Before the fan club newsletters started arriving with cheerful Carpenter happenings, there was a family story—controlling, ambitious, and already full of pressure.

In Episode 1, we rewind to the beginning: the move from New Haven to Downey. The household dynamics that shaped Karen and Richard, and the force of their mother Agnes, as the family’s musical mission takes shape. We also dig into the piece of the origin myth that gets overlooked most: Karen didn’t begin as “the voice.” She began as a drummer—fighting to get behind the kit in marching band because, as she put it, she “just wanted to play the drums.”

From early wins and “almost” years to the moment A&M finally opens the door, we build toward the pivot point: 1970, when Karen and Richard become the Carpenters—and the official story is ready to be printed, mailed, and preserved.

Welcome to This Masquerade: The Carpenters Fan Club—where the story begins not with a concert, a chart position, or a TV special… but with a piece of paper.

Picture it: 1970. You’re driving around with the radio on, and a soft piano intro gives way to lush strings and a voice so warm and low it feels impossible. You fall hard for the song, for the arrangement, for the calm confidence of that singer. So you do what fans did back then: you write a letter. You tell the band—through their label—what their music is doing to you.

A few weeks later, you get a reply in the mail.

It’s a Carpenters Fan Club application.

Three dollars. Cash, check, or money order. A “lifetime membership card.” Souvenirs. Monthly newsletters promising “Carpenter happenings” from a P.O. Box in Downey, California. Then the fine print turns the invitation into a world: members-only sew-on patches, wallet photos, posters, and even official T-shirts—kids’ sizes in yellow, adults in red or blue—plus the kind of line that makes it all feel strangely official: no exchanges, no refunds.

In this intro episode, we read the application out loud and treat it like what it really is: a portal. Not just into a fan community, but into an entire curated version of the Carpenters—sweet, safe, sunny, and printable.

And that’s the premise of this series.

Because once the newsletters start arriving, they feel like comfort: tour updates, studio notes, friendly details, a monthly reassurance that everything is going great. But behind every bright page, there’s a larger reality—pressure, business, family dynamics, image management, and the private cost of being one of the most famous duos in pop history.

This episode sets the ground rules for the journey ahead: we’ll read the fan club documents exactly as fans received them… then we’ll compare them to what the historical record shows was happening in the same time period. The masquerade and the real. The official story and the story underneath.

Start here. Open the envelope with me.

Welcome to the fan club.