"Frampton Comes Alive!" Comes Alive Again! On 50th Anniversary Limited Edition
Joe Nino-Hernes nails it!
"This looks like a fire drill at an assisted living center" I quipped to my wife as we exited the Mayo Performing Arts Center theater and into the lobby March 13th, 2024 following Peter Frampton's energized and most enjoyable "feel good, rock hard" performance. Sorry, but that's what the audience looked like half a century later. At least we still are alive. I could give you a long list of who's not as I'm sure can many reading this.
Frampton still is alive, of course, and though he played mostly sitting down due to his IBM (Inclusive Body Myositis) the condition has not appreciable interfered with his dexterity. Or at least it didn't show in his playing. He's not got arthritic hands like Keith Richards appears to have, nor has this hardship cut into his joy at being on stage. This was not one of those "Poor fellow, I'm almost sorry I came, he should stop" kind of shows. Quite the opposite. The show was a pure does of uplift and impeccable musicianship.
The Mayo Performing Arts Center wasn't named after the late guitarist Bob Mayo who was in the band that recorded this best selling album and I wondered whether Frampton would mention the coincidence but he did one better by introducing Mayo's son Greg who came onstage and performed on "Baby I Love Your Way". Yes the audience was old but everyone left the theater feeling 25 again. It was that kind of evening.
TBH I hadn't played this album, the original or the Mobile Fidelity Anadisq 200 version in a very long time. I skipped it even prepping for interviewing Frampton because that was about the Intervention Records solo album reissues. Of course this album was huge. It broke Frampton's solo career selling more than 8,000,000 copies in America alone. Why did this happen? One can speculate because there's no certainty to these things.
Yes, Frampton had graduated to big venues so the live show was doing well, and yes, the concert was strong from beginning to end, and the recorded sound was outstanding and unlike so many "live" recordings, very little was overdubbed and here almost all for technical glitches, but what accounts for the vinyl sales dam breaking? My speculation is that 1976 was in some ways like 1964 when The Beatles invaded. America was in a miserable state and needed an uplift. Watergate had ended, Nixon was out, we had stagflation, energy shortages, Saigon fell, New York was bankrupt. And here comes this high energy, tuneful, you could say "frothy" rock album from a guy who Humble Pie'd it for a few years so had the edgy bona fides, but could also sell something lighter that everyone could enjoy and boy did they! Boys delighted in Frampton's guitar playing chops (though the first time he played The Boston Garden there was more blowing kisses and less string bending than I would have liked) and the girls enjoyed the cute guy with the open shirt. That is so sexist and that's why I wrote it—for some frothy fun. I'm entitled.
Playing this new reissue at high SPLs brought another dose of relief and high energy fun and served as a reminder of what the same record had accomplished 50 years ago only this new Joe Nino-Hernes's mastering produced spectacular live sound on the level say, of Little Feat's Waiting For Columbus. The louder I cranked it, the more real it sounded. It sounded as if he'd mixed it just for my system! The show lagged in a few spots as is typical, but picked up again quickly so listening though all 4 sides was not a chore, it brought musical and sonic pleasure.
Does the original and Mo-Fi sound this spectacular? I don't recall either putting me in the arena, though perhaps it's just a system improvement? But no. The original (well there were 8 million so you can be sure sonics vary wildly, so my original) sounds kind of glazed, edgy and ill-focused compared to this new one, and the Mo-Fi for some reason sounds kind of distant and dead unlike what I expected from a Stan Ricker 1/2 speed.
This new Vinylphyle edition is not only the best sounding version of this recording I've yet heard, it is sonically supremely pleasurable. The ensemble image spread across the stage is precisely focused and presented 3 dimensionally, the drum sound is "you are there live"—cymbals crash as live, the snare drum cracks, Frampton's Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty" guitar thought lost in a 1980 cargo plane crash but found and returned decades later, is so well presented. I don't know how Mr. Nino-Hernes bought this recording back to life like this, but he did. It sparkles with arena air musical life and even the audience applause has newfound enveloping realism.
If you're at all a fan, it would be a plain shame to miss out on this limited to 2500 copies edition.
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