In the basement of my childhood home, there are stacks of old Billboard magazines, dating from the mid-’70s. Recently I rooted through them to find the issue of Jan. 5, 1974. At the top of the album chart inside is the greatest-hits collection by the Carpenters, No. 1 40 years ago this week.

Seeing that chart always puts me in mind of another date that same year, April 12, when I got to see the Carpenters live. I was 13. After the show, my mother and I walked up the aisle of the theater, and she delivered her review of the concert:

“Karen looks as if she’s putting on weight.”

She was talking about Karen Carpenter, of course, who, with her brother, Richard, had staged a nonviolent musical coup a few years earlier. Their gentle pop songs, stuff like “Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun,” conquered the charts in the era of acid rock. And because they were a little geeky — Karen a tomboy-with-bangs who played the drums, Richard a keyboard-and-arranging whiz in a pageboy haircut — they scored big for underdogs everywhere, including me. The music could be cheesy sometimes, but I still loved Karen’s low, lamenting voice and Richard’s tidy, tuneful arrangements. And most of all I loved their chart-topping numbers. For a gay adolescent nerd whose other greatest thrill came on report-card day, their success was my success.

My own review of the concert had nothing to do with Karen’s appearance; she didn’t look overweight, or underweight, to me. I was just struck by how the music — long, somewhat rote medleys interspersed with hokey patter — almost didn’t matter. For me it was probably similar to the Beatles’ legendary concerts at Shea Stadium a decade before, when the screaming drowned out what was happening onstage. On that night in 1974, my mother and I were within a few feet of the Carpenters. We touched the proverbial hem of Karen Carpenter’s hiphugger garment.

They were always better in the studio anyway, I thought, again just like the Beatles. And they were due for a new album soon. The music would take care of itself then.