Joe's Record Collection: Frampton comes apart

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful: Peter Frampton at his mid-1970s peak.

The record: I'm in You (A&M, 1977 - SP 4704)

The artist: Peter Frampton

I'm in You

History: It doesn't happen much (or ever) these days, but back in the 1970s, a live album could really turn an artist's career around. It happened for KISS with Alive! in 1975, and it happened in an even bigger way that very next year for journeyman rocker Peter Frampton with the similarly-titled Frampton Comes Alive! Born in 1950 in Beckenham, England, Peter Frampton had made something of a name for himself as a singer and guitarist in such bands as the Herd (which he joined at age 16), Humble Pie, and Frampton's Camel, and he'd done some prominent session work for George Harrison, Harry Nilsson, and others. He signed with A&M as a solo act in 1972 and released a handful of studio LPs to middling sales, until an album simply called Frampton staggered up to #32 in May 1975 and went gold. In January 1976, A&M released the singer's first live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, which was recorded at San Francisco's famed Winterland. FM stations took a liking to it, and the LP caught fire. By February 1976, it was the #1 album in the country. In all, it logged ten weeks at the charts and sold ten million copies. Great news, right? Well, yes and no. The live album made Peter Frampton a household name and brought him to a much larger audience than he'd ever known before, but a hit that big brings with it a certain amount of backlash. To say the least, the stakes were awfully high when Peter and his band returned to the studio to make the follow-up. Though his commercial triumph had been a long time coming, Peter Frampton was an out-of-nowhere sensation to many listeners. Critics and other rockers were also rankled by Frampton's "pretty boy" image: the flowing blond locks, the delicate facial features, the bare chest -- all of which were prominently featured on the cover of I'm in You. It seemed like everyone was waiting for his star to fall.

Alanis Morissette: The Peter Frampton of the '90s.

I'm in You, while not an outright flop, was the beginning of Peter Frampton's commercial decline and the start of his status as a pop culture punchline. That trend would be greatly accelerated the next year when the singer made the ill-advised decision to co-star with the Bee Gees in the Robert Stigwood-produced mega-flop Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a movie musical based on the Beatles' 1967 concept album. In 1979, Peter's last year as a hit-maker, Frank Zappa released his most successful album ever, Sheik Yerbouti, whose opening track, "I Have Been in You," was a direct swipe at the title track from Frampton's record. In his failure to top Frampton Comes Alive!, Peter Frampton might seem similar to Michael Jackson, who was haunted by Thriller for the rest of his life. But Jackson scored major hit albums before and after that career milestone. To me, the Peter Frampton story is analogous to that of Alanis Morissette. A former child star, Alanis had been a pop singer for a few years in the early 1990s, with two albums that had been successful in her native Canada before she released Jagged Little Pill (1995), the worldwide #1 smash that ultimately sold 33 million copies. That album was Alanis' Frampton Comes Alive! and inspired a similar backlash. Its follow-up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998), was her I'm in You -- the pretty successful sequel which still felt like a commercial disappointment and which signaled her popular decline. Ultimately, both Peter Frampton and Alanis Morissette adopted the old philosophy of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and simply revisited their past triumphs. In 2005, Alanis released an acoustic remake of Jagged Little Pill and managed to sell 300,000 copies. In 1995, the very year of Alanis Morissette's greatest popularity, Peter Frampton finally released Frampton Comes Alive! II. A deluxe, 25th anniversary edition of the original would come out six years later. Their chart-busting days are over, but both Peter and Alanis have endured as touring acts whose fans still turn out, albeit in smaller numbers.

All Music Guide says: Four stars. "A surprisingly laid-back album steeped in lyricism and craftsmanship, particularly in the use of overdubs on even the harder rocking numbers." - Bruce Eder [link]

Was it a hit: Yes, but not the success Frampton and his label were hoping for. It peaked at #2 on the album charts, was certified platinum, and landed three singles on the charts -- the title track (which also hit #2), "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" (#18), and "Tried to Love" (#41). By most standards, that would be cause for celebration, but after Frampton Comes Alive!, it was a letdown. After one more modest hit album and single in 1979, Peter never reached the Top 40 on either chart again. What went up had come down.

Cameron Crowe

Choice excerpt from the liner notes: Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe, years away from directing Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous (and, uh, We Bought a Zoo), acknowledges that Peter had a daunting task ahead of him when recording the follow-up to Frampton Comes Alive!, but the critic assures us that "Frampton has risen to the challenge of his incredible success with authority. From sweeping acoustic melodies (played in part on his idol Django Reinhardt's original acoustic guitar) to all-out electrical virtuosity. There is a new vibrancy about this music." The album's fancy inner sleeve contains further liner notes from Peter himself. He dedicates the album "to all of You" for"the confidence" you've given him, but he still sounds a little nervous. "I was bubbling with ideas and trying not to compete with myself," he writes. "Even so, subconsciously there was an underlying pressure to 'out do' the last album." Underlying Pressure might have been an excellent alternate title for this LP.

Frank Zappa: "I'm in you!"

The listening experience: Not nearly as painful as I'd feared. I'm not a Peter Frampton fan; this album was one I got from (I think) my aunt and uncle's collection. Before this, my knowledge of Frampton was pretty much limited to the misbegotten Sgt. Pepper movie (which holds a grim fascination for me; I own the DVD, the soundtrack on CD and vinyl, and the tie-in paperback book), plus his guest appearance on The Simpsons (where he gamely mocked his image as a rock dinosaur) and, of course, Frank Zappa's scathing parody. Onstage, Zappa would preface "I Have Been in You" with a monologue about Peter's exploits with teenage groupies, and the phrase "I'm in you," always uttered in a taunting, cartoonish voice, became a running joke in Zappa's show. After that, I feared I'm in You would be a wussy, pseudo-rock embarrassment. It's not that at all. Well, it is that just a little in spots (the title track), but I'm in You definitely didn't deserve to be a career-killer. Bruce Eder was right; this is a laid-back album, as mellow as lime Jell-O. Frampton was under the gun when he made this LP, but you can't hear it in the songs, which mainly just plod along quite amiably. A few go on too long, particularly an eight-minute slog called "Won't You Be My Friend," but that's to be expected of a 1970s rock album. Eder was right about the "craftsmanship" part, too. I'm in You is one slick endeavor. Frampton and his band have a tight, cohesive sound, and the production work -- by Frampton himself -- is very professional. I'm in You has a rich, satisfying sound which I found very gratifying. As Michael Parks said in Kill Bill, Vol. 1, "Well, a sure and steady hand did this. This ain't no squirrelly amateur." Frampton's singing is a lot like his guitar playing: strong, supple, melodic, and kind of anonymous. His songs, too, are pleasant and tuneful, but for the most part, they soon fade from memory. One track in particular, "St. Thomas (Don't You Know How I Feel)," seemingly takes its inspiration from two of the most famous songs from Frampton Comes Alive!: the title from "Do You Feel Like We Do" and the melody from "Baby I Love Your Way." On Side Two, Frampton calls in the cavalry. Mick Jagger makes an uncredited but unmistakable cameo on "Tried to Love." (Frampton thanks a "Mick" in the liner notes but doesn't give a last name.) And then Stevie Wonder lays down one of his intricate harmonica parts on "Rocky's Hot Club," one of I'm in You's catchiest songs. The album closes with a double shot of very credible Motown covers: "(I'm a) Road Runner" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)." There are no real stinkers on this LP, no major missteps; all it needs is a sense of urgency or a strong reason to exist. Frankly, a live audience might have provided just that. What probably doomed this album more than anything else, though, was its terrible cover: Peter in a coquettish "seductive" pose, wearing shiny pink pants and an unbuttoned blouse with lace cuffs. Coupled with the implied sexual boast (masquerading as sensitivity) of the album's title, that cover would be enough to kill anyone's career.

Overall grade: B

Joe's Record Collection: The Beastie Boys and De La Soul were on the cutting edge of nostalgia, if that's possible

In 1989, the Beastie Boys and De La Soul took hip hop someplace it hadn't been before -- the past.

The records: Love American Style EP (Capitol Records*, 1989 - V-15483); Buddy & Ghetto Thang (Tommy Boy, 1989 - TB  943)

* The Capitol logo is altered to read "Beastie Boys Records"

The artist(s): The Beastie Boys; De La Soul

Love American Style EP

History: The Beastie Boys were coming off an incredible high in 1989 when they recorded Paul's Boutique, their sophomore release on Capitol Records. Their first full-length rap LP, Licensed to Ill (1986), had been a mammoth #1 hit in America, selling nine million copies and becoming the first rap album ever to top the Billboard charts. After half a decade as a punk and experimental band, the Beasties were now among the most popular acts in the country. The key to their success had been following the lead of Run-D.M.C., who had combined rap with heavy-metal-style guitars on singles like "Rock Box" (1984), "King of Rock" (1985), and their genre-bending Aerosmith collaboration "Walk This Way" (1986). The Beasties took this even further with the party-hearty frat anthem "Fight for Your Right," a Top 10 smash which was closer in spirit to mid-1980s hair metal like Motley Crue than hip hop. Their album, too, relied heavily on rock and metal samples, particularly Led Zeppelin, in addition to the funk and soul songs which normally provided the foundation on rap records. The first sound listeners heard on Side One of Licensed to Ill, in fact, was John  Bonham's pounding drum intro from the Zeppelin classic "When the Levee Breaks." Commercial expectations were high for the follow-up album, but the Beastie Boys were not interested in repeating Licensed to Ill. Instead, Paul's Boutique was a heady, densely-layered sound collage, its lyrics jam-packed with arcane cultural references and in-jokes. The Beasties announced their new direction with the Adam Bernstein-directed video for "Hey Ladies," the first single from the album. Gone were the sneakers, jeans, and ballcaps of the "Fight for Your Right" era. In their place were vintage 1970s leisure suits and platform shoes. They'd ditched "rock & roll" image and sound, too. "Hey Ladies" was built around a sample from "Machine Gun," a 1974 funk single by the Commodores. Initial commercial reaction to Paul's Boutique was underwhelming, and the commercial triumph of Licensed to Ill was never to be repeated, but the quirky 1989 LP had a long shelf life, eventually becoming widely acknowledged as a modern classic. Instead of burning out quickly as a one-joke fad, the Beasties enjoyed two more decades of productivity and success, and their second album was the first step in that new direction. Their Love American Style EP, characteristically named for a campy early 1970s TV series, is an interesting artifact from the Paul's Boutique era, when the Beasties were paradoxically looking forward by looking back. Nostalgia for the 1970s was still a fairly novel concept at the time. The decade had not yet been strip-mined for parody and imitation quite yet.

Buddy & Ghetto Thang

Meanwhile, that very same year, a Long Island hip hop trio called De La Soul was offering the American public something radically different than anything it had ever seen from a black hip hop act. Rap had its gangsters (N.W.A., Ice-T), its politicized crusaders (Public Enemy, KRS-One), and its braggarts (LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane), but it didn't have whimsical, nerdy pacifists like Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove, and P.A. Mase. That is, until De La Soul's debut LP, 3 Feet High and Rising, came out in 1989. The fact that the album took its name from a Johnny Cash lyric was indicative of just how different it was from everything else in hip hop at the time. The press was quick to label De La Soul as hippies and their music as "hippie hop," but the group bristled at this snap judgment and said so in their first hit single, "Me, Myself, and I." Like the George H.W. Bush-era Beastie Boys, De La Soul's sound was rooted in the wacky, tacky 1970s more than the dippy, trippy 1960s anyway. For example, "Me, Myself, and I" was built around a groove from "(Not Just) Knee Deep," a 1979 track by Funkadelic from their Uncle Jam Wants You album. The album's first song, "The Magic Number" was a take-off on "Three is a Magic Number," a 1973 educational tune from the animated Schoolhouse Rock! series. And "Eye Know" borrowed heavily from "Peg," a 1977 Steely Dan number. In short, the trio raided their parents' record collections in search of soundbites with no regard for the usual "rules" of hip hop. This wasn't the only way they broke the mold either. While hip hop is famous for its "beefs" -- often-violent rivalries between acts (think Biggie vs. Tupac) -- De La Soul joined like-minded rappers Queen Latifah, the Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, and A Tribe Called Quest in a mutually-supportive collective called the Native Tongues. Several members of the Native Tongues, in fact, guest star in the extended remixes which appear on Buddy & Ghetto Thang, a maxi-single release of two standout tracks from 3 Feet High. The record stores at my local mall, the Genesee Valley, didn't carry vinyl EPs, so I purchased both the De La Soul and Beastie Boys records during one of my family's occasional visits to Detroit's Greektown district which at that time had some slightly hipper, more eclectic disc boutiques. At the time, it blew my mind that these groups were issuing alternate, remixed versions of their songs that weren't included on the regular albums. "What will they think of next?" I wondered. This was before pop culture became one big remix, of course.



All Music Guide says: (Beasties) Three stars. No full review. [link]; (De La Soul) No review, just a generic listing. [link]

Was it a hit: (Beasties) Tough to say. "Hey Ladies" hit #36 in America and charted in Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand as well. But according to this discography, the extended play single was only released as Love American Style in "several territories." The EP did reach #76 in England, so it was a minor hit in at least one country. (De La Soul) Nope. The Buddy & Ghetto Thang maxi-single does not appear to have charted anywhere. But "Buddy" did appear as the B-side to "The Magic Number," which hit #18 on the R&B charts, #27 on the club charts, and soared all the way to #7 in England.

Choice excerpt from the liner notes: (Beasties) Love American Style EP has no notes to speak of, but the credits on the back cover list Adam Yauch's alter ego Nathaniel Hornblower as the photographer and Ricky Powell (memorably name-checked in the Paul's Boutique song "Car Thief") as a photo assistant. (De La Soul) Buddy & Ghetto Thang is similarly note-less, but the words "Real Dan Stuckie" (a silly, made-up slang expression frequently used by De La Soul in those days) plus the initials "CG" and a peace sign are etched into the inner groove on Side A. Many records have writing etched into the vinyl; generally, it's just the catalog number but some acts like to use that space for personalized messages. "Weird Al" Yankovic did this habitually in the 1980s, hiding little jokes like "Don't forget to eat your broccoli!" on his vinyl albums for eagle-eyed fans to discover. Try doing that with an MP3!

Robert Blake as TV's Baretta

The listening experience: (Beasties) Revelatory. The Beasties were always big proponents of vinyl ("I'm still listening to wax/I'm not using the CD," they would later attest on "Sure Shot"), and Love American Style EP shows why. The format is inordinately kind to their intricate, bass-heavy music. Side One contains the album versions of two tracks from Paul's Boutique, "Shake Your Rump" and "Hey Ladies," and even on my rather primitive system, these songs pack a wallop that my iPod can't touch. Side Two consists of two very worthy instrumental remixes. "33% God," its very title a reference to the 33 1/3 RPM speed at which vinyl records are played, is an extrapolation of "Shake Your Rump," while "Dis Yourself in '89 (Just Do It)" extends the groove of "Hey Ladies." Both tracks on Side Two are opportunities for the Beasties to shoehorn in even more soul, funk, and hip hop samples and get more mileage out of the ones they've already appropriated, like the theme song from Baretta. Why these two fun little tracks were not included on the Paul's Boutique reissue a few years back, I do not know. (De La Soul) Enjoyable, if a little repetitive. The EP contains three incarnations apiece of "Buddy" and "Ghetto Thang" -- the standard LP versions plus remixes presented with and without their lead vocals. The extended version of "Buddy," a double-entendre-filled sexual anthem, is a lot of fun. De La Soul use their extra disc space to add a feisty verse by Monie Love (who offers the often-ignored female perspective on sex), a little playful repartee with Queen Latifah (who speaks with a Puerto Rican accent for some arcane reason), and few more eccentric samples, including a chldren's record extolling virtues of the dictionary and a cool little quote ("In order to make his cavegirl smile, he had to improve his whistle style!") from Disney's 1953 short, Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom. "Ghetto Thang" does not benefit much from the remix treatment, however. The song is De La Soul's serious look at inner city strife, and the spare, no-nonsense beat used on the LP version suits it perfectly. On this EP, though, the rather somber vocals are overlaid on top of a funky "party" groove, and the disconnection is jarring. The two instrumentals may prove valuable to DJs and freestyle rappers, but they're not too compelling as standalone recordings. One last note: I'm not sure if Capitol used higher-quality vinyl or what, but these records are of the same vintage and have endured similar treatment, and Love American Style EP still sounds crisp and clear while Buddy & Ghetto Thing is scratchy and dull.

Overall grades: (Beasties) A-; (De La Soul) B