Carpenter's Hammer: When Karen went Punk. A Hensonverse TLIAW

[Geekhis Khan]

[Fade In]

Haunting orchestral music plays faintly over a field of black. One by one video clips fly onto the screen, take precedence up front, then fall into the background, each sequentially taking a random spot on the screen, top, bottom, left, or right, stretched out towards the back, slowly filling it in like patchwork.

Clip: Karen Carpenter singing the opening to “We’ve Only Just Begun”

Clip: Karen wailing on drums

Clip: News announcer saying “The young brother-sister team has taken the nation by storm…”

Clip: Karen, looking emaciated, singing “Close to You”.

Clip: Richard Carpenter playing the piano. Dan Rather (voiceover) saying, “Tragedy in a Las Vegas hotel room as…”

Clip: Karen in an interview, “I felt lost, hopeless, an ugly pig…”

Clip: Prince saying, “I told her she is beautiful…”

Clip: Karen, hair short, singing Alice Cooper’s “No More Li’l Miss Nice Girl [Mr. Nice Guy]”

Clip: Kurt Loder saying, “It’s a bold new direction for her, but will audiences accept it?

Clip: Man on street: “Sure, she rocked it, but come on, it’s the chick who sang ‘Muskrat Love,’ right?”

Clip: VCR footage of a dark basement club. Debbie Harry screams into the microphone while Karen hammers on the drums behind her

Clip: Kurt Loder saying “Hari Kari’s new single…has dominated the emerging NuPunk scene…”

Clip: News Announcer saying “…rumors persist that the drummer for the Debbie Harry fronted underground sensation may in fact be…

Clip: Debbie Harry in an interview saying, “She’s my bad-ass bitch, you know?”

Clip: Karen, hair short, face fuller, in an interview, saying, “Fame is bullcrap, no matter how it comes to you”

Clip: Footage of Karen Carpenter. A male Narrator saying, “She was at the top of her newfound fame…”

Clip: Jon Stewart saying, “Kari where-y?”

Clip: VCR footage of Karen drumming in a jazz band.

Clip: Deborah Harry saying to the media, “Let the woman do her thing, you fucking jackals!”

Clip: Kurt Loder saying “…promoting the so-called ‘Riot Grrl’ sound…”

Clip: Bikini Kill doing a semi-ironic thrash cover of “Close to You”

Clip: News Announcer saying “a Hari Kari reunion tour was announced for…”

Clip: Dan Rather saying “Is the future of punk female?”

Clip: Tobi Vail saying “She’s a fucking goddess and an inspiration”

The clips align along the four sides, their sounds mixing into a cacophony, until the screen is full, giving the appearance of a long, rectangular tunnel stretching into the distance.

Deep, foreboding electric guitar music plays as the title cards superimpose, one after another, over it all.

Title Cards (in succession):

Rolling Stone Presents:

Long Plastic Hallway

Carpenter’s Hammer: When Karen Went Punk

Narrated by Jude Barsi

[Fade to…]

February 1975 Playboy Magazine cover (Image from E-Bay)

A copy of the February 1975 issue of Playboy Magazine lays on a table. A soft instrumental cover of “We’ve Only Just Begun” plays.

Narrator: In February of 1975, Playboy Magazine printed the results of their reader poll of the best drummers in popular music. Such subjective polls are almost inevitably the source of disagreement and even controversy, and this one was no exception. And yet it wasn’t the number one and two slots that caused the biggest uproar. Buddy Rich and Carl Palmer, for what it’s worth. It was who were in the numbers ten and eleven slots.

A feminine hand with black nail polish reaches down and flips the magazine to a marked page, showing the poll results. The camera zooms in and a finger points out the names as she describes them.

Narrator: Just missing the top ten at 11th place was the legendary Led Zepplin stickman John “Bonzo” Bonham. Just above him, rounding out the top ten, was Karen Carpenter.

Poll Results (Image: Playboy; scanned and posted by Tori Holub)

Opposed footage plays of John Bonham and Karen Carpenter on drums.

Narrator: For modern audiences familiar with her later work, it may be hard to understand the outrage that this generated. After all, this is the woman that Debbie Harry called her “badass bitch” and who Riot Grrl icon Tobi Vail cites as a principal inspiration. Even at the time, none less than drum legend Buddy Rich, the top of that poll, expressed open admiration for her skills with the sticks. And yet this poll caused outrage among rock fans at the time. Bonham, for one, did not take it well at all, calling it “bullshit” and implying that Carpenter “wouldn’t last ten minutes” on a Zepplin set. Carpenter was much more reticent, proclaiming that she was “humbled and embarrassed” and expressed hope that Bonham wasn’t mad at her. And while the sexist attitudes of the time certainly played their part in this gut reaction in the fandom, it’s worth remembering that in 1975 Karen Carpenter was best known as the Queen of Easy Listening, a singer with a dulcet and melodious voice whose slow, chart-topping pop singles with her brother Richard in The Carpenters lit up many an elevator or dentist’s lobby in the 1970s.

Clip: The Carpenters performing “We’ve Only Just Begun”

Clip volume drops for Narrator voiceover.

Narrator: Notably not present in many of these performances were moments with Karen behind the drums.

[Clip Ends]

Still publicity image of Karen and Richard from the late 1970s, looking sweet and innocent.

Narrator: Karen Carpenter in the 1970s was America’s Sweetheart, the innocent, demure Girl Next Door. Soft spoken, melodious of voice, polite and shy, she openly expressed a desire for domesticity, motherhood, and married life out of step with the second wave feminism of the era. She was an innocuous presence shorn of attitude or power, non-threatening to traditional values. She was, in a word, Safe.

[Cut To…]

Still image of Karen and Debbie Harry from the mid-1980s, looking dangerous and badass.

Narrator: So how did Karen Carpenter, Queen of Easy Listening, become Kari Carr, punk sensation and living legend? It’s a tale of hard work, success, tragedy, rebirth, adversity, disappointment, and triumph anew. This is Long Plastic Hallway.

[Cut To…]

Opening graphics for Long Plastic Hallway[1] play (a liminal CG journey down a plastic hallway full of pimps, thieves, and predatory-looking executives) as the Carpenters version of “We’ve Only Just Begun” continues playing (“Sharing horizons that are new to us/Watchin' the signs along the way”), ending in Title Card.

Title Card:

Long Plastic Hallway

(“Together!”)

---

So welcome again to the Hensonverse, this time with a crazy little idea that the Mrs. and I came up with while on a long drive. It’s our first collaboration beyond singular posts. It began as such things do as a crazy passing thought that latched on and wouldn’t let go: Karen Carpenter, the Icon of Easy Listening, going hard core punk.

Why Karen Carpenter? Why not? You got a fuckin’ problem?

As those of you who have followed me know all too well, I love irony, and the idea of Karen Carpenter, the perpetual “nice girl with the sweet voice and easy sound,” becoming a Punk icon was too weird to pass up. The challenge (our own personal AHC) was making it plausible. Come with us on this week’s journey and see if we pulled it off. And if not, hey, enjoy the crash!

That said, this is not a joke timeline. My wife and I deeply and profoundly respect The Carpenters for their talent and their contributions to art. Karen was an incredible drummer, and incredible singer, and incredibly able to do both at once. This timeline is intended to honor her, her brother and bandmates, and their legacy, as well as the legacy of Punk music and the often overlooked, or at least minimalized, contributions of women to the genre and culture and attitude.

For those not familiar with her, Karen Carpenter was a tragic figure, an incredibly talented musician, virtuoso with both her iconic voice and on her true passion: percussion. Karen was a “natural” with the drums, all the more talented in being able to drum and sing at the same time, which is a rarer talent than one would think when you understand the level of motor compartmentalization required. As noted above, drumming legend Buddy Rich himself was an open admirer of her drumming skills. Was she better than Bonzo? Make up your own mind. Here’s some footage of her at the drums. There’s plenty more on the web just a search away:

Despite her percussive talents, however, the studio system pushed her to the front of the band, as we shall see tomorrow. There has been much discussion on the web in recent years about Karen’s ability as a drummer and the controversial poll, much of it driven by half-information (she and Bonham came in 10th and 11th, not 1st and 2nd as is often reported, and no, she never “schooled” him in a drum-off; she was far too modest and self-effacing for such things at the time). Much of this newfound interest in her drumming skill reflects the changes in cultural attitudes, particularly towards women in music. It has certainly led to a resurgence of interest in The Carpenters, a group synonymous in our day with the dull, saccharine, toothless easy listening “elevator music” that oozed via Muzak in every store and lobby in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The Carpenters were, when we were kids, about as far from Cool as possible, and essentially as far from Punk as one can get musically and culturally.

In our timeline Karen Carpenter tragically passed away in 1982 from complications related to anorexia nervosa, the result of a long battle with body image leading to the ultimately fatal eating disorder. Here…something else happens. It will play out over the course of this week.

Yes, this is Hensonverse Canon. No, you don’t need to have read the Hensonverse to read this TLIAW, so new readers, enjoy! I’ll footnote anything that you need to know. I don’t recall offhand if Karen Carpenter ever appeared in the main Timeline. She briefly came up in discussions, if I recall, but never broke into the Canon. If someone can point me to anything Canon regarding her, let me know and I’ll blatantly retcon it, because, fuck it, this is fun.

So (say it with me, regulars) “Stay Tuned” on our wild journey this week.

After all, we’ve only just begun!

---

[1] The name is a reference to a quote from Hunter S. Thompson: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Blank screen. The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” plays.

Title Card:

A Wealth of Talent

Montage of pictures of the Carpenter Siblings growing up interlaced with images and video clips from Connecticut in the 1950s and Southern California in the 1960s.

Narrator: Karen Anne Carpenter was born near New Haven, Connecticut, on the 2nd of March, 1950, to Agnes Reuwer and Harold Bertram Carpenter. Three years junior to her brother Richard, her first words were recorded as “bye bye” and “stop it”, the latter reportedly said to Richard, presaging their often-complicated relationship. Both siblings showed a talent towards music, with Richard learning piano and Karen taking Tap and Ballet, but also showing a sporty side, playing baseball and softball. Encouraged to pursue his musical studies, Richard spent many a summer day playing the piano while Karen swung a bat outside.

Richard and Karen as children (Image: Freedrum)

Narrator: In 1963 when she was 13, the family moved to a suburb of Los Angeles, where her adolescence would play out in the California sun. Beginning High School a year early at age 14, Karen initially joined the Marching Band to get out of gym class. It was here that Karen was introduced to percussion. She was handed the glockenspiel…which she despised.

Clip: 1976 Carpenters TV Special. Karen is reenacting the Marching Band with guest star John Denver. She carries a glockenspiel. He carries a bass drum.

Karen: Boy, this is a rotten instrument! It’s hard to carry. Nobody can hear it. It smells bad. It’s got a dumb name, even. Glockenspiel!

[Clip Ends]

Photos from their high school years play across the screen.

Narrator: Friend and classmate Frankie Chavez, who idolized Buddy Rich and had played drums for a long time, introduced her to jazz drums. It was love at first sight. For the drums. Sorry Frankie! As she said in one interview “I picked up a pair of sticks, and it was the most natural-feeling thing I’ve ever done.” Immediately begging her parents to buy her a Ludwig kit, Karen dove into the drums with a singular obsession. Entirely self-taught at first, Karen grew to idolize Ringo Starr and Joe Morello and was soon playing even their most complicated beats, sets, and time signatures, including Morello’s 5/4 and 9/8 time. Wanting to learn more, she soon formally studied under jazz drummer Bill Douglass, gaining professional precision on top of her foundation of natural and self-taught talent. After High School, she and Richard attended Long Beach State, where she studied Music, not only expanding her talents as a drummer, but taking voice lessons until she developed her iconic three-octave contralto, soon demonstrating her seamless ability to drum and sing simultaneously. Naturally, between her talent on the drums and voice and Richard’s talents on the piano and as a songwriter, they would form a band.

Karen in the Marching Band (Image: Marcy Rutland on Pintrest)

Narrator: After several attempts at starting bands, both together and apart, Karen and Richard were discovered by Joe Osborn of the Wrecking Crew session musician collective. Impressed with both Karen’s drumming and her unique voice, he encouraged them to go further. Forming the band The Dick Carpenter Trio in 1967, Karen and Richard would eventually get a coveted slot on Your All American College Show in 1968, where Karen impressed with her drum licks and voice alike on a cover of “Dancing in the Street.”

Clip: The Carpenters performing “Dancing in the Street” on Your All American College Show in 1968

[Clip Fades to…]

Clip: News announcer saying “The young brother-sister team that has taken the nation by storm is coming to Miami. Karen and Richard Carpenter, the talented duo behind The Carpenters, will play this summer at…”

Title Card:

Top of the World

[Clip fades out]

Footage and stills of The Carpenters playing music, sitting at interviews, or collecting Grammy statuettes.

Narrator: Rebranded as The Carpenters, they signed a record deal with A&M Records and from there they exploded onto the scene, reaching number 54 on the Billboard Top 100 for their cover of The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride”. Their next album, 1970’s Close to You, featured the hit singles “Close to You” and “We've Only Just Begun,” which respectively hit numbers one and number two on the Billboard 100. Hit followed hit throughout the 1970s, with many a Grammy or other statuette taken home. Not only did her melodious contralto voice set the tone for the music, but her virtuoso drumming pulled it all together, and she still thought of herself as “a drummer who sings”.

The Carpenters in 1974 (Image: Wikipedia)

Narrator: But as their fame grew, producers and critics began to complain that the band lacked a clear focal point or “front”. And Karen, at five-foot-four, vanished behind the drum kit even as she was clearly the lead vocalist. Taking these criticisms to heart, Richard and Manager Sherwin Bash pushed the shy and self-effacing Karen to abandon her beloved drums for a position up front at the microphone, leaving the drums to others. Audiences and critics responded favorably, and now Karen Carpenter was the front woman for one of the most popular bands in the world. Karen had found fame and wealth, but in doing so had set aside her chief musical passion.

Clip: The Carpenters performing “On Top of the World” on The Bob Hope Show in 1973

[Clip Ends]

Montage of footage of The Carpenters playing music, appearing on TV shows, or at awards shows. “Top of the World” plays on.

Narrator: Yet fame, as it so often does, came with a dark side. While she’d occasionally get to remind the world of her talents behind the drums, such as on their 1976 TV Special, she was increasingly a vocalist who occasionally played the drums. Even drumming for studio albums was taken from her, as the production team wanted to prevent the drum and vocal tracks from bleeding into each other. Set drummers stepped in. As she left behind the drums and focused on the vocals, the passion began to wain and performing became a job. She not only gave up her drums, but even had to increasingly set aside her upper vocal range in favor of the lower sounds that audiences best responded too, saying, ironically of this, that “The money’s in the basement.”

Footage of a joyous Karen wailing on the drums in the 1976 TV Special.

Narrator: On the rare occasion when she got to play the drums publicly, such as that 1976 special, a small bit of that spark would reappear. But increasingly, the stresses and responsibilities of fame began to build up for both Karen and her brother Richard.

Footage of The Carpenters into the late 1970s. Karen appears increasingly thin and withdrawn, her once sweet smile increasingly painted on.

Narrator: Richard developed an addiction to quaaludes as a way to deal with the stresses, an addiction that increasingly began to interfere with his life and even career. In 1979 he fell down the stairs in a near catatonic state. He checked into rehab in January of 1979, and came out seemingly a new man. For Karen, however, an addiction of a different sort struck.

Clip: Karen in a 2002 interview with Larry King.

Karen: Now that I was the Front Woman, my appearance became increasingly important and I was under a lot of pressure to stay thin.

Larry: The beauty standards of the 1970s focused on the very thin. Like Twiggy.

Karen: Yeah, and I internalized it a lot. I developed an unhealthy body image. I’d look in the mirror and even at ninety pounds I’d just see a fat pig. I’d use laxatives and go on crash diets obsessively. I’d try therapy, but it never seemed to stick!

[Clip Ends]

Footage and stills of an increasingly emaciated Karen. “Top of the World” plays on, its sweetness and wistful lyrics feeling increasingly ironic (“There is only one wish on my mind/When this day is through I hope that I will find/That tomorrow will be, just the same for you and me/All I need will be mine if you are here”).

Narrator: Karen was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, a dangerous eating disorder. It’s an issue all too common among famous women where the pressure to maintain a certain body image is high. She attained thyroid medicine to increase her metabolism and abused laxatives. Her weight would sink to as low as ninety pounds. Friends, such as Dionne Warwick and Olivia Newton-John, staged interventions. Cherry Boone, who’d suffered from anorexia, recommended a doctor [1], but his method took too long for her busy schedule, so she sought “quick fixes.”

The Horrid Effects of Eating Disorders (Image: Daily Express US)

Narrator: But it would take a terrible tragedy to finally break the cycle. A tragedy that would upend more than her life and career, but shake her to her very soul.

---

[1] Eating Disorders are a serious medical condition that costs far too many lives every year. In you or someone you know struggles with eating disorders, there is help. Please, please take care of yourself and those you love. Here’s a link to resources and options. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/get-help/

 

[Geekhis Khan]

[Fade In]

Sirens and the sound of emergency dispatch.

Clip: Dan Rather behind a news desk

Dan Rather: Tragedy in a Las Vegas hotel room as Richard Carpenter, one half of the Grammy winning duo The Carpenters, was found dead from a suspected drug overdose…

Sound fades out. Sad instrumental music plays.

Title Card:

I Won’t Last a Day Without You

[Clip Ends]

Footage and stills of Richard and Karen intermixed with images from impromptu public memorials and a sad-looking Karen hiding from the cameras.

Narrator: In October of 1981 Richard Carpenter overdosed on quaaludes. Earlier that year, he and Karen had been meeting at Disney Studios with Manager Sherwin Bash and Disney Producer David Lazer to discuss a possible Muppet Show appearance [1] when Karen collapsed and was admitted to the hospital. Seeing Richard’s distress, John Belushi, who’d been on set filming what became Season Six, Episode Eight of The Muppet Show along with Dan Ackroyd, handed Richard a couple of pills that he took instinctively. They were quaaludes, and it reignited his cycle of addiction. Karen had been released from the hospital after receiving intravenous parenteral nutrition, and after a few weeks’ rest, the two traveled to Las Vegas to discuss a possible show at the Circus Circus Casino. Amidst the stress, Richard lost track of how many of the pills he had taken. Combined with alcohol, he fell into a sleep he never awoke from. He was thirty-six.

The Carpenters c1980 (Image: UK Evening Standard)

Clip: Karen sings “I Won’t Last a Day Without You.”

Clip volume reduces for the Narrator.

Narrator: Karen was, needless to say, devastated by this dark turn of events. Her relationship with Richard had been complex, as sibling relationships often are, with her transition from drums to vocals being a particular sticking point. But the love between them was real. She’d relied heavily upon her brother for setting the tone and pace of the band and working with their manager, agent, and producers to keep their careers moving forward. “I was lost without him,” she said in a later interview. At her and her family’s insistence, the funeral was a private affair, shielded from reporters with large screens and security teams. Even so, a bootleg photo shows her face streaked with tears, eyes blank with shock. Friend Dionne Warwick noted to friends how Karen was becoming increasingly withdrawn and depressed, hiding away in her room for days on end. Her new husband, real-estate developer Thomas James Burris, whom she’d wed in August of 1980, appeared supportive at first. But by this point, cracks had already appeared in the marriage over her desire for children and his unwillingness to reverse his vasectomy from his prior marriage. The strain of her “wallowing in misery” as a mutual friend quoted him as saying led to verbal fights, particularly when she failed to participate in Christmas celebrations. It ended in divorce by the spring of 1982. [2]

Larry King in 2002 (Image: CNN Twitter)

Clip: Karen speaking with Larry King

Karen: It hit me like a freight train. We’d been partners, but I ended up following his lead most of the time, getting dragged by him or Sherwin [Bash] from gig to gig. I’d occasionally have to take the lead when he was too on a nod to move, but I was lost without him.

Larry: And how did you react?

Karen: I locked myself away in my room! I felt lost, hopeless, an ugly pig. I cried and binged on junk food or just stared at the walls. Tom tried to reach me, but it was honestly beyond his skills. I’d look in the mirror, at this bloated, tear-streaked face, and just see ugliness. I was so hopeless! I ended up flushing all of my pills I was taking, not to turn my life around, but to punish myself. I know it sounds weird. [pause] The silver lining was that I was gaining weight, though at the time I saw it as a bad thing.

[Clip Ends]

Images of Karen’s house, surrounded by reporters.

Narrator: Karen, holed away from life, was a woman increasingly under siege. Armies of reports camped outside her home, hoping for an appearance. Manager Sherwin Bash, under pressure from studios and the press, kept trying to get ahold of her to at least make a statement. He had to cancel several appearances when she’d back out at the last minute, unable to steel herself to do it. Friends like Dionne Warwick came to check on her. By this point she’d cut off her long hair with a pair of desk scissors. Warwick told a friend that Karen “looked a mess”. She and Olivia Newton-John all but forced their way in and ended up smuggling her out past the press.

Dionne Warwick (Image: Hollywood Life)

Clip: Dionne Warwick talking with Larry King

Dionne: We had one of the maids dress up in one of Karen’s dresses and get driven off in a limo. All the sharks followed them while we slipped away in a Chrysler. We cleaned her up as best we could and took her to a late-night diner. She swung between depressed and angry and eerie quiet as she drank her coffee and gorged on eggs and bacon. We tried to talk to her, but she avoided our questions. Then those punk girls came it, all loud and profane. Karen couldn’t look away. We assumed she was shocked at them and perhaps at the Joan Jett or whoever it was they put on the Juke Box. Turned out, she was listening. Listening and watching.

[Clip Ends]

Images and footage of Joan Jett and other female punks of the Early 1980s LA scene. Music from Poly Styrene and X Ray Spex performing “Identity” plays

Title Card:

Identity

Clip: Karen speaking with Larry King. “Identity” still plays quietly in the background

Karen: All my life I’d been the “good girl”. I listened to my parents. I did what I was told. I never contradicted my brother or my husband in public. In private was a different story, of course! (laughs) I mean, I’d never really listened to much hard rock. “Helter Skelter” was about as raw as I got. But…I don’t know, it was this hard, vulnerable time in my life. My whole world had collapsed under me. I was this disastrous mess with a haircut not too dissimilar from the one Joan [Jett] was wearing, as it was basically all the stylist could do with what I’d left him. And these three girls, maybe eighteen, came in. And they were all short haired or had dyed their hair some weird color. And they’re loud and they’re cussing and they’re everything that I was warned never to be. One was this fat girl who anyone would tell you had no business wearing those black leather pants! People were staring and scowling at them…but they didn’t care!! They put this music on the Juke. It was Poly Styrene doing “Identity”. It was so raw. The drumming was this pounding thing, fast, simple and repetitive, but persistent. It hit you in the gut. Poly’s voice was this angry mix of scream and call for action. It was everything that the image they’d crafted for me wasn’t! It was raw, noisy, dissonant, dangerous, unapologetically ugly…it was…free, Larry. It was free.

Clip: Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” 1983 video

[Cut to…]

Stills and footage from Karen in the early 1980s, often at the drums, clip by at a fast rate matching the Punk beat. Her hair remains short, her face and body full and no longer emaciated. “Bad Reputation” continues to play, volume lower for the Narrator.

Narrator: Karen returned to her home, but instead of hiding herself in her bedroom, she bought a bunch of records from Joan Jett, Blondie, Nina Hagen, Patti Smith, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Poly Styrene, among others, and played them incessantly. She later added male-fronted punk bands like Ramones, Misfits, Sex Pistols, Black Flag, Minor Threat, and, fittingly given later events, Dead Kennedys. She’d put on headphones and sit at her drum kit, playing along. One housekeeper said, “She left the bedroom and moved to the studio, listening to her records and hammering on her drums. She often played the drums when she was upset, but this was different. It was like the loud songs my son played. Not Krupa and Ringo like normal.”

Poly Styrene up in your face (Image: The Face)

Narrator: Karen went emotionally all-in on this new cathartic passion. She learned drum sets from every punk band she could find: major label, indie, or scratchy demo tape. She added to them, complicated them, reworked them, made them her own. Soon, she was developing original punk-inspired drum riffs. “Krupa plays Misfits,” as one witness put it. Karen met with her friends and therapists, all of whom encouraged the new pursuit for the clear therapeutic benefit that it was giving her. But she continued to ignore her agent and her manager, refusing to see the press or speak about the tragedy. Sherwin Bash ultimately convinced her parents to “try and speak reason to her.” Angered, but feeling pressured, she relented to a series of interviews, including an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. It was an appearance that would change everything.

David Letterman c1982 (Image: IMDB)

Clip: David Letterman on the set of Late Night

David: And now, with a special guest, the Dead Kennedys!

[Cut To…]

Dead Kennedys playing the “We've Got a Bigger Problem Now” version of “California Über Alles”. Sharp eyes will notice that D.H. Peligro isn’t present. Instead, a dark-haired woman is playing in his place.

Music volume drops to allow for the Narrator’s voiceover.

Narrator: In August of 1982 Karen Carpenter was scheduled by her agent to appear on Late Night with David Letterman. When she declined to perform any Carpenters songs, citing her need to honor her brother’s memory, David managed to convince his producer to sign the Punk band Dead Kennedys. “This will be a riot,” he told Band Leader Paul Schaffer. “Jello Biafra and Karen Carpenter seated on the same couch!” He was in for a bigger riot than he ever expected.

Dead Kennedys c1982 (Image: A Pop Life)

Clip: 1983 MTV Interview with Dead Kennedys

Jello: So, it was the night before our Letterman gig, and we’re half excited and half, like, what the fuck are we doing with this mainstream NBC shit? We took the gig half on a lark and half for the cash. Peligro was pissed off. He thought it was a fucking joke. He had a few too many the night before and punched the wall in the hotel. Of course, he went and hit a stud and broke his middle finger!

D.H.: Yeah, my favorite fuckin’ finger too!

Jello: Yeah, the next morning it was swole up like a fuckin’ balloon an’ he couldn’t hold a fork, much less a stick! The doc said, “no drumming”, and we’re all, “fuck, now what? Letterman tapes in three hours!” We went to Dave, and suggested that maybe [Late Night Drummer] Anton Fig could sit in. But Dave had a crazier idea. He got this wild look in his eye and said, “Hey Jello, I know just the drummer for you!” And he… (laughs) …he brings us…

D.H.: (scowls) Karen Fuckin’ Carpenter!

Jello: (laughs) Karen Fuckin’ Carpenter! He’s like, “hey, she’s a drummer!”

D.H.: (shakes head) Out his damn mind!

Jello: We laughed, but she said, dead serious, “I’ll do it. What are we playing?” I said, “Fuck it” and led her to the kit. She laid the beat on “California Über Alles” like she’d done it her whole life!

D.H.: (annoyed) She was alright.

[Clip Ends]

Footage of Karen and Dead Kennedys on stage. Clips of them sitting at Dave’s desk, speaking and laughing.

Narrator: Karen took over for Peligro that night, and more than held her own. Peligro dismissed it publicly as a stunt, but admitted privately that she’d done well. Jello Biafra later noted that she even helped prepare them for the interview segment, giving them “useful pointers,” having done many such gigs before. But the stunt casting caused a riot with fans of both punk and The Carpenters. Some commentators considered it in poor taste to do on her “post mortem” press tour, but Karen’s gigantic smile made clear to all that she’d enjoyed the set, and those who could set aside their preconceived notions on both sides of the debate had to admit that she made a good stand in for Peligro. Professionals in the industry took notice. In particular, one person watching intently that night was another woman famed for her abilities behind a drum kit. She’d make Karen an offer she couldn’t refuse.

---

[1] The Inciting Butterfly (or Proximate Point of Departure). The Muppet Show had ended by this point in our timeline. Jim Henson’s involvement in Disney resulted in two more seasons.

[2] The marriage lasted until October of 1982 in our timeline. The strain of it fed further into Karen’s body image issues and anorexia, leading to her abuse of thyroid medication and laxatives.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Stills and video footage of Karen in the early-to-mid-eighties as Ramones’s “Blitzkrieg Bop (Hey Ho Let’s Go)” plays.

Narrator: Karen Carpenter was feeling better than she had in months. The brief stand-in for D.H. Peligro on Late Night had reawakened her passion for performance. Her Manager Sherwin Bash was eager to get her back on tour and recording a solo album, hoping to capitalize on the flash of publicity that the controversial set with Dead Kennedys had generated. But while Bash wanted more of the same, a return to the sweet innocent Karen of before, she wanted to branch out in a new, “freer” direction. The argument got heated, and at one point Bash stated that she was going to play a Carpenters set on Good Morning America and one of his assistants suggested that she get hair extensions and lose a few pounds while she was at it. Karen’s friend Cherry Boone, an anorexia survivor herself, was present for the exchange and dragged Karen away from the meeting. On Boone’s advice, Karen fired Bash, who in response threatened that Karen would never work in the music industry again.

Title Card:

Make Your Own Kind of Music

Clip: Karen speaking with Larry King. “Blitzkrieg Bop” plays in the background.

Karen: Of course I internalized the comment [from Bash’s assistant]. You don’t just shed an addiction, which is what anorexia is. An addiction and an illness. I hadn’t stopped seeing myself as a fat pig, I’d just resigned myself to being one. I wasn’t, of course, I was a hundred and twelve pounds, but when the disease grabs you, you’re incapable of recognizing that. Cherry swore that she’d find me a new producer. It turned out that one found me.

[Cut To…]

Clip: Video for Prince’s “Kiss”

Music fades in volume for the Narrator.

Narrator: For many, the set with Dead Kennedys had been a stunt. But one drummer took it very seriously. Sheila Escovedo, better known by her stage name Sheila E., had watched and admired Karen for her stick skills for a long time, and the Late Night gig was just the latest thing for her to admire.

Sheila E. and Prince c1984 (Image: EW)

Narrator: Sheila E. in turn approached her local NBC affiliate and secured a copy of the VTR tape and brought the tape to Prince, her longtime friend and occasional collaborator. Prince had just recorded his 1999 album with The Revolution, which would propel him to fame upon its release that October. He and Sheila reached out to Karen that September right before the start of the 1999 Tour. They met, and Prince offered to pull some strings at Warner Brothers to get her an album and tour, “in any style that you want.” Sheila offered to manage and help produce. At first, Karen was hesitant. Prince had already garnered a reputation as a ladies’ man, and Dionne Warwick in particular warned Karen that he might take advantage of her vulnerability. But while Prince did indeed live up to his reputation, he was also a man who was respectful of women and frequently worked to boost the careers of talented women without seeking anything in return. He also encouraged her to find the beauty in herself. Despite rumors to the contrary, their relationship remained one of mutual respect rather than romance.

Clip: Prince in an interview

Prince: She was struggling to see the beauty in herself. The Machine had made her feel ugly. She longed to be beautiful. I told her she is beautiful. Because she is. And always will be.

[Cut To…]

Clip: Karen with Larry King

Karen: Yeah, he told me that I was beautiful, and I could tell that he meant it. Here’s this man surrounded by all these drop-dead gorgeous women, a guy who dated supermodels. And he looks me square in the eyes and tells me I’m beautiful. It sounds crazy, but that little compliment meant a lot. It’s one thing when your friends say it. It’s another when a sex god does.

[Clip Ends]

Images from the production and tour of Karen Carpenter: Demolition

Narrator: While Prince exploded onto the scene with his seminal 1999, Karen and Sheila set to work on what would be her first new album since her brother’s passing. Consisting mostly of Punk covers with two original songs, including the title track, Karen Carpenter: Demolition promised to show the world a new side of Karen Carpenter. And it surely did. Her melodic contralto took on a harder edge while retaining its range and richness in a style sometimes compared to Freddie Mercury. Her drumming, masterful as ever, was more frantic, energetic, and passionate. Krupa meets Peligro. Her image, meanwhile, went through a transformation. Black leather replaced silk dresses. Her hair became shorter, more feathered. The safe Girl Next Door was replaced by a little rebel.

Karen in a publicity still for the Demolition album (Image generated by @nick_crenshaw82)

Narrator: To kick off the tour, they went back to where it had all started: Late Night with David Letterman. Dave was ecstatic to follow through with this, knowing the publicity that this would generate, be it a success or a laughable failure. Artist Andy Warhol recalled the event in an interview.

Clip: Andy Warhol in an interview with MTV

Andy: So, Prince calls me up and says that I need to tune in to Letterman, something that I rarely ever did. “You really need to see Karen Carpenter’s new set,” he said. I was skeptical to say the least. But when Prince tells you to check out Karen Carpenter, you check out Karen Carpenter. “Andy,” he said, “brother, this is going to be revolutionary.” He was not exaggerating.

[Cut To…]

Clip: Karen Carpenter on Late Night.

Dave (wry look in his eye): Ladies and Gentlemen, Karen Carpenter like you’ve never heard her!

Pans to Karen and her new band. She’s behind a massive drum kit. She starts quietly, like in her old act, using her signature dulcet contralto, keeping a simple, quiet symbol and tom beat.

Karen (singing slowly): I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing, ‘till they…got a hold of me. I’d hold the door for little old ladies. I taught the blind to see. I got no friends ‘cause they read the papers…they can't be seen…with me. (voice gets rougher, taking on a slight growl) And I'm gettin' real shot down, and I'm…feeling meeeaaaannn……

Karen breaks into an insane, blistering drum solo that goes on for near ten seconds. It settles into a steady rhythm and the band joins in with shredding punk guitars. The band jumps and head bangs. The audience, stunned at first, starts to shriek. She breaks into the chorus, singing higher, louder, rougher than her typical easy listening style while still drumming wildly and not missing a single sixteenth note.

Karen (singing loudly): No more, Li’l Miss Nice Girl! No more, Beauty Quee-ee-eeen! No more, Li’l Miss Nice Girl! They say, “She’s sick, she’s obsce-e-e-eeen!”

For reference, the Original

Drums and guitar continue, fading into the background for the Narrator.

Narrator: The set, a personalized cover of Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” sent shockwaves through the music scene. It became the lead single for her new Demolition album. It got discussed, often incredulously, by the media and critics and public alike. The controversy drove publicity. Radio stations played it, at first for the novelty, and then increasingly by request. The single went Platinum. The Album followed suit. The Tour Dates began to sell out.

Clip: Kurt Loder on MTV News

Kurt: It’s a bold new direction for her, but will audiences accept it?

[Clip Ends]

Footage of Karen on the 1983 Demolition Tour.

Narrator: But the success would be fleeting. Audiences and critics took it as a novelty, something to be enjoyed with tongue-in-cheek and a healthy dose of irony.

Clip: A Man on street interview after a concert

Man: Sure, she rocked it, but come on, it’s the chick who sang “Muskrat Love,” right?

[Clip Ends]

More Tour footage and stills, ending with footage of Karen sitting back against a wall, looking frustrated. Music ends suddenly on a dull B-flat.

Narrator: By the end of the Tour, audiences were becoming anemic as the novelty wore off. Warner Brothers canceled the option for a second studio album. Karen’s Punk rebirth was, it seemed, stillborn.

[Fade to Black]

The insane drum riff from “Demolition” plays in the background.

Title Card:

Call Me…

Fade in on footage of Karen drumming on a stage in a small club.

Narrator: But while mainstream success would prove fleeting, with audiences unable to buy into Karen Carpenter as a Punk, actual Punk musicians, once they could set aside any preconceptions, began to recognize her as legit.

Clip: Tommy Ramone in an interview

Tommy: Sure, it felt like a joke at first. But then I heard the track on “Demolition” and I flipped instantly. I couldn’t duplicate that track if I tried, and trust me, I tried.

[Clip Ends]

Images of Joan Jett with Karen Carpenter.

Narrator: Enter Joan Jett, one of Karen’s influences. Jett had initially scoffed at the new Karen, noting that “she lifted my look wholesale,” a charge that Karen confessed to, blaming the studio stylist. But upon hearing first the actual performances and second the dismissive, often misogynistic response from critics and audiences, she decided to approach Karen.

Joan Jett in the early 1980s (Image: Wikimedia)

Clip: Joan Jett in an interview, Karen beside her

Joan: Kari is legit punk. I hadn’t believed it at first, but she was and she is. When I heard the dismissive shit fuckin’ [Robert] Hilburn spewed about her, I got pissed. More, I grabbed the phone.

Volume drops for the Narrator.

Narrator: Music critic Robert Hillburn later reversed his initial skepticism and became a fervent supporter of Karen’s work.

Clip: Video of The Blackhearts cover of “I Love Rock & Roll”

Music quiets down for the Narrator

Narrator: For Joan and Karen, the timing was near perfect. Blackhearts drummer Lee Crystal had been presented with a solo opportunity [1], and they needed a drummer. Karen would replace Crystal on the new Blackhearts studio album Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth and the subsequent tour. To avoid any of the dismissive accusations of stunt casting, and not wanting to outshine Joan, Karen adopted the pseudonym Kari Carr, which she would keep even after being later “outed” as Karen Carpenter.

Clip: Live performance of The Blackhearts performing “Push and Stomp”. Karen can be seen in the background wailing on the drums

Volume drops for the Narrator

Narrator: Rebranded as Kari Carr, Karen toured with The Blackhearts throughout the mid-1980s, providing drums and backup vocals. Able to fade into the background behind the bombastic Jett, Karen called the tour “the time of my life and the terror of my life,” enjoying the raw energy of the performances and given total freedom to innovate on the drums, but overwhelmed by the rollicking backstage Punk life with its sex, drugs, and rock & roll attitude. Joan and Ricky Bird and Gary Ryan had to intervene on numerous occasions to protect her from aggressive men or jealous women, and she slowly began to adopt a more aggressive, Punk attitude simply out of self-defense. Yet after two years of touring, she was spent. The last straw came when a fanatical fan threw a cup of semen at her and Joan, thankfully missing. Bird broke the man’s nose, but the foul deed was done, and so was Karen. Plus, by this point Punk was fading out of the public eye, with more pop-influenced Punks like Billy Idol pushing aside the more hard-core original acts. Karen left The Blackhearts on amicable terms in 1987, replaced by Thommy Price. Instead, a new collaboration awaited.

---

[1] Crystal wouldn’t leave the band until 1987 in our timeline. Here, butterflies have presented him an earlier opportunity.

 

[Dan]

Posted with permission from @Geekhis Khan
------

Excerpt from "Oblivious, Oregon", Henry Rollins, live at Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, 2004.

"So this is something that happened to me back in the mid 80's when the band, (Black Flag), were on our way back from a show in Portland, Oregon. And this ladies and gentlemen, was, without doubt, the second strangest, most surreal time of my life.
Middle of the fucking night, we've got another 6 hours of driving to fuck knows where for our next show and Bill [Stephenson, Black Flag drummer] starts complaining that he's hungry. We'd just done a great show, it was a theatre the size of a shoe box and everyone up there was fucking wild man, it's the north west, they got nothing up there but rain, and punk shows

Anyway, we're on a road in the middle of fucking nowhere, it's pitch black out, like, you look out of the van and you can see nothing.
And up ahead we see a diner and a gas station lit up like an oasis of light in this inky, solid black.
We pull in, Greg [Ginn] was driving so he filled up with gas and we went into this diner.
We were the only fucking people in there. I'm in athletics shorts, a t shirt and sneakers, the other guys are in their jeans and shit, we looked what we were, fucking punk kid degenerates. But, we're polite and we sit quietly and eat our food.

As we're sat there eating, another van pulls up. Four guys and a woman get out and come in.
Now we were all fucking exhausted, they look like a small time rock band, and so we didn't pay too much attention to what was going on. This group sat at another table ordered their food and got on eating.

After a few minutes, the lady gets up, walks over and sits opposite me and says, "you're Henry Rollins aren't you"?
Now, I am in my mid 20's. I'm in a band, we just played a show and I am high on my own supply of ego, I am young, dumb and, well, mostly just dumb, and, Ladies and Gentlemen, you will see just how dumb in a moment...
Yes I am, I replied, we just played a show and we're on our way to our next show in wherever the fuck it was.
I have no idea who this woman is, but she seems to know who I am and I was raised to be polite...
"Oh" she says, realising I am obviously an idiot, "I'm in a band too, I'm the drummer, we're heading to LA for our next show"
And we get talking. And talking and talking. Everything I knew about music, she knew more, stories about touring, she knew more, people I'd met, she knew more. She was never arrogant about it, she was this total badass goddess and I am hanging on every fucking word.
After a while, we're getting ready to go, she writes down her number and tells me to ring when we play LA next. I put the napkin away and leave.

The guys around me can't believe what had happened and I was talking to this woman, and they're just like "Dude, what the hell man, why didn't you introduce us"?
And I'm like "why, just some chick in a band".
Just some chick in a band, [shakes his head slowly and sadly] Just. Some. Chick. In. A. Band...

And THIS Ladies and Gentlemen, this one moment, is why I am THE absolute DUMBEST motherfucker you will ever meet:

"Dude, that was Karen Fucking Carpenter"!

Did I ever ring that number?
Nope
Do I regret it?
Yup
However, that was only the second most surreal moments of my life, because of what happened about 15 years later..."

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Title Card:

The Money's in the Basement

Clip: VCR footage of a dark basement club. Debbie Harry sings “The Hardest Part” while Karen hammers on the drums behind her

Narrator: Debborah Harry, front woman of the experimental sometimes-Punk band Blondie, met Karen backstage at a West Berlin performance by The Blackhearts and the two hit it off. When Karen left The Blackhearts, she and Harry, who was “between projects” as she put it, decided to collaborate on an experimental Post-Punk band they named, naturally, Hari Kari. Deliberately non-mainstream between Harry’s unworldly vocals and Karen’s jazz-inspired drums, Hari Kari rarely sold Platinum, but it was never meant to. Instead, it quickly built up an underground following. The smaller, more intimate setting suited Karen well, and she called the tour, mostly of basement clubs, “heaven below the earth,” which became the title for their largest hit, which steadily climbed up the Alternative Top 100 in 1988.

Debbie Harry and Joan Jett; Kari is just off camera (Photograph by Chris Stein, posted to Reddit by Bronxtrixie86)

Clip: Kurt Loder on MTV News

Kurt: Hari Kari’s new single “Heaven Below the Earth” has dominated the emerging NuPunk scene, a surreal track that evokes Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sue, and The Cure.

[Clip Ends]

Clip: News Announcer behind a desk

Announcer: And many rumors persist that the drummer for the Debbie Harry fronted underground sensation may in fact be Karen Carpenter, credited as Kari Carr, who had also performed with The Blackhearts.

[Clip Ends]

Kari Carr touring with Hari Kari (Image generated by @nick_crenshaw82)

Footage of Hari Kari in concert. Karen can be seen hammering in the back, occasionally providing vocals.

Narrator: Soon enough outed as one half of The Carpenters, Karen refused interviews at first, but finally relented. Once outed, the discovery added some freedom, allowing her to more openly sing in her signature style, no longer feeling pressured to hide her identity. But with the “outing” came the outcry, at least from certain sectors. Harry not only defended her decision to partner with Carpenter, but hyped up her growing cred with the underground Punk and Post-Punk scenes.

Clip: Debbie Harry and Karen Carpenter (as Kari Carr) in an interview with MTV

Debbie: Kari’s the fucking best. A true Punk. She’s my bad-ass bitch, you know?”

Volume drops.

Narrator: Harry wasn’t alone. Soon others were chiming in. David Bowie called her transformation “a sublime metamorphosis; a dark butterfly emerging from a soft silk chrysalis”. Souxsie Sue called her “a glorious example of the power of Punk to empower.” Henry Rollins called her “Far more than just some chick in a band.” Alice Cooper even famously said, “She’s got the purr of a kitten and the roar of a lion. And I do love her taste in music.” Even D.H. Peligro came to her defense, calling the haters “whiny little shits.” The refusal by Karen to engage in the controversy simply made the controversy linger, which in turn boosted national attention to it, helping to propel “Heaven Below the Earth”, which had languished in semi-obscurity, to near the top of the Alternative charts. When Karen did finally relent to an interview, on the condition that they’d only talk about Hari Kari, she still managed to garner controversy when asked why she wasn’t following the then-current trend towards drum machines.

Volume returns

Karen: Yeah, I don’t do drum machines. I guess Phil Collins popularized them and now everyone’s doing them. I don’t like them. They sound fake. I prefer playing real drums. I like that real sound, you know?

Narrator: The press ran with this clip, spinning it up as a diss on Phil Collins, which it wasn’t. Without seeing the interview or hearing the context, Collins replied dismissively that Karen “couldn’t handle” Drum Machines or Genesis tracks. At first, Karen wanted to respond amicably and diffuse the controversy, as she’d tried to do with John Bonham, but Harry intervened, urging her to “let it walk a bit”. Karen avoided the press, greeting any questions involving Collins with a middle finger. Eventually, again at Harry’s urging, she released a video of a flawless Drum Machine medley of Collins drum lines, then expanded and elaborated upon them, and then, recalling the challenge she’d received from Bonham a decade before but been discouraged from accepting, challenged Collins to a Drum Duel. The results were epic.

Clip: Karen Carpenter and Phil Collins in their epic Drum Duel. After a few exchanges, the volume drops

Narrator: The duel and subsequent concert sold out Madison Square Garden and got a thirty-six Nielsen share when shown on NBC. The two spun the controversy into a limited eight-city tour together, with Hari Kari and Phil Collins taking turns opening for one another and frequently playing together or swapping songs or trading parts and players. A live album of one such concert sold double-platinum and a VHS recording was a best video seller. Phil and Karen remain friends to this day. It would be the peak of Karen’s new Punk-inspired career renaissance. But the fall would come quickly.

Clip: Karen, in an interview, looking tired

Karen: Fame is bullcrap, no matter how it comes to you.

Title Card:

A Kind of Hush

[Clip Ends]

Footage and stills of Karen in the late 1980s. Black Flag’s “Nothing Left Inside” plays.

Narrator: Karen Carpenter was back on top of the world, but the return to the spotlight brought with it a return of the same stresses that it always had. Seeing the thin, beautiful Jett and Harry brought back the body image issues, though Harry showed her healthier ways to stay fit, telling her, at one critical point, “it isn’t the pounds, hon, it’s what you pack into ‘em.” Even so, the omnipresent drugs and drinking brought back bad memories of her brother while the Long Plastic Hallway of the music industry wore on her. In 1989, at the peak of her newfound fame, she and Harry ended Hari Kari. Harry would return to solo work. Karen would vanish from the public eye.

Clip: Footage of Karen Carpenter as Kari Carr on Behind the Music

BtM Narrator: She was at the top of her newfound fame, and suddenly, she was nowhere to be seen.

[Cut To…]

Clip: Jon Stewart on VH1

Jon: (shrugs) Kari where-y?

[Clip Ends]

Footage of confused fans and Karen dodging reporters.

Narrator: For all intents and purposes, Karen had fallen off the face of the earth. Her home was sold at auction, her belongings moved to a warehouse, and then secretly moved from there to her new home, acquired through a holding company, the location a closely guarded secret. Rumors circulated that she’d moved to Switzerland or New Zealand or The Cayman Islands. Others suggested that she was living under an assumed name or had joined an underground band. These last two rumors, it turned out, were right on the nose.

Clip: VCR footage of Karen in a long black gown, drumming in a jazz band. Her hair is blonde and tied up in a complex style. She is drumming to the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five”

Narrator: Grainy footage appeared in 1991 on various news outlets purporting to show Karen playing the drums to one of her old favorites, “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet with its iconic 5/4-time signature. The band was an experimental Jazz Ensemble called The Jazz Passengers fronted by saxophonist Roy Nathanson and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, both formerly of The Lounge Lizards. The drummer, listed as K.C. Richards, was, in fact, Karen Carpenter.

One Lineup of The Jazz Passengers c1990; Curtis Fowlkes is in the center with glasses, Roy Nathanson is beside him, third from the left with mustache (Image: Wikimedia)

Photos of Karen with the various members of The Jazz Travelers and other musicians, including her old partner Debbie Harry. “Take Five” plays in the background.

Narrator: Karen had been introduced to Nathanson by Deborah Harry, and he had in turn introduced her to Fowlkes. The two became good friends with their mutual love of jazz and sunny senses of humor. Karen in particular told Dionne Warwick how much she loved his sense of humor. Scandal erupted when the friendship became an affair, with Fowlkes ultimately leaving his wife and family and marrying Karen in secret. And in 1991 Karen would, despite being in her early forties, finally get the family that she’d wanted, giving birth to daughter Rosa Deborah Anne Fowlkes. A son, Richard Mataw Fowlkes, followed in 1993. But in early 1991, with Karen visibly pregnant, The Jazz Passengers began to notice a sudden shift in their audience.

Clip: Karen in an interview with Larry King.

Karen: Now all of the sudden our audience of Bop fans and neo-beatniks is getting increasingly padded with squares in corduroy and Punks in leather! We knew in that moment that the jig was up! We were approached to perform at the [Hollywood] Bowl, and decided to do it, one last concert before I went on maternity leave. We called it “Caught in the Act”.

[Cut To…]

Clip: Footage from the “Caught in the Act” Concert plays. Karen continues to speak in voiceover

For reference, Debbie Harry with The Jazz Passengers c1994

Karen (V.O.): We went crazy. The cat was out of the bag, so it became all about me. If you haven’t seen it, Larry, it’s insanity. I play “Dancing in the Street,” “Ticket to Ride,” and then some of my Carpenters singles. It was the first time I’d performed them in years, and it was emotionally hard to even practice, and a bit hard to relearn after so many years, but in Richard’s honor I did ‘em. Then into the Punk stuff. “California Über Alles,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” all my stuff with Joan and Deborah. Finally, my husband gets to join me for some jazz stuff. At one point I even played “Cum on Feel the Noise” on the glockenspiel! Insanity!! But the crowd loved it!

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Clip: The Carpenters performing “Superstar”

Title Card:

You Said you’d be Coming Back this Way Again, Baby

[Clip Ends]

Stills and footage from Karen at this time, with her children and husband and their modest home on Long Island. “Superstar” continued to play in the background.

Narrator: Karen disappeared from public view once again, and for a long time, on an extended maternity leave that stretched into a second maternity leave when son Richard, called “Buddy”, was born. Attendance to The Jazz Passengers diminished back to its modest core fandom plus a few new converts without Karen there. The press, meanwhile, reacted to the sudden revelation in their usual high-handed way, hyping up the scandal of the marriage. Often it went down the usual “homewrecker” path, but often, the judgment was reserved for Fowlkes. People who’d never call themselves racist decried the marriage as somehow wrong, Fowlkes somehow the “wrong man” for Karen without articulating why. Those who knew her best, on the other hand, spoke out in favor of the union.

Clip: Joan Jett speaking to the press.

Joan: If you don’t get why Kari would go for a jazz musician with a gentle style and a great sense of humor who treats her with respect and dignity, then you don’t get Kari.

Narrator: Harry in particular went on the offensive.

Clip: Deborah Harry yelling at the media.

Deborah: Let the woman do her thing, you fucking jackals!

Narrator: Even Karen herself, who rarely spoke on such personal things, shed some light on things that made clear on why he was a good husband.

Clip: Karen in an interview with Larry King.

Karen: I mean, he’s sweet, he’s funny, he’s a clever and innovative musician, and he’s always there for me. I mean, when the pounds stuck to my hips after Rose was born, I was getting kind of bothered by it, and he was like, “no, babe, keep it! Looks good on ya!” And he meant it! I mean, I still hesitate when the dessert cart rolls by, but not for as long! And I don’t feel guilty about it later.

[Clip Ends]

More pictures of Karen and family, living a modest domestic life.

Narrator: Over time, the press feeding frenzy quieted, and Karen’s biggest challenge became making good with Curtis’s children from his first marriage, which needless to say was no mean feat. But eventually, via their younger half-siblings, they came to an amicable peace with her, though Curtis’s ex-wife has reportedly never spoken to her. But motherhood suited her, and those who know her maintained that she was happy with the arrangement, a mother and homemaker by choice. Now going by K.C. Fowlkes, she traded the stage for the nursery and the red carpet for the Safeway. And true to her earlier word, she found domestic life fulfilling in a new way.

Clip: Karen in an interview with Larry King.

Karen: I actually did enjoy it. I mean, getting no sleep sucks and nobody likes changing a diaper, Larry, but I love my kids and was blessed to have them. Sure, I’ll get a few side-eyes from some of the old busybodies for having kids with high melanin counts, but the joy in seeing first steps and hearing first words made up for it all! Had I never received that tape, I might have stayed on Long Island forever!

[Cut To…]

Clip: Bikini Kill performing “Sugar” in 1993

Music volume drops for the Narrator and later voiceover

Narrator: In 1993, with young Buddy swaddled in her arms, Karen popped in a demo tape that Joan Jett had sent her. It was the Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill performing “Sugar”. “Listen to this,” Joan had written on it.

Karen (V.O.): It was raw, it was true, it was Poly Styrene meets Dead Kennedys. I’d heard some of the stuff they were starting to call “NuPunk” on the radio, and it was good, sure. That Green Day song had a good sticky bass and drum combo. But it was, I don’t know, too safe. Too commercial. Nirvana was better, of course. But this…this called back to the heyday of hardcore Punk. I called up Joan and said, “What the he-, excuse me, heck is this!” “Riot Grrrl!” she said. “Well…heck yeah, I replied! About da…arn time, sister!”

“Sugar” returns to full volume

Title Card:

Punk’s Not Dead

Clip: Karen in an interview with Larry King.

Karen: And so, I asked her for more. And she sends me more. Demo tapes, bootlegs, indie CDs, even some eight-millimeter Camcorder stuff! A lot of bands out of Olympia, Washington. Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Suture, 7 Year Bitch. Oh! (puts hand over mouth) Sorry, Larry!

Larry: It’s OK.

Karen: And the subjects. Talk about pushing boundaries! They sang about rape. They sang about racism. They sang about body image. Talk about Punk! They even sang about periods! I mean, I never would have thought about singing about my period in the seventies or eighties. Even in Hari Kari!

Images and video footage from various Riot Grrrl and adjacent bands. Bratmobile’s “Bitch Theme” plays

Narrator: It hardly needs explaining why the new Riot Grrrl sound coming out of Olympia connected to Joan and Karen and Deborah in the way that it did. It was like the delivery on a promise they’d made fifteen years prior. The Olympia scene would expand quickly on word of mouth and indie CDs, with other female-fronted NuPunk bands springing up around the world. Slant 6 out of Washington DC, Emily’s Sassy Line out of California, Lobby Tramps out of Washington, DC, Huggy Bear out of Brighton, England, Willow World out of Osaka, Japan, and my personal favorite, Riot Goth band Jack Off Jill out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Clip: Jack Off Jill’s “My Cat”

Volume fades for Narrator

Narrator: At first, Karen’s maternal duties kept her glued to Long Island, as she refused to hand off her kids to a hired nanny. So, she launched what she called her “Telephone Tag Production Team”.

Photos of Karen, Buddy in her arms, speaking on a phone.

Karen (V.O.): So, Larry, there I am with Rose at my feet and Buddy in my arms and a cell phone to my ear. I’d talk to Joan, I’d talk to Deborah, I’d talk to Prince and Sheila E. We’d call producers and labels. We did all we could to promote the new sounds. Joan set up in Olympia and entered active production. I played telephone tag with her and the labels. Finally, a chain of calls led me to talking with Mira Velimirovic at Fox, and she said, “we have exactly the production for this!” Not an album, but a movie! It was Tank Girl, of course!

[Clip Ends]

Footage from Tank Girl and behind the scenes. Karen can be seen in many of the behind-the-scenes bits. “My Cat” plays on in the background

This Timeline’s Tank Girl movie is different. Read All About It Here (Image: Wikimedia)

Narrator: Fox and Skeleton Crew Productions collaborated on this live action production of the Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin postfeminist, post-apocalyptic indie comic about a Punk woman who lives in a tank and fights the power. Directed by Caroline Thompson and starring Helena Bonham Carter, the film performed modestly at the box office on its 1995 debut and is seen as both “of its time” and “ahead of its time.” But it quickly gained a huge cult following and kickstarted the careers of many of the Riot Grrrl bands whose music it featured, in particular Bikini Kill, whose “Rebel Girl” broke the Alternative Top 10, sold Double-Platinum, and became an anthem for a new generation of Punks.

Kari and Deborah Harry after working a production deal for 7 Year Bitch (Image generated by @nick_crenshaw)

Karen (V.O.): Tank Girl kicked down the door and the riot followed. We landed the Grrrls several deals. When Buddy was old enough for travel, I joined Joan in Washington and Cali and we went into active production, cleaning up some of the sound, giving some hints on how to craft something that will catch airplay without losing its teeth, and helping them Sell Up rather than Sell Out, as we liked to put it.

[Cut To…]

Clip: Kurt Loder on MTV News. The droning bass of “My Cat” can still be heard

Kurt: Joan Jett and Kari Carr have been front and center in producing and promoting the so-called “Riot Grrrl” sound, an edgy, feminist, female-fronted NuPunk subgenre that, thanks to the recent Fox film Tank Girl, has been kicking down doors everywhere.

(Image: WECB)

Clip: Bikini Kill doing a semi-ironic thrash cover of “Close to You”

[Cut To…]

Clip: Kathleen Hanna in an interview. “Close to You” still plays in the background

Kathleen: People laughed when Kari went Punk in ’82. Nobody’s laughing now. We grew up listening to Demolition and Hari Kari and The Blackhearts. If Karen Carpenter hadn’t sat in for D.H. Peligro that night, you might never have seen Bikini Kill or Bratmobile.

Narrator: And with their support for the Riot Grrrls, Joan Jett, Karen Carpenter, and Deborah Harry were soon rediscovered by a new generation, along with others like Poly Styrene, Patti Smith, and Nina Hagen. And as the 1990s continued and Buddy was out of diapers, Karen and Deborah knew that it was time to get the band back together…at least over Summer Break, and if it didn’t interfere with soccer practice.

Clip: News Announcer behind a desk

Announcer: In music news, a Hari Kari reunion tour was announced for the summer of 1997.

Narrator: It was just the latest in the growing Third Wave of Feminism, with Punk at the leading edge.

Clip: Dan Rather behind a desk

Dan: Is the future of Punk female? It seems so with the growing Riot Grrrl sound. That’s “Grrrl” with three Rs and no Is, mind you, like a primal growl.

[Clip Ends]

Footage of Hari Kari reunion tour. A live track of “Heaven Below the Earth” plays

Hari Kari performing live in 1997, Kari Carr just out of picture (Image: Wikipedia)

Narrator: Star, mother, producer, promoter…Karen seemed somehow able to do it all! She continued to support and mentor Riot Grrrl bands. She did a few collaborations with the Punk-Industrial supergroup Pigface, a band whose name held a special, ironic personal meaning for her. And she even found the time to repay an old friend.

Clip: Prince speaking to an interviewer.

Prince: So, I’d been given Percocet for the pain, and, well, (laughs) I’ll just be blunt, I couldn’t stop takin’ it. I kept it hidden real well. Hid it even from my band. Nobody knew. But Karen, she figured it out. She saw the signs. She’d seen it with her brother and, well, she and Sheila dragged in Bob Forrest and Flea, and, well, they staged the intervention. I wasn’t ready, but they were persistent and Bob and Flea had walked that walk and they knew how to speak about it. It was a long, hard fight, but they set me on the road to recovery.

[Clip Ends]

Narrator: But not even a living legend like Karen Carpenter could handle these juggled responsibilities forever. With the end of the Limited Reunion Tour, Karen Carpenter, exhausted from the twin responsibilities of motherhood and rocking out, returned to her modest home on Long Island to once again be a mother and only a mother. When she uncomfortably explained this decision to [Bikini Kill Drummer] Tobi Vail, Tobi told her, “Never be ashamed of being a good mother. Many girls grow up without one and it fucks ‘em up. Nothing anti-feminist about being a good mother. And what’s the point of freedom if you’re afraid to follow your love?” Karen has, for the time being, retired from music in the name of the domestic life she spoke fondly about in her youth. But while Karen Carpenter, and by extension Kari Carr, is in retirement, her legacy lives on.

 

[Dan]

Excerpt from "Oblivious, Oregon", Henry Rollins, live at Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, 2004.

"Just before I left for the USO Tour in Congo, I got a call from Ben Folds. I kinda know Ben, we'd played a lot of the same festivals in Europe, we waved at each other but that was about it.
"Hi Henry, it's Ben, I'm producing a record and I want you involved".
"OK, you need someone to go get pizza and drinks, empty ashtrays? I can do that but I'm not scoring drugs for you"
"No, I want you involved in the record itself"
"No way, that's insane"
"Oh Henry, you have no idea, it's a record for William Shatner"
Now I know you've all been high, I mean contemplating the nature of the universe high, but how many of you have been "Ben Folds, William Shatner and Henry Rollins on one record High? Right?
So I have to answer "Ben, that sounds fucking insane - I'm in"
"Cool, I know you're away, come over when you get back and we'll make it happen"
So I go to Congo, I play the shows, I meet the troops and I take a 28 hour journey from Kinshasa to Johannesburg, South Africa, Johannesburg to London, onto New York and from New York I land in Nashville.
I have had no sleep, I am hallucinating, I get in a cab and go to the studio.
That's where I meet William Shatner. He is 70 but has all the energy of a toddler that has discovered crack cocaine.
"HENRY! Good To Meet You, I'm Bill"
"Good to meet you too Sir"
"BEN, Play Him The Track"
Ben plays this track, it's a Bill on a 3 minute rant about things he can't get behind to a drum beat.
"HENRY, I Want To Do Another Song Like This But With You".
"Well, I think it might seem a bit odd, a record with two rant songs, it'd be lopsided, like it would roll like an egg, how about we redo this one, I'll say one, you say one, like call and response"
"HENRY, That's A Marvellous Idea"
So I write a list of about a hundred things I can't get behind and three minutes later I hand it over to Ben, he cuts it down to about ten, we work it in, rehearse and we go.
"Oh guys, I got us a new drummer, they're gonna sit in on this as the session guy had to go"
No problem. I have no idea who Ben got or how he got them, but this new drummer is insane, like part punk, part jazz, heavy as the first four Black Sabbath albums combined. Bill starts, I start and we're golden. We record four or five takes and the drumming is just getting crazier. it's awesome and the energy is just incredible.
"BEN, HENRY, I'm Thinking We Need A Guitar I Hear A Guitar, What Do You Think"?
"I'm good" I say, I mean all I hear is a high pitched ringing in my ear since 1982...
"OK" says Ben, "I got a guy, let me just grab him"
Oh Cool, Ben just happens to have a guy, Ben opens the door and this guy walks in.
I AM IN SHOCK!
In walks probably one of the worlds greatest guitar players, he's played with David Bowie, Prince and oh yeah, King Fuckin Crimson!
Adrian Belew.
My mind is blown, I worship this guy like a GOD. I start to walk towards him and Ben is like "DON'T, Henry. Do not slobber on him, do not breath on him, do not paw him with that sweaty excuse for a hand, just NO"
Now like I said, you've all been high, but never Ben Folds, William Shatner, Henry Rollins and Adrian Belew all on one record high.
We listen to the track, he nods, the mics come out, the drummer starts, the energy is absolutely insane, we record another version, it is absolutely golden.
Bill looks up, "You Want To Do One More Henry"?
"I can always go one more"
we look at Adrian, he's like fuck it, let's go
Ben Buzzes the intercom to the drummer who's in the booth next door "OK, You ready to go one more"
"Sure, let's do it, make it so Captain" comes a voice from the booth.

A familiar voice
A voice I know I should know, and I can't place it. But I know that voice from somewhere...
We turn around and do one more.
We are gasping like spent fish, the song is done, Bill is absolutely bouncing and is taking us all for dinner.
Then the drummer joins us in the studio from her booth.

Now, you've been high. I mean really fucking high. You understand the reason for every atom high, even.
But you have never been Ben Folds, William Shatner, Henry Rollins, Adrian Belew and Karen motherfucking Carpenter all on one fucking record High.
Cheech and Chong have never been that fucking high while smoking their way through the gross national product of Jamaica listening to Frank Zappa. We are talking so high you duck under the Hubble Space Telescope high at this point to get to this combination.

"I can't believe you never called me, you jerk"
I have never been so embarrassed, then elated in one moment in time at the same time. She remembered me. Oh Shit, she remembered me!
Luckily, Bill saved the day.
"HENRY, KAREN, Why Don't We Get Lunch? My Guy From The Eastern Seaboard Is Flying In Today With Freshly Caught Scallops, They'll Be Wonderful.
Now I have no idea what a scallop is. And I guess Karen could read the look on my face. She starts playing on how this guy must be special to catch scallops, and how he does it bare handed.
"Bare handed" I asked?
"Oh yes, scallops are quite a thing to catch, aren't they Bill, especially bare handed, they can be ever so dangerous" she chimed in.
By now Bill has caught on too. "Oh Yes HENRY, Out There Alone, Underwater, In The Wild! It Requires Nerves Of Steel"
And I swallowed it.
Hook, Line and Sinker...
It was an awesome lunch, Bill is super polite, he's talking to everyone, taking photos and signing autographs, while Karen, Ben, Adrian and I are talking like we'ver known each other forever - it's the Bill effect.
And so, you may have been high, You may have consumed more drugs than Timothy Leary, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and the entire writing staff of the Banana Splits, but you have never been Ben Folds, William Shatner, Adrian Belew, Karen Carpenter and Henry Rollins, sat in a 5 star restaurant in Nashville eating scallops, (which I now know are shellfish by the way), high.

At the end of it, Karen gave me her number again.
Did I call it this time?

Yes
And I'm pleased to say I've had my friend Karen as a guest on my radio show a couple of times, we talked music, we talked life, she is a total fucking delight, an absolute Goddess and the toughest motherfucker in rock and roll and I WILL TAKE NO ARGUMENT!

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, THAT was the single, greatest, most surreal moment of my life so far.

Thank you very much, you've been awesome.
Thank you

GOODNIGHT"

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Clip: Karen, looking older and fuller, leads a camera crew through a modest living room scattered with toys, many of them lined up in perfect rows.

Karen: And here’s where we live most of our lives, as you (laughs) can probably see!

Heavens to Betsy’s “I Wanna’ Be a Karen,” a song modeled on Ramones’s “I Wanna be Sedated”, plays (“I’ll smile gently as I purr at your feet…I wanna be a Karen! A gentle little kitty with the claws underneath…I wanna be a Karen!”)

For reference

Title Card:

Only Just Begun

(“Ba baa buh baah, buh ba baa buh baah…I wanna be a Karen! Ba baa buh baah, buh ba baa buh baah…I wanna be a Karen!”)

Bikini Kill Drummer Tobi Vail (Image: Far out Magazine)

Clip: Tobi Vail speaking to Kurt Loder. “I Wanna Be a Karen” plays on in the background

Tobi: Karen Carpenter? She’s a fucking goddess and an inspiration. My dad and grandpa were drummers, but I really picked up the sticks when I saw her on that ’76 TV special. I mean, chicks could drum too! And then I saw her on Letterman…holy fuck, Kurt, chicks could hammer! She hung with the fuckin’ DKs! Arguably overshadowed them! She could do Rich and Krupa. She could do Morello. She could do Ringo. And now she’s hammering out Peligro! Un-fucking-real!!

[End Clip]

Deborah and Karen in 2004 (Image by @nick_crenshaw82)

Footage and stills of Karen at home. “I Wanna Be a Karen” plays on in the background

Narrator: Karen’s retirement took her back to her modest gated community somewhere in central Long Island, the actual location of which has been kept secret to help preserve her family’s privacy. Part of the impetus for this retirement, right at the start of her third wave of fame, came due to family health needs.

Footage and photos of Karen with Buddy at various ages

Larry (V.O.): And then in 1998 things changed with your family.

Karen (V.O.): Yeah, Buddy was four and he was diagnosed with Autism. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Buddy was always a little different from the other kids, and raising him was different than with Rose. I mean, I knew raising boys was different than girls, I had a brother, you know, but this was more than just X vs. Y.

Clip: Karen in the interview with Larry King. The chords of “I Wanna Be a Karen” still plays faintly in the background

Larry: You retired once again to care for him.

Karen: And get him the supports he needs! I mean, rather than try and find someone or something to blame, I accepted Buddy for who he is and did my research. It’s still not well understood and there’s a lot of misinformation out there on the net, but I knew that he needed reading supports and speech and occupational therapy and special study aids at school, and that’s where I had to get mean.

Larry: Do tell.

Karen: So, the school district was rather old fashioned and had a board and principal more concerned with cutting costs than helping kids…or at least that’s how I saw it. So, I had to fight, fight like the smallest girl in the mosh pit, to get Buddy his constitutionally entitled supports. I attended education plan meetings, school board meetings, briefings from activists and advocates. Thankfully, I had a secret weapon, a sort of good cop/bad cop routine that I called “Karen/Kari”. (smiles)

Larry: Karen/Kari.

Karen: (steel in her eyes and voice) Yeah, if you’re polite and respectful with me, then you get to talk to sweet, kind, modest Karen who is oh-so-polite and respectful. Karen will smile and work with you through thick and thin and write kind words about you to your boss. But if you cross me, or lie to me, or disrespect me or my son or try and bullshit me…sorry, Larry, went a little Kari there. Then Kari comes out. The woman who once threw a beer bottle at an aggressive fan who couldn’t take “no” for an answer. I mean, I’m never loud and I’m never violent, but I’m in total control and not going to accept anything less than what my son is entitled to. Whether you meet Karen or Kari is up to you. I prefer the former, but I won’t hesitate to go with the latter when Buddy’s future is on the line.

[Clip Ends]

Photos of Karen with Buddy and Rose or at school board meetings. The chords of “I Wanna Be a Karen” still plays faintly in the background

Narrator: The 2002 interview took the world by storm as mothers everywhere, and indeed women everywhere, latched on to the Karen/Kari dynamic. Soon “Being a Karen” and “Being a Kari” became part of the lexicon for, respectively, being the sweet and polite person who always treats others with respect and dignity and who wants to say nice things about you to your manager, and the hard, cold-hearted bitch who gets shit done and won’t accept anything less than what’s right. [1]

Footage and photos of Karen sitting in the House of Representatives or meeting with various musicians of various races, sexualities, and gender identities as well as movie stars and producers. Queercore band The Third Sex’s “Mombies” plays

Narrator: Karen continues to fight on for Buddy and other kids like him, testifying at the New York State Assembly or in DC before Congress about the need for more funding for Special Needs education and supports. As she put it: “I once rocked the house, now I rock the House!” But even in retirement, Karen continues to support Riot Grrrl and other NuPunk bands, even helping to expand the scope to include more non-white, Queercore, and other non-normative bands, which has caused some controversy within the scene. As such, suburban Long Island has become a strange sort of Mecca for outcasts and Punks as they meet to discuss production deals and Punk drumming styles while Disney’s Unbound or Maleficent plays in the background and Rose leads Barbie and Bubbles through a set of Minor Threat covers.

Footage of Buddy at his mom’s drum kit and Rose kicking a soccer ball

Narrator: And if you’re wondering where these two worlds meet, the familial and the musical, ultimately it would be music that brought the family all together.

Karen (V.O.): So, Buddy was this very quiet child. He didn’t say much and had trouble saying it when he did. Played by himself and had a hard time connecting to anyone. Curtis and I would try to reach him through words and then through music, but he’d at first seem to ignore us and just line up his trucks, and grunt or bob his head on occasion. But one day while I was working on a set, Rose noticed that his grunts and motion were in time with the music. So, we started to experiment. The more complex the rhythm and time signature, the more obvious it became that, although it wasn’t obvious, he was indeed keeping time! She was right! By age five, he’d be boppin’ along. I handed him a drum and a stick, and it was like the most natural thing in the world for him to tap along. As he’s grown, he’s been taking to it like a fish to water!

Narrator: Buddy has since shown a prodigal aptitude for music of all sorts. Hand him an instrument, and in no time, he’s got it all but mastered. Rose, on the other hand, prefers sports to music. But so did her mother…at first.

Karen in 2005 (Image generated by @nick_crenshaw82)

Retrospective images of Karen through the years leading up to the mid-2000s when the episode aired. It includes images of her with Narrator Jude Barsi.

Narrator: Karen Carpenter’s legacy is long, from the “Chick who drums” through the first high of The Carpenters through tragedy and loss and reinvention and the long fight to a new career peak, inspiring many of us, myself included, along the way. And from there to retreat, a secret life, and marriage and family, and then newfound purpose as first a promoter and now an activist. Through it all, Karen Carpenter remains a Legend. Time will tell whether Hari Kari ever tours again, but whether you think of her as Karen Carpenter, Kari Carr, or K.C. Fowlkes, this artist and living legend will continue to rock the world into the new millennium.

Clip: Karen speaking to Larry King.

Larry: So, Karen, what comes next? Any plans to return to music production, perhaps once your kids are grown? Perhaps a family band?

Karen: Well, time will tell, of course, but yeah, we’ve certainly thought about it!

Larry: So, more to come from the Carpenters?

Karen: Are you kidding, Larry? (winks at camera) We’ve only just begun!

Larry chuckles. Fades to silence as Interview comes to an end. Karen smiles brightly, and looks wistfully into the camera, waving. It all ends on a single, damped A Major chord.

[Cut To Credits]

Credits roll as a Punk-influenced 7 Year Bitch cover of “We’ve Only Just Begun” plays.

---

[1] Yes, being a “Karen” in this timeline will mean roughly the opposite of what it means in ours. And being a “Kari” is not the same as our timeline’s “Karen” either. OTL’s “Karens” are considered out of control and entitled. TTL’s “Karis” are considered in control and fighting for their rights. Both “Karen” and “Kari” are largely considered complementary things to call a woman, though both terms will occasionally be used ironically as an insult, and context should always be considered (like when a Southern woman says “bless your heart”). Most women in this timeline will attest to their “Karen vs. Kari” sides.