Audio Recordings

Karen Carpenter didn't live long enough to see her only solo album released, and it didn't look as if her fans around the world would live long enough either. A&M Records has kept "Karen Carpenter," a 12-song collection, locked away for 17 years. But after a 1994 Carpenters tribute album--featuring versions of the group's hits by such acts as Sheryl Crow, Sonic Youth, Matthew Sweet and the Cranberries--sparked renewed interest for the duo's work, A&M will release the solo package on Oct. 8.

Bye bye, Hootie. Look out, Boston. It seemed like only yesterday that music industry insiders all agreed that Hootie & the Blowfish's "Cracked Rear View" album was on its way to surpassing Boston's 20-year-old self-titled album as the best-selling major-label debut ever. Now, though, "Cracked" has itself already been surpassed as the best-selling major-label debut in recent history. Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" has quietly left it in the dust--and isn't slowing down to look back.

When television cameras captured the sight of Riverside County sheriff's deputies striking illegal immigrants at the end of a wild chase, cries of anger went up around the world, some directed at the immigrants, others at the cops. Amid the uproar, one person seemed to emerge from the episode unscathed: California Highway Patrol officer Marco A.

Chris O'Connor of the Primitive Radio Gods admits that Cinderella stories such as his "just don't happen all that often." Like, almost never. "It's obviously a one-in-a-million thing," he says. But, hey, somebody's got to win the lottery, right? And in O'Connor's mind, what's happened to him is akin to striking oil in the backyard.

U2's next album, which record retailers were counting on this fall to help boost holiday sales, won't be released until early next year, it was learned Monday. Though neither U2 nor Island Records had announced a formal release date, published reports have indicated that the album was anticipated as early as October or November. This gave retailers hopes of a major rock 'n' roll sales sweepstakes this fall--with albums coming from four of the best-selling and most respected bands in rock: U2, R.

A senior California Highway Patrol official has decided at least temporarily to halt the firing of Officer Marco A. DeGennaro, whose actions at the scene of a police beating involving Riverside sheriff's deputies won praise but whose conduct afterward drew the wrath of CHP supervisors. DeGennaro's case has attracted wide attention, both for the role he played at the scene and for its strange aftermath.

To paraphrase Nathan Lane, theater music occupies a space on the cultural food chain somewhere between folk singing and clog dancing. But to the ravenous and extremely opinionated group who loves it, theater music is a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to go out at night. So, while the words "Varese Sarabande" may not mean anything to most people, they mean a great deal to the people--usually between 5,000 and 10,000 per disc--who buy the CDs the L.A.

The floor in Studio C in the basement of Hollywood's historic Capitol Records tower is cluttered with crates, each filled with recording tape boxes and their precious rounds of Mylar-preserved history pulled from the archives of Blue Note Records. These original master tapes, preserving sessions from many of the great names in the history of jazz, sport handwritten labels that give only hints of what's inside: "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," "Live in London" or simply "Ervin."

Metallica fans across the country turned out in droves last week, buying a whopping 680,000 copies of the hard-rock band's new "Load" album--but will the group's Southern California faithful be willing to drive more than two hours to see them as part of Lollapalooza '96? That was the question being asked in industry circles Wednesday as Lollapalooza organizers confirmed that they are considering two sites for the only expected Southern California stop by the traveling rock festival this summer.

Alert Aunt Bee: Andy Griffith, 70-year-old icon to two generations of television viewers, is running with a younger, faster crowd. The venerable actor has joined rockers and rappers--from Rage Against the Machine and Alice in Chains to Busta Rhymes and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony--on the upper half of Billboard magazine's weekly list of the nation's 200 best-selling albums.