what they want; if they're lucky, their request is granted, but usually for one night only.

Still, I hope I'll come across a Kojak rerun on Me TV that shows the title detective relaxing at home while listening to a 45 of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain." Who loves ya, Carly? A David Gates-quoting Telly Savalas, that's who.