Peter Frampton - All Blues/Frampton Forgets the Words

In his recently published autobiography [Do You Feel Like We Do?], Peter Frampton detailed personal health issues which have materialized within the past few years.  Sometime during his 2013 tour, Peter Frampton and his band were playing with a Frisbee backstage prior to a show.  He noted at the time that he was having difficulty running.  He chalked that up to “getting old”.  During a show two years later in Walker, Minnesota, he was kicking a beach ball off the stage and he fell.  He and his band joked that it was an “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” moment.  Three weeks later, it happened again as he tripped over a guitar cable.  It was then he thought something was amiss.  He went to see his doctor during a break in that tour.  His doctor referred him to a neurologist. 

He told the neurologist that he was having trouble with his arms and legs feeling weaker, and that putting anything in the overhead compartment of a plane was becoming more and more difficult.  The doctor had him do a finger flexor test, as well as having him hop on each leg ten times.  He was fine with his right leg, but not so good with his left leg.  Whatever was affecting him didn’t affect both sides of his body.  Since whatever was bothering Frampton didn’t affect both sides of his body, the doctor eliminated Lou Gehrig’s Disease [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis] as a cause but zeroed in on Inclusion Body Myositis [IBM].  Unlike ALS, IBM is not life-threatening, but it is life changing.  The disease is a progressive muscle disorder – he’s getting weaker in his legs, arms, hands and fingers.  IBM progresses at different speeds for different people.  Luckily for him, IBM is progressing slowly.  The disease’s progression is slow enough for him to decide he wants to record as much new music as possible before he can’t do it anymore.

Given his IBM diagnosis, Frampton and his band recorded three and a half album’s worth of material between September 2018 and April 2019.  The first installment of these recording is All Blues [2019].  He got the idea to do a blues album from a couple of tours he did with Steve Miller.  During Miller’s set each night, the two musicians would play a handful of blues numbers.  One such number was Freddie King’s Same Old Blues, which is the final song on All Blues.  I admit to having a bit of trepidation about this release.  Why?  Eric Clapton always refers to himself as a bluesman, but with him the results are mixed [in my opinion, anyway].  For all the great guitar playing, there is still the voice of a white Englishman singing songs written by black men from Mississippi.  Irish guitarist Gary Moore tired of the heavy metal game and remade himself as a “bluesman”.  He had the same vocal problem as Clapton, and as good a guitarist as he was, sometimes he tended to overplay like he was getting paid by the note.  Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher is the other side of the white blues coin.  Rory oozed the blues.  Rory thought of himself as a student of the blues, but he had the indescribable “IT” when it came to the blues.  I bring up these guys in the context of a piece about Peter Frampton because I had to wonder this – would a Frampton blues project be more like Clapton or Moore, like Rory Gallagher, or does it lie somewhere in between?  Then I reminded myself that the blues was nothing new to Peter Frampton.  Before Frampton Comes Alive made him a megastar, he played the blues with Humble Pie.  He still plays Four Day Creep in his sets [I saw him in 2011].  Having reminded myself of his Humble Pie past, I took the plunge into All Blues.

On All Blues, Frampton and his band played Frampton’s favorite blues songs, but with their own spin, their own arrangements.  Frampton’s playing is, as always, impeccable.  He doesn’t overplay.  Most of these songs I know – some of them I don’t.  The opening track is Muddy Waters’ I Just Want To Make Love To You.  With Kim Wilson [of Fabulous Thunderbirds fame] blowing the harp alongside, this was a good opening number.   There are Taj Mahal’s She Caught The Katy and Freddie King’s Me And My Guitar. They are closer to how Led Zeppelin might do them [think I Can’t Quit You].  I wondered how he was going to do Georgia On My Mind.  This song is so identified with Ray Charles, how could one cover it without sounding sacrilegious?  As I listened, the answer was simple – Frampton let his guitar do the singing for him.  I had the same thought about The Thrill Is Gone, BB King’s signature tune.  There aren’t that many words for Frampton to sing, which he does passably, but it just doesn’t feel right.  The saving grace here is Louisiana slide maestro Sonny Landreth.  For all the good guitar playing, he should have passed on this one.

Frampton then throws the listener a curveball with the title song, All Blues.  This isn’t blues – it’s jazz.  Not only jazz, but Miles Davis jazz.  This song is from Kind Of Blue.  Frampton brings guitarist Larry Carlton [four albums with Steely Dan] along for the ride.  Not only do the two guitarists sound magnificent, Frampton’s keyboardist Rob Arthur is simply perfect here.  Somewhere, Bill Evans is smiling.  Frampton’s cover of Bo Diddley’s You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover doesn’t utilize the signature Bo Diddley beat, but the rhythm section of bassist Glenn Worf and drummer Dan Wojciechowski still make it work.  Frampton’s slide playing is very tasty.  St. Louis Jimmy Oden’s 1942 standard Going Down Slow sounds tailor-made for Frampton’s current health struggles.  Frampton and his band dig deep for this one – it’s very well-done.  The same goes for Slim Harpo’s I’m a King Bee, where Frampton’s talk box makes an unexpected appearance [“buzz awhile…”].  The finale of All Blues is Freddie King’s Same Old Blues.  This version is faithful to the original, even down to the background singers. 

If Peter Frampton the 1970s megastar had made this album back in the day, he probably would have lost his audience, and critics would have savaged him.  But the megastar is long gone, replaced by a rock elder statesman.  As such, Peter Frampton made an excellent homage to the blues.  Though it isn’t perfect, it succeeds more than I thought possible.  Blues purists [of which I am not] might even like it.  The answer to the question I asked earlier [Clapton/Moore or Rory Gallagher], the answer, to these ears anyway, is closer to Rory.

Last Friday [April 23^rd] the second installment of Frampton’s “last recordings” dropped, the title of which is Frampton Forgets the Words.  As the title suggests, it’s an instrumental album.  Frampton has been here before, with his album Fingerprints [2006].  The album’s songs were mostly Peter Frampton originals, the lone exception being Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.  Frampton Forgets the Words, like All Blues before it, consists of covers of other people’s music.  His reasoning for this approach is simple – to write original music for as much as Frampton wanted to record would have taken a very long time.  He didn’t know how much longer his muscles would last to make/record more music.  Lack of time was the root of the problem that came with I’m In You, the album that followed Frampton Comes Alive.  The way he saw it, I’m In You was doomed because he didn’t have much time to work on it.  All the songs from the live record were many years in the making, but the record company wanted more “product” to sell to take advantage of Frampton’s wave of superstardom.  It matters not to me with All Blues and Frampton Forgets the Words because I have more of his guitar playing to hear. 

Frampton and his extremely capable band put down ten no-vocal versions of songs from artists ranging from Marvin Gaye and Lenny Kravitz to David Bowie and Sly & The Family Stone.  Frampton and company cast a wide net to capture music from different genres, from soul, funk, jazz, art rock, country, and a solo Beatle.  Of the ten songs, I knew six of them.  His take of Sly & The Family Stone’s If You Want Me To Stay [from 1973’s Fresh] is a better listen than Sly’s original.  There are two other soul covers – Marvin Gaye’s One More Heartache and Stevie Wonder’s I Don't Know Why.  I don’t know either one, so I don’t have any preconceived notions of what they are supposed to sound like.  One reviewer described Frampton’s version of One More Heartache as “soul, psychedelia, and the blues coexisting in the exact same moment.”  I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I don’t have better words to describe it so I’ll go with it.  The jazz number is Michel Colombier piece Dreamland, where Frampton plays Jaco Pistorius’ bass parts on his 1954 Les Paul.  This was an inspired choice.

Peter Frampton cites Roxy Music’s Avalon album as one of his all-time favorites.  He chose to record the title track.  Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry’s lounge lizard schtick never appealed to me, but it’s his album, not mine.  Frampton does a good take of a sleepy song.  To each his own, I suppose.  Frampton also felt compelled to record his own version of Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way.  My only comment about this song is this – why?  He’d probably answer with “why not?”  As inspired a choice as Dreamland was for this album, I put these two songs in the “uninspiring” category.

Frampton made a couple more interesting choices.  One was Radiohead’s Reckoner [In Rainbows, 2007].  I really like this one. Frampton replaces Thom Yorke’s falsetto vocals [an acquired taste that I have yet to acquire] with his guitar.  The song is much better for it.  I like it a lot – it has kind of a floating, spaced-out vibe to it.  The other choice from left field comes in an Alison Krauss song, Maybe [Forget About It, 1999].  Alison Krauss has one of the most angelic voices one could ever hope to hear.  Frampton’s guitar tone captures the mood of the song perfectly.

The remaining two choices of songs each has its own personal story behind it.  One is David Bowie’s Loving the Alien [Tonight, 1984].  David Bowie and Peter Frampton were friends dating back to their school days.  In 1987, Bowie did his Glass Spider tour.  By this time, Frampton’s career had gone downhill and picked up speed.  It had been eleven years since Frampton Comes Alive made him a star.  Bowie needed a guitar player.  He offered the job to Frampton, who jumped at the chance of being “just the guitar player” without the pressure of being the front man.  Bowie let him take a long solo during the show – this was the song.  Recording this song is Frampton’s way of saying “thank you.”  It’s a good one.  One final song is George Harrison’s Isn’t It a Pity [All Things Must Pass, 1970].  This isn’t Frampton first Harrison cover.  He also covered While My Guitar Gently Weeps [The Beatles, 1968] on his 2003 release Now.  Frampton said the reason he chose this one was because when he got the call to work on All Things Must Pass, Isn’t It a Pity was the first song he heard from the album when he first set foot in Abbey Road Studios.  Frampton effortlessly captured the power and majesty of George’s answer to Paul McCartney’s Hey Jude.

I mentioned that he recorded enough music for three and a half albums.  He has enough blues songs recorded for a second blues album, and the remainder are Frampton originals.  Now that COVID restrictions are lifting somewhat. hopefully he’ll find the strength to finish the fourth album.  When those two albums will come out is anyone’s guess.  In the meantime, All Blues and Frampton Forgets the Words will tide me over just fine. 

Peter Frampton - Hummingbird in a Box

Mention the name “Peter Frampton,” one imagines long hair, loud, distorted guitars that talk, and Do You Feel Like We Do. But Peter Frampton has always been about more than just loud guitars. There has always been the acoustic, more melodic side of his music. His desire to make such music, as opposed to the loud boogie rock of Humble Pie, is what prompted him to leave that seminal band in 1971 in the first place. His brand of quiet melodicism serves him well on his latest “album,” Hummingbird in a Box. I say “album” in quotations because it’s more like an EP that a full-length album [28 minutes and change].

Just what is Hummingbird in a Box? The cover and the title give the clues. The subtitle is “Songs for a Ballet.” The cover has a ballet slipper-clad leg superimposed over a Les Paul guitar. So how does a rock star come to create music for a ballet? A few years ago, when Frampton still lived in Cincinnati [he calls Nashville home now], he was approached by the director of the Cincinnati Ballet to work on a new collaboration. The ballet company had previously done some work with some of his existing music. Would he like to write some new music for the ballet? The show would work this way – there would be three parts – the beginning and ending parts would be performed to recorded music, while the middle section would have Frampton and his band performing onstage along with the dancers.

For this, Frampton created seven different pieces of music, the totality of them lasting about 28 minutes. Frampton plays most of the instruments himself, except for the drums and percussion. Of the seven numbers, only one is an instrumental [The One in 901, the only “loud” song]. The remainder are mostly acoustic pieces with the electric guitar used as coloring. Instead of using screaming Les Pauls, the electrics sound quiet, cleaner. The opener The Promenade's Retreat sounds initially like something Mark Knopfler would create. The title track sounds like one of Paul McCartney’s acoustic numbers from The White Album. Frampton told the Huffingtom Post the title track refers to a Chinese box that belonged to Mr. Frampton's grandfather, who traveled overseas in the navy. When opened in the right way, the box produced a hidden drawer inside which was a beautiful stuffed hummingbird. On Shadow of My Mind, the guitar tones remind one of Hank Marvin and the Shadows. The jazzy Norman Wisdom shows Frampton’s Django Reinhardt influence. All of the pieces give off a sparse, laid-back vibe. This isn’t your older brother’s Peter Frampton album.

For those who are looking for another loud guitar record from Peter Frampton, look elsewhere because this album is not for you. Some might be disappointed and find the album to be “boring.” But I like it. It’s something completely different. What you get is another side of Peter Frampton’s talent. In my feeble mind, there’s no downside to that.

Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive!

If you were alive in 1976, you heard Frampton Comes Alive! whether you knew it or not. It was everywhere. In my neighborhood, it literally was everywhere. My friend Mike put his stereo speakers in his bedroom window and broadcast it every day for everyone to hear. Luckily for him, he forced a good album on all of us, otherwise he surely would have died a quick death. In this age of digital downloads, Mike still has his vinyl LP. Why was this such a good album, and why did it sell by the truckload? I have one theory. During that time we all had to suffer a disease that was afflicting the music industry. That disease was called disco.

I won’t get into a long diatribe about how bad disco was. Suffice to say, if you hated disco as much as I did, Frampton Comes Alive! was a welcome respite from that “musical” [and I use that term loosely] scourge. If you don’t buy this argument consider the following. Peter Frampton later teamed up with the Bee Gees, purveyors of that monstrous musical form, to make the movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Frampton had sold out, he had taken up with “the enemy” and his fall from grace was as sudden as was his rise to fame. I dare say that it took his career over 20 years to recover. Yes, the movie had nothing to do with disco, but the mere thought of a musician of Peter Frampton’s caliber associating himself with perpetrators of such crap was just too much to bear. But enough about disco…

Disco isn't the only reason Frampton Comes Alive! was a monster hit. What was the appeal? Sure, he had the teeny-bopper good looks, the long-flowing blonde locks that the girls loved at the time. They liked the pretty songs like Baby I Love Your Way. For the guys [and girls too] there was a damn fine guitarist. His band was as tight as they come [the immortal Bob Mayo, Stanley Sheldon, and the late John Siomos]. From the opening moments of Something’s Happening, the energy of both the band and the audience leap out of the speakers. Frampton’s element was on-stage. He comes across as a nice guy who has an excellent rapport with his audience. He had strong material, even though it didn’t sell well in the studio incarnations. I think the hook for many people was the talk box. I know of only two people who used it with guitar before Frampton did [Joe Walsh and Jeff Beck], and when people heard Frampton do it, people thought “that was cool” [at least I did anyway]. Was it a case of “right place, right time”? It probably was, but it sounded good. Hell, it sounded great!

What about the songs? With the exception of one song [Shine On], all the songs are from the first four albums Peter Frampton made after leaving Humble Pie [Wind of Change, Frampton’s Camel, Somethin’s Happening, Frampton]. He left Humble Pie because he thought the hard rock direction they were taking overwhelmed his talents as a player. Unlike the balls-to-the-wall attack of Humble Pie, Frampton liked to mix his music with both electric and acoustic textures. Additionally there’s more of an emphasis on melody. This approach is also reflected on Frampton Comes Alive!, but fear not – Frampton did not forget how to rock out just because he left Humble Pie. There was the talk-box excess of Do You Feel Like We Do. There was the white-boy funkiness of Doobie Wah. How can one NOT like Show Me The Way? My personal favorite is the Humble Pie song Shine On, which follows Do You Feel Like We Do on the 25^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. Also on the Deluxe Edition, there are four extra songs that weren’t on the original album for space reasons. One of those, White Sugar, immediately follows Shine On and flows right into PF’s inspired take of the Stones’ Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Where the original album ended with Do You Feel Like We Do, the Deluxe Edition ends with Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Peter Frampton re-sequenced the Deluxe Edition to reflect what his setlist really looked like at the time, such is the luxury of not having to squeeze music onto pieces of vinyl.

The original album track listing:

Somethin’s Happening / Doobie Wah / Show Me The Way / It’s a Plain Shame / All I Wanna Be (Is By Your Side) / Wind of Change / Baby I Love Your Way / I Wanna Go To The Sun / Penny For Your Thoughts / (I’ll Give You) Money / Shine On / Jumpin’ Jack Flash / Lines on My Face / Do You Feel Like We Do

The 25^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Somethin’s Happening / Doobie Wah / Lines on My Face / Show Me The Way / It’s a Plain Shame / Wind of Change / Just the Time of Year* / Penny For Your Thoughts / All I Wanna Be (Is By Your Side) / Baby I Love Your Way / I Wanna Go To The Sun / Nowhere’s Too Far (For My Baby)* / (I’ll Give You) Money / Do You Feel Like We Do / Shine On / White Sugar* / Jumpin’ Jack Flash / Day's Dawning* [live-for radio session]

Peter Frampton is celebrating the 35^th anniversary of Frampton Comes Alive! this summer by playing the whole thing, start to finish [including the extras]. That’ll be just the first set. I assume he also play a heavy dose of selections from Fingerprints and Thank You Mr. Churchill. I suspect he’ll play While My Guitar Gently Weeps and I Don’t Need No Doctor. At least I hope so because I plan to buy tickets to see this show in Pensacola in October this year. It should be a great show.

Great Live Albums

I love live albums. Since I don’t go to concerts anymore, for me they are the next best thing to being there, especially if there is a DVD tie-in. Live albums fall into three areas – 1. The stop-gap between studio albums to keep a musical act in the public eye; 2. The contractual obligation, like a greatest hits album, that allows an act to complete a recording contract with one label before moving on to a better deal with another label; 3. The document of a band’s prowess as a live act that can’t be captured in a studio. Here are some live albums that fall into the third category that I think are required listening.

Deep Purple – Made in Japan (1973) – recorded over a three night span of shows in Osaka and Tokyo. This live document featured the best-known and most successful Deep Purple line-up of Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice. The original album included only seven songs, but the 1998 remastered version also included the encore songs Speed King, Black Night, and Lucille. Made in Japan has the definitive version of Highway Star, on which both Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore are simply spectacular. The rest of the band isn’t too shabby either. It also features a superb Smoke on the Water that’s better than the Machine Head original, a lengthy Lazy and an even longer Space Truckin’, both from Machine Head. In order to provide an on-stage foil for guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord fed his Hammond organ through a Marshall stack, providing the Hammond with a more metallic sound. Instead of sounding like a mellow instrument that one would hear in jazz or blues, by feeding the Hammond through a Marshall stack Jon Lord turned a piece of furniture into a fire-breathing, smoke-belching beast. On both Lazy and Space Truckin’, Jon Lord uncaged the beast. I saw Deep Purple on their 1985 Perfect Strangers tour. They were as great that night as they were on Made in Japan. What a shame they couldn't get along and keep it together.

The Allman Brothers Band - At Fillmore East (1971) – Produced by Tom Dowd, this was recorded over four shows in March 1971. I’ve written about this album at length in a previous blog, therefore I won’t repeat myself. I’ll just say the deluxe edition of At Fillmore East is the best live album I’ve heard from anybody. The track listing:

Statesboro Blues/Trouble No More/Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’/Done Somebody Wrong/Stormy Monday/One Way Out/In Memory of Elizabeth Reed/You Don’t Love Me/Midnight Rider/Hot ‘Lanta/Whipping Post/Mountain Jam/Drunken Hearted Boy [featuring Elvin Bishop]

Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive! (1976) – if you grew up in the 1970s, you heard this album a lot – I know I did. My friend Mike owned a copy [I’m sure he still has it], and everyday he put his stereo speakers in his upstairs bedroom window and blasted Frampton Comes Alive! for the whole neighborhood to hear. We heard it so much that I think we all knew every nuance of Do You Feel Like We Do, all 13 minutes of it. There are many reasons why Frampton Comes Alive! is the best selling live album of all time: 1) Good songs; 2) Great guitar playing; 3) It’s an excellent recording – it just sounds good. The deluxe version sounds even better. Frampton’s most recent releases, Fingerprints and Thank You Mr. Churchill, are proof that the success of Frampton Comes Alive! was not some pretty-boy fluke. The man can play!

Jeff Beck – Performing This Week: Live at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club (2007) – Several years ago I saw Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival on TV. One of EC’s guests was Jeff Beck and his band. After having heard Beck’s set I was hoping that sometime in the near future he would record a live album. For once my musical wish was granted. This album is an excellent overview of Jeff Beck’s career since leaving The Yardbirds in 1966. This set includes Beck’s Bolero, an outstanding Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers [from 1975’s Blow By Blow], some great live versions from songs off of 1976’s Wired, including Led Boots and Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat. To top it off, included is Beck’s take on The Beatles’ A Day in the Life. Beck doesn’t sing – he lets his guitar be his voice. In his hands, a Fender Stratocaster can laugh, cry, sing, moan, wail – it can express any emotion a human voice can express. Joe Satriani and Steve Vai have nothing on this guy.

Stevie Ray Vaughan – Live at Carnegie Hall (1997) – Recorded October 4, 1984, the day after SRV turned 30, released posthumously. Joining SRV and Double Trouble on this occasion were SRV’s big brother Jimmie Vaughan (from the Fabulous Thunderbirds), Dr John, and the Roomful of Blues horn section. The band and the guests turned Carnegie Hall into a Texas roadhouse that night. There was lots of great blues played on this night. The track listing:

Scuttle Buttin’/Testify/Love Struck Baby/Honey Bee/Cold Shot/Letter to My Girlfriend/Dirty Pool/Pride and Joy/The Things That I Used to Do/C.O.D [sung by Angela Strelhi]/Iced Over/Lenny/Rude Mood

The Sky Is Crying and Voodoo Child [Slight Return] from the same show are on the SRV box set. Live at Carnegie Hall is SRV’s best live album and is an essential part of his discography.

Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison (1968), At San Quentin (1969) – two recordings from two different California prisons, same result – electrifying! It’s pretty chilling when you hear a bunch of cons cheering wildly when The Man in Black sings I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die [Folsom Prison Blues]. The reaction from the cons is the same when they hear My name is Sue/How do you do/Now you’re gonna die! [A Boy Named Sue] and I can’t forget the day I shot that bad bitch down [Cocaine Blues]. The Man in Black definitely connected with captive audiences that were starved for entertainment, and herein lies the greatness of these two live albums.

Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1998) – don’t let the title fool you. Yes, this started out as a bootleg, and it was originally thought to be from the Royal Albert Hall. A bootleg of this show, incorrectly labeled as being from the Royal Albert Hall, has been making the rounds for over thirty years. Contrary to legend, this concert was recorded in Manchester. To put the show in its proper context, the year before recording it Bob Dylan had shocked his folk audience by “going electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. This move in a more commercial direction so angered the folk faithful that they bought tickets for Dylan shows for the expressed purpose of booing him. The first half of the show was Dylan alone and acoustic. The audience sat silently and hung on his every word. The second half of the show was an electric set with a full band, The Hawks [who later became The Band]. Considering this was recorded in 1966, the audio fidelity is pretty good. The performance from Dylan and The Hawks was intense. Between songs during the electric set there were catcalls from the crowd. Finally, between Ballad of a Thin Man and Like a Rolling Stone you can hear the famous cry of “Judas!” After hearing that, Dylan turned to the band and you can hear him tell them to “play it fucking loud!” The Hawks obliged, and when Like a Rolling Stone was finished, there’s nothing but stunned silence. How's that for greatness?

UFO – Strangers in the Night (1979) – this one is like a “greatest hits live” recording taken from shows recorded in Chicago and Louisville. All the best UFO songs are here. The band, with German guitarist Michael Schenker, is in peak form. Here you will find the best version of Lights Out. Also included is a mind-blowing 10-minute version of Rock Bottom. UFO did several studio albums with Michael Schenker, all of them very good. But this live album is the best album they ever did or ever will do.

Neil Young – Live Rust (1979) – recorded with Crazy Horse at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, this is the album that got me hooked on Neil Young. Here you will find definitive versions of Powderfinger, Cortez the Killer, Like a Hurricane, and very good renditions of Cinnamon Girl, Tonight’s the Night, and Hey Hey, My My (Out of the Blue). The recording starts off with the early song Sugar Mountain, includes I Am a Child from Buffalo Springfield, and then reviews NY’s career as both a solo acoustic performer and as an electric guitarist with Crazy Horse. This is a well-done recording of an excellent performance.

Gov’t Mule – Mulennium (2010) – Gov’t Mule has a tradition of ringing in every New Year with a show. For Mule fans a NYE show is the musical highlight of the year. Mule NYE shows tend to go on all night (4-hours plus), feature many guests, and they play anything and everything they can think of. The show recorded on 12/31/99 [never intended for release] was no different. The show started out with six Mule originals, and then right after midnight they launched right into King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, followed by The Who’s We’re Not Gonna Take It and Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused. The second CD features a six-song set with blues legend Little Milton. After the blues set, Black Crowes guitarist Audley Freed joined the Mule onstage for Alice Cooper’s Is It My Body, Jimi Hendrix’s Power of Soul, the best cover I’ve ever heard of the Beatles’ Helter Skelter, the Black Crowes’ Sometimes Salvation, Humble Pie’s 30 Days in the Hole, and the Allman Brothers’ End of the Line (which Warren Haynes wrote with Gregg Allman and Allen Woody). Guitarist Johnny Mosier and pedal steel player Mark Van Allen (both from the Blueground Undergrass) join the Mule for the encore of Tony Joe White’s Out of the Rain, Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released, and finally Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man. They had recorded and released two other live albums, Live at the Roseland Ballroom (1995) and Live…With a Little Help From Our Friends (2001). Both of those shows are very good, but Mulennium is better. It’s also the last NYE show to be recorded before Allen Woody’s death in August 2000. This set is a “must have.”

Motörhead – No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith (1981) – despite the title, this album was recorded at shows in Leeds and Newcastle. Motörhead’s sound is unique – Lemmy Kilmister plays the bass like it’s a rhythm guitar. He’s the only guy I’ve ever seen to play chords on a bass. He uses open string drones and power chords. On his amps, the volume is set at the 3 o’clock position, the bass and treble on his amps are turned all the way down while the mid-range is all the way up, while the tone and volume knobs on his Rickenbacker are all the way up. His Rickenbacker basses [4001 and 4003] are outfitted with Gibson Thunderbird pickups at the bridge position. Lemmy has a very distinctive, gruff voice, as if he gargles with gasoline and Jack Daniels and smokes four packs of Marlboros a day. Lemmy once said that if Motörhead was to move in next to your house, your lawn would die. If I wanted to kill my grass, this album would probably do the trick. The track list:

Ace of Spades/Stay Clean/Metropolis/The Hammer/Iron Horse-Born to Lose/No Class/Overkill/(We Are) The Road Crew/Capricorn/Bomber/Motörhead – The songs Bite The Bullet-The Chase is Better Than the Catch/Fire, Fire/Shoot You in the Back/The Hammer, recorded at the same shows, appear on The Best of Motörhead collection as well as a deluxe version of No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith.

No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith is a high-energy album, and very loud too. The production is fairly raw – no feedback is edited out. Lemmy wouldn’t have it any other way. The band played at such a breakneck pace that it would put punk bands to shame. If you want a good review of early Motörhead, this is a good place to start. All of the early classics are here. My favorites: (We Are) The Road Crew, Overkill, Capricorn.

That's my list. Do you have a list of great live albums?

Peter Frampton: Thank You Mr. Churchill/Fingerprints

When one hears the name Peter Frampton, one thinks of the rock-god, long-flowing blonde locks from the megahit live album Frampton Comes Alive! from 1976. He’s done two live albums since then [Frampton Comes Alive II and Live in Detroit, both very solid efforts]. Since 1976 his studio creations have been mixed affairs, with some fairly good songs mixed with some very forgettable ones. Despite his uneven material, he has always been a great guitarist. This brings us to his latest studio release, Thank You Mr. Churchill. Unlike studio albums of the past, this one is fairly autobiographical, with some commentary on outside events. The first track, the title track, thanks Winston Churchill for bringing his father home from the Second World War so he could meet his mother and conceive Peter Frampton. Solution is about people’s perception of him and how different he is from the public perception. Vaudeville Nanna And The Banjolele is about him picking up his first instrument, a banjolele which was left for him to be found by his grandmother [“Nanna”]. His grandmother loved Vaudeville, so in his mind, Vaudeville plus Nanna plus banjolele equals Peter Frampton. Asleep at the Wheel is a piece about the North Korean kidnapping of a Japanese girl, Megumi Yokota, a Japanese girl kidnapped more than thirty years ago by North Koreans to help train their spies to pass for Japanese citizens. Suite Liberté: A. Megumi B. Hurla Watu is an instrumental companion piece to Asleep at the Wheel that would not have been out of place on his previous release, the instrumental Fingerprints from 2006. Restraint is him feeling on edge about the recent Wall Street situation, people living in the lap of luxury on other peoples’ money. Invisible Man is a song that Frampton and his songwriting partner Gordon Kennedy put together with as many Motown titles as they could think of as an homage to the Funk Brothers, that anonymous band [hence the title] of Motown studio musicians who played on more hits than the Beatles. As a bonus, some of the Funk Brothers play on it. The last song, Black Ice, sounds to me like it is the most personal song on the CD. He’s working on his eighth year of sobriety and it talks about the journey to sobriety and of the one person in his life who has helped him get there.

All told, this is one of Peter Frampton’s strongest studio efforts. Not only are his usual guitar chops well intact, he’s finally got some well-written songs with some lyrical bite to match his musicianship. Thank You Mr. Churchill is a worthy follow-up to his last CD, the Grammy-winning Fingerprints. Speaking of which…

Sobriety has been very good to Peter Frampton. Thank You Mr Churchill is the second record he has made while sober; Fingerprints is the first. Peter Frampton is quite fond of it, to wit: “This has been the CD I've been waiting to make all my life. Every track has been a wonderful challenge, pushing me to raise my own bar again and again.” Guests include Warren Haynes [the Allman Brothers Band/Gov’t Mule], some members of the Rolling Stones, the Shadows and Pearl Jam. Blooze is the track that features the slide guitar of Warren Haynes. As one can surmise, it’s a blues-based rocker that features Frampton and Haynes swapping leads. Cornerstones is another blues-based rocker that features Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. Double Nickel is a laid-back number that features the talents of veteran Nashville steel guitar player Paul Frankilin. If you own any Dire Straits or Mark Knopfler CDs, you’ve heard his work. Mike McCready and Matt Cameron from Pearl Jam play on two songs – the first an instrumental version of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun. Frampton’s talk-box [think “Do You Feel Like We Do”] is the “vocal” on the song. The second song is a Frampton/McCready improvisation called Blowin’ Smoke – very rock-ish. My Cup of Tea features Hank Marvin and Brian Bennet from the Shadows, a big British instrumental group from the early 1960s. Hank Marvin is one of Peter Frampton’s biggest influences, and he cites Marvin as his reason for getting into music in the first place. Smoky pays tribute to jazz greats like Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell. The last song finds Peter Frampton teaming with John Jorgenson on Souvenirs de Nos Pères (Memories of Our Fathers), a gypsy-sounding number reminiscent of Django Reinhardt. It’s quite entertaining.

Both Thank You Mr. Churchill and Fingerprints represent Peter Frampton’s finest work since his 1970s heyday. To quote Bob Dylan, “it’s all good.” If you’re a fan and you’re not sure whether to buy them, buy them both. I did – you won’t be disappointed.