At the time of its release, Frampton Comes Alive! was an anomaly, a multi-million-selling (mid-priced) double LP by an artist who had previously never burned up the charts with his long-players in any spectacular way. The biggest-selling live album of all time, it made Peter Frampton a household word and generated a monster hit single in "Show Me the Way." And the reason why is easy to hear: the Herd/Humble Pie graduate packed one hell of a punch on-stage -- where he was obviously the most comfortable -- and, in fact, the live versions of "Show Me the Way," "Do You Feel Like I Do," "Something's Happening," "Shine On," and other album rock staples are much more inspired, confident, and hard-hitting than the studio versions. [The 1999 reissue in A&M's "Remastered Classics" (31454-0930-2) series is a considerable improvement over the original double CD or double LP in terms of sound -- the highs are significantly more lustrous, the guitars crunch and soar, and the bottom end really thunders, and so you get a genuine sense of the power of Frampton's live set, at least the heavier parts of his set, rather than the compressed and flat sonic profile of the old double-disc version. Frampton and the band sound significantly closer as well, even on the softer songs such as "Wind of Change," and the disc is impressive listening even a quarter century later. Of course, one must take this all with a grain of salt as a concert document -- as was later revealed, there was considerable studio doctoring of the raw live tapes, a phenomenon that set the stage for such unofficial hybrid works as Bruce Springsteen's Live/1975-85 and countless others.]
Frampton Comes Alive!
Peter Frampton
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Frampton Comes Alive! Review
by Bruce Eder
Track Listing
Title/Composer | Performer | Time | Stream | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Peter Frampton | 05:40 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
2 | Peter Frampton | 05:34 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
3 | Peter Frampton | 04:34 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
4 | Peter Frampton | 04:36 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
5 | Peter Frampton | 03:25 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
6 | Peter Frampton | 02:45 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
7 | Peter Frampton | 04:37 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
8 | Peter Frampton | 07:14 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
9 | Peter Frampton | 01:22 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
10 | Peter Frampton | 05:36 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
11 | Peter Frampton | 03:34 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
12 | Peter Frampton | 07:52 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
13 | Peter Frampton | 07:02 | SpotifyAmazon | |||
14 | Peter Frampton | 14:15 | SpotifyAmazon |