Tuesday, September 11, 2007

368. Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive! (1976)

















Track Listing

1. Baby Something's Happening
2. Doobie Wah
3. Show Me The Way
4. It's A Plain Shame
5. All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)
6. Wind Of Change
7. Baby I Love Your Way
8. I Wanna Go To The Sun
9. Penny For Your Thoughts
10. I'll Give You Money
11. Shine On
12. Jumpin' Jack Flash
13. Lines On My Face
14. Do You Feel Like We Do

Review

Here's Peter "fucking" Frampton. I can never think of him without reminding myself of High Fidelity: "Is That Peter Fucking Frampton?". That out of the way, you can see from the album picture that the man has a face that you really want to slap. After this you think: "Why is this the biggest selling live album in the history of live albums?". Then you think: "Man, people have poor taste indeed.".

The album is pretty terrible, it is dull, uninnovative (with the notable exception of the usage of talkbox) and dull. Had I said dull already? That's because it is. Oh and then it has as its great highlight Baby I Love Your Way... which is pretty bad.

It is paradoxical, however, that my favourite song of the album is also the longest one. The last track actually is a bit interesting, it has a pretty great bridge which lasts something like 10 minutes where Frampton makes extensive use of talkbox to the point where he gets to sound like Daft Punk... weird, I know. When the bridge ends and it kicks back into the main theme it is actually quite exhilarating. But an album doesn't live by just one song, and most other ones are bad... even tough there is also an interesting instrumental one there in the middle. Oh well, dispensable.

Track Highlights


1. Do You Feel Like We Do
2. Penny For Your Thoughts
3. Baby I Love Your way
4. Show Me The Way

Final Grade


6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

* Referenced in Family Guy, season six, episode one. After being called a monster, Peter refers to the Frampton Comes Alive! album as being a monster.

* Referenced in Arrested Development, where a main character records an interracial Ventriloquism album, named Franklin Comes Alive.

* Appears in Wayne's World when Cassandra shows Wayne the old records that she has bought. When she asks Wayne if he's seen it before he claims to have been issued it as he lived in the suburbs, and that it came in the mail with samples of Tide.


Do You Feel Like We Do. Frampton does his best Daft Punk impression at around the 4 minute mark:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I haven't listened to this album yet and I am familiar with the High Fidelity quote (one of my favorite movies, actually). Having said that, there was always a part of me that felt bad for Frampton being pigeon-holed into the cheesy category mainly because the guy is a really good guitar player. And I am not just talking about the talk box stuff , I mean in general he is good if you listen to his soloing and rhythm work in his songs.

Having said that, I will probably eat my words when I have to review this album, because the cheese factor is definitely there.

Having said that, at least it isn't as bad as what he and the Bee Gees did to The Beatles' music in the film "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".

Francisco Silva said...

M:

He is a pretty good guitarist, but he uses his gifts for evil.


Nothing is as bad as the Bee Gees.