"Frampton Comes Alive" - Keep or Return?

baker

i wish Sandy were on this thread, feel like she could help parse out some more of the finer-grained sociology of Frampton listenership.

I did the incognito thing and found Cameron Crowe's RS piece from April '76:

“Sweet guy”...“nice kid”...nobody has anything bad to say about Peter Frampton. He is extremely easy to like. An already endearing personality combined with the automatic courtesy that comes with all the second-billed years on the road have made him expertly charming. In conversation he remains light and breezy, but his personal life comes out in the albums. “I write about what happens to me,” he says. “It’s all there. I couldn’t do it any other way.” Wind of Change, for example, was a pleasant slice of life from the time of his first marriage. Frampton’s Camel was a depressing look at the marital breakup. Somethin’s Happening marked the arrival of his current girlfriend, Penny, and Frampton was a joyous testimony to their success together.

Before the now platinum Frampton Comes Alive!, none of his albums had gone beyond the 200,000 sales mark. Why the sudden fever? Peter isn’t about to question his explosion to the top: “Dylan, Chicago, Paul Simon...and me?” Rather, he shrugs in wonder. “I’ve figured it out,” he laughs. “There’s no way anybody could like that album and hate my guitar playing. That takes care of a lot of my insecurities. I’ve always wanted to be the best guitarist in the world, ever since I was eight years old. Ever since I saw Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers and...anybody else with a Stratocaster. But between you and me, I’ll settle for just being listened to.”

And this:

Frampton Comes Alive! was originally meant to be another single album. “I was told to keep it to a one-record package,” Frampton recalls, “’cause the day of the double live album is gone. I agreed, you know. So I mixed and cut together the whole thing, with ‘Lines on my Face’ and ‘Do You Feel’ on one side and ‘All I Want to Be,’ ‘Something’s Happening,’ ‘It’s a Plain Shame’ and ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ on the other. That’s all.

Gone? Seems to me it was just beginning--I suspect you could list 100 double-lives from the second half of the decade. Although maybe it was dying and then record companies took a look at Frampton's album.

This says far more about me than Frampton Comes Alive: I did not, when I bought it at 15, think I'd be sitting in front of little screen at the age of 59--much less on a Friday night--trying to figure out why it was so popular.

clemenza, I think you have the opening and closing scenes of an autobiography there.

We're Up All Night Trying To Figure Out If Frampton Comes Alive Was Destined To Be Popular, Or Did He Just Get Lucky?

Remembrance of Things Frampton

Gone? Seems to me it was just beginning--I suspect you could list 100 double-lives from the second half of the decade. Although maybe it was dying and then record companies took a look at Frampton's album.

I think they may have been on the way out, but then the triple-whammy of Frampton, Alive!, and Live Bullet (all career makers too), brought 'em back.

Yeah, as soon as I typed that, I realized Frampton himself was the answer. Did the first wave of double-lives start with Live Dead?

The internet is not answering that question for me...had to have been the first.

Yeah, Live/Dead in '69, then the Woodstock soundtracks in '70 & '71, Mad Dogs & Englishmen in '70, Allmans at the Fillmore in '71...

Live/Dead probably was first — all live non-jazz/non-classical albums at that point were single LPs — Live At The Apollo, The Live Kinks, Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, B.B. King’s Live At The Regal — mostly because those artists rarely played (or were allowed/had the opportunity to play) a live set longer than 40 minutes or so. The Dead obviously played far longer sets than many acts.

And even after Live/Dead, many of the iconic late ‘60s/early ‘70s live albums — Live At Leeds, Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!, Band Of Gypsys — were all singles from bands whose sets were often longer than double-LP length.

Just remembered too that Absolutely Live by The Doors from '70 was a double. Like alot of the early Rock double lives, it had a number of exclusive/expanded tracks.

4 Way Street must have been one of the first.

The Little Feat live from Ultrasonic Studios is all-time.

live adventures of bloomfield/kooper was jan 69 so pre-live/dead (tho does have some tangential dead connections)

also yes to the little feat tip!

Wow, you're right--many months ahead of Live/Dead. Yet the Wikipedia entry doesn't even mention it as the first. Either an oversight, or there's something else earlier.

Guess this doesn’t really count?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famous_1938_Carnegie_Hall_Jazz_Concert

JAZZ

I had not twigged to this 70s double live thing before. Gives the title of the Butthole Surfers 'Double Live' official bootleg some context which I would not have considered before.

https://img.discogs.com/adV9AwhXGFUzd-JTdY65PObXP1k=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-10911005-1515020145-1293.jpeg.jpg

It’s known as The Foghat Principle (at 1:24):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDgpQBaziy0

Solid rule.

The Little Feat live from Ultrasonic Studios is all-time.

they actually did two shows there, in '73 and '74. also worth a listen: Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George & John Hammond Ultrasonic Studios, Hempstead, NY October17,1972

I had not twigged to this 70s double live thing before. Gives the title of the Butthole Surfers 'Double Live' official bootleg some context which I would not have considered before.

― ringworm, Saturday, June 19, 2021 5:38 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I thought that was like an understood given. maybe less visible if you're coming from much later or something.
But yeah did seem to be something that was a near standard thing for early 70s hard rock bands and presumably others.

I thought the mid 70s might be the milieu it was characteristic of too. Interesting if the fading arc was interrupted by a chance reignition in a double lp that could have been a single becoming popular outside of other trends.

Yes, the double live album is such a 70s cliche, usually released when bands had run out of new material or needed a break from the one album a year treadmill.

Hard to imagine that without FCA, Jimmy Buffett might never have released "You had to be there."

At one point I thought about putting together a book proposal for something like The 101 Greatest Seventies Live Albums (with extra space devoted to triples like Yessongs and the ELP one and Santana's Lotus).

I have never heard Frampton Comes Alive!, ftr.

Neither have I, but I'm not American!

you haven't lived until Frampton has

35 years ago, for a defunct Canadian magazine, a friend and I did a piece on stage patter that was dominated by '70s double-lives. Kiss Alive!, of course, was the Citizen Kane of stage patter, though someone else might argue for Take No Prisoners. (Can't remember if there's much patter on Frampton Comes Alive. I don't think we quoted anything--probably good-guy innocuous, if there is.) It'd take some box moving to retrieve the piece, but from memory, one of my favourite bits was from a Thor live album (a single, I think):

"Anyone out there read Kerrang!? (no response)...Kerrang!? (no response)...Anyway..."

hahahah

The Little Feat live from Ultrasonic Studios is all-time.

they actually did two shows there, in '73 and '74. also worth a listen: Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George & John Hammond Ultrasonic Studios, Hempstead, NY October17,1972

― Thus Sang Freud, Saturday, June 19, 2021 6:38 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't realize this. The one I know is from 1973 and opens with the dedication of Apolitical Blues to Chairman Mo Astin. I always loved that joke.

I will have to find the 1974 show.

I misspoke; I dug through my Twitter archives and it turns out I listened to Frampton Comes Alive! in 2019. But I have absolutely no memory of that, so I'm listening to it again this morning.

The only track that stood out to me on this record was a bonus, "Nowhere's Too Far For My Baby".

UFO's Strangers in the Night and Neil Young's Live Rust, both 1979, seem like the last iconic rock double live albums of that era. Something like The Name of This Band is Talking Heads is already a different world.

Oh wow, I was going to mention "Strangers in the Night" earlier!

It's one of those live records that's more acclaimed than any of the band's studio albums.

These were also really popular live records too.

DP's - Live in Japan
Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous
Judas Priest - Unleashed in the East (their first Platinum record but not a double)

The one surprisingly not mentioned yet and filed in getting big in Japan and then released to US/UK...

Cheap Trick - Live at Budokan

It is one like Frampton's where the live versions are the more known version of song rather than the studio take. It was the album the broke them in the US. Not a double LP though...

I don't really know the lp but do know Frampto0n from the Herd and Humble Pie.
Face of 68 too.
I probably heard it in the wake of Dinosaur Jr covering Show Me The Way though.
& I think I have a few live sets by him and various backing bands on various hard drives. Frampton's camel among them. Probably mostly early 70s though. But nothing I know well enough to sing a song from its title. Apart from Show Me teh Way I think.