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Trolling for MP3s on Google a while back, I came across a site of old 70s stuff. There was a 12 meg version of "Do You Feel Like I Do" from _Frampton Comes Alive_ there. Figuring it was the full version, on a lark I downloaded it.
Now, had you asked me in, say, 1983, it is unlikely I would have even admitted that I ever owned this particular piece of vinyl. I did, once. In 1976 Peter Frampton was probably one of the closest things to "hard rock" you would hear played often on the radio, and as a high school student with a limited budget what the radio played was what I listened to.
Of course, a twelve minute song featuring Frampton's "trippy" talking through a Vocoder is the sort of thing I once had learned to mock. With distance, though, it brings back memories: memories of senior year in high school, memories of Mary Jane's first kiss. Twelve minutes of psychedelia lite, a song about being stoned all the time, was just what I wanted to hear in 1976. Can it have been as bad as I remember?
----
One other thing occurred to me when I was listening to Frampton. It struck me that "Do You Feel. . ." might be "my generation's" version of "In A Gadda Da Vida." This got me thinking about how seriously distorted my sense of time is with regard to pop music history.
"In A Gadda Da Vida" has ever struck me as a product of a remote, bygone age, like the living rock of Stonehenge or something. It theoretically was a record made within my lifetime, but for all its importance in memory it seems technically crude and to sound its age. "Frampton Comes Alive" is equally the product of the past, but technically it seems little different from any other much more recent live album. The instrumentation is different, but that's only because 70s synths and keyboards were rather primitive and unreliable affairs. (One of my most vivid music memories is seeing Peter Gabriel in maybe 1981. For some reason, a bunch of his electronic gadgets were not working, so he could not continue with the set he planned. He went to the grand piano and did an absolutely gorgeous solo version of "Here Comes the Flood.")
At any rate, music I have continued to listen to semi-regularly seems "modern." Bowie's "Heroes" is a "modern" album, even though only two years separate it from Peter Frampton. More recent music I also listen to continues its idiom in a recognisable way, so it is projected forward in time, even though now "Heroes" is a lot closer to "In a Gadda" than to any current releases. But for younger folks, it too might seem a product of a distant age, like "In a Gadda da Vida" seems to me. I have to remind myself that these things might seem as old to whippersnappers as "In a Gadda. . ."
And all the changes in pop music that have taken place since I could afford a record collection of my own --- and could therefore tune out if I didn't like 'em --- are more or less off the screen. I remember when Nirvana appeared. I remember when Jane's Addiction appeared. But rap, to me, is Sugarhill Gang (they seemed :"clever" in 1980) and something Blondie played at on the album that has "The Tide is High" on it. Hip hop is just a collection of annoying commercial jingles. The reinvention of processed cheese-wiz dancepop, most of the career of Michael Jackson after Willard and Ben --- all of these things washed over me like the rain.
Now, had you asked me in, say, 1983, it is unlikely I would have even admitted that I ever owned this particular piece of vinyl. I did, once. In 1976 Peter Frampton was probably one of the closest things to "hard rock" you would hear played often on the radio, and as a high school student with a limited budget what the radio played was what I listened to.
Of course, a twelve minute song featuring Frampton's "trippy" talking through a Vocoder is the sort of thing I once had learned to mock. With distance, though, it brings back memories: memories of senior year in high school, memories of Mary Jane's first kiss. Twelve minutes of psychedelia lite, a song about being stoned all the time, was just what I wanted to hear in 1976. Can it have been as bad as I remember?
----
One other thing occurred to me when I was listening to Frampton. It struck me that "Do You Feel. . ." might be "my generation's" version of "In A Gadda Da Vida." This got me thinking about how seriously distorted my sense of time is with regard to pop music history.
"In A Gadda Da Vida" has ever struck me as a product of a remote, bygone age, like the living rock of Stonehenge or something. It theoretically was a record made within my lifetime, but for all its importance in memory it seems technically crude and to sound its age. "Frampton Comes Alive" is equally the product of the past, but technically it seems little different from any other much more recent live album. The instrumentation is different, but that's only because 70s synths and keyboards were rather primitive and unreliable affairs. (One of my most vivid music memories is seeing Peter Gabriel in maybe 1981. For some reason, a bunch of his electronic gadgets were not working, so he could not continue with the set he planned. He went to the grand piano and did an absolutely gorgeous solo version of "Here Comes the Flood.")
At any rate, music I have continued to listen to semi-regularly seems "modern." Bowie's "Heroes" is a "modern" album, even though only two years separate it from Peter Frampton. More recent music I also listen to continues its idiom in a recognisable way, so it is projected forward in time, even though now "Heroes" is a lot closer to "In a Gadda" than to any current releases. But for younger folks, it too might seem a product of a distant age, like "In a Gadda da Vida" seems to me. I have to remind myself that these things might seem as old to whippersnappers as "In a Gadda. . ."
And all the changes in pop music that have taken place since I could afford a record collection of my own --- and could therefore tune out if I didn't like 'em --- are more or less off the screen. I remember when Nirvana appeared. I remember when Jane's Addiction appeared. But rap, to me, is Sugarhill Gang (they seemed :"clever" in 1980) and something Blondie played at on the album that has "The Tide is High" on it. Hip hop is just a collection of annoying commercial jingles. The reinvention of processed cheese-wiz dancepop, most of the career of Michael Jackson after Willard and Ben --- all of these things washed over me like the rain.
