Last night I went with Beloved to see Peter Frampton playing his "Peter Frampton Comes Alive!" I wasn't really looking forward to it (the tickets were a birthday gift for Beloved), but by the end of it, I really appreciated Frampton—he's a guitar god!! Oh, and he played the planecrash guitar, which was really cool.
It was a really good show. They played the whole album (which I really don't care for—more on that in a minute), took a short break, and then for their encore (which was almost as long as the first part), they played new stuff, including "Black Sun" (which I very much liked) and some instrumentals.
I am not really an electric guitar girl. I like it, I appreciate it, but I always thought it goes just so far. I've seen the error of my ways. For most of his new stuff, there were FOUR electric guitars going, and the drums. And it didn't seem as though anything was missing—very full, very cool sound.
Overall, this is what I would say about Frampton: he's thin on vocals/songs. This is not a diss on his voice, which sounds exactly the same (eerily so). But his strength is CLEARLY music. It's a bit of a shame that he didn't meet with a really great lyricist, because I bet that would have been a band of the century.
Side notes:
· The fans were all Beloved's age or older (he is a few years older than me, and he was a "young" fan [14] at Frampton's height). Parked around the concert venue, there were all SUVs, mini-vans, and, as I put it, "old white-people cars."
· Everyone was so happy—we chatted with the people all around us about how big Frampton was for a period, how every girl had his poster on the wall…like Justin Beiber, someone said...and everyone paused for a moment.
· During the song, "Show Me the Way" (I want you/to show me the way…I want you/day after day) a woman a few rows in front of us got up and went.to.town dancing. I realized in that moment what it must be like to sit behind me at a Bruce Springsteen concert.
· There was a couple at the end of the row we were sitting in, and every time someone in our row had to go out or in, which was not often, the woman had a minor fit. I didn't get it—everyone was THRILLED to be there and it was such a happy atmosphere. And you can see where your bloody seating is when you buy the tickets. Crabby people like that piss me off.
Peter Frampton used to look like this, back in the day:
Now he looks like this:
Still handsome; just different without the hair. He has the same arms and legs he had back in the day—very skinny. But when he turned to the side, he had a nice ol' pot belly. I saw just about every woman in the audience turn to her partner and whisper, and I saw every man slightly incline his head. I just knew the women were saying something about Frampton's pot belly, and the men were thinking, "I finally got something on Frampton."
Background (why I didn't like Peter Frampton)
In my house, we had one big record player that was a piece of furniture. That was for my dad's records—no rock records allowed. And we had a portable record player that my older sisters used. They played Peter Frampton all the damn time. I got sick of him. This is also how I got sick of the Beatles and, later, Michael Jackson. But it's also how I fell in love with Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, and BRUCE.
Anyway, I grew up and eventually met Beloved. When we started shacking up, one day I heard some music coming out of our "office" room that was vaguely familiar and vaguely irritating to me. I could see he was rocking out to it, so I didn't say anything. I was going about my tidying business, ignoring the music, when I suddenly heard the words, "woke up this mornin', with a wine glass in my hand/whose wine?/what wine?/where the hell did I dine?"
I interrupted Beloved and asked that he confirm "the stupidest song lyrics of all time." He was aghast and asked me if I knew who Peter Frampton was. "Oh, God!," I said, "that's who that is. I hate that guy," which led to a long lecture about how Peter Frampton was the biggest thing ever and that he was in the top ten all-time greatest guitar players in the world. I just laughed.
Several months later, Beloved and I were training for a century bike ride. For our 75-mile training ride, it was hot, it was hilly as hell, and we were on hour five, I think. Chugging up yet another hill under the hot sun, we were miserable. I suddenly heard Beloved's voice, "woke up this mornin', with a wine glass in my hand…" and I laughed so hard. He kept singing, and as we crested the hill, he raised a fist and sang, "Do youoooo, YOU…feel like I do?!"
So when I saw that Frampton was going on tour, I had to buy tickets for Beloved's birthday. And it was sooooo worth it. Not only did I enjoy the concert, but Beloved's face was alight with joy and delight. He was so excited!
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