{"id":1830,"date":"2009-03-31T08:35:54","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T16:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=1830"},"modified":"2009-03-31T08:36:16","modified_gmt":"2009-03-31T16:36:16","slug":"one-more-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/31\/one-more-time\/","title":{"rendered":"One More Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Cause nobody knows how I’m feeling<\/span><\/p>\n

I discovered Peter Frampton the last week of May 1971.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s when I purchased Humble Pie’s "Rock On", in preparation for seeing the band open for Lee Michaels at the Fillmore East.\u00c2\u00a0 This was regular procedure.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought Fairport Convention’s "Full House" the year before, when they opened for Traffic at the same venue.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to show up unfamiliar with the material, I wanted to enjoy the experience.<\/p>\n

I’d like to tell you I loved "Rock On", that I played it incessantly after seeing the band and hold the disc close to my heart, but this would be untrue.\u00c2\u00a0 "Rock On" begins with a killer cut, and then fades thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 But that opening track…<\/p>\n

"Shine On" burst opens with a flourish, and a patina of distortion akin to the Small Faces’ "Itchycoo Park".\u00c2\u00a0 But this was not a Steve Marriott number.\u00c2\u00a0 "Shine On" may have featured the backup chicks who graced the Frampton-less follow-up, "Smokin’", but "Shine On" didn’t feature the bluster that Humble Pie became known for, rather "Shine On" was the kind of rock that made nerdy white boys feel powerful.<\/p>\n

Not that I went to that gig alone.\u00c2\u00a0 But we’re all self-conscious at heart, that’s what draws us geeks to the music, it completes us.<\/p>\n

And the following fall, when I was on a college road trip to Boston, I saw a double album on the floor of a music store in Kenmore Square and bought it.\u00c2\u00a0 That album was "Rockin’ The Fillmore", a document of the shows from the spring before, that I attended.<\/p>\n

Humble Pie broke through, they became a giant band.\u00c2\u00a0 But without Peter Frampton.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter Frampton had already decided to leave Humble Pie before the band hit the Fillmore East, it was well-publicized, and kind of hilarious… What musician leaves an act on the verge of its breakthrough, after paying all those dues?<\/p>\n

And I never found another soul who owned "Wind Of Change", Frampton’s solo debut from 1972, until years later. But I bought it instantly, and loved it.\u00c2\u00a0 The opening has got the feel of a placid lake just before sunset.\u00c2\u00a0 But "Fig Tree Bay" does not equal the opener on the other side, "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)".<\/p>\n

"All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" starts off as a peek into a studio.\u00c2\u00a0 Listening, you get that feeling of being a fly on the wall.\u00c2\u00a0 This is music made for the musicians, not the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 This six and a half minute epic has got too many twists and turns to ever be played on AM radio.\u00c2\u00a0 As for FM?\u00c2\u00a0 Playlists were becoming consolidated under the guidance of Lee Abrams, and there was no room for this unheralded guitar player.<\/p>\n

And that was the added bonus.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, Peter Frampton was pretty, but this was long before little girls knew who he was, he was dancing on the fretboard in "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" the same way Mick Taylor added that dollop of intensity atop the Stones classics of the same era.<\/p>\n

But from there the albums got worse.\u00c2\u00a0 "Frampton’s Camel" from the following year was serviceable, but not phenomenal.\u00c2\u00a0 1974’s album, "Somethin’s Happening" verged on unlistenable, I gave up.<\/p>\n

And I figured Frampton and A&M would too.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything was going in the wrong direction.\u00c2\u00a0 But then came "Frampton Comes Alive!"<\/p>\n

But something came first, an eponymous fourth solo album, which I never bought, because I felt ripped off.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t as good as the solo debut, but "Frampton" was a return to form.\u00c2\u00a0 It laid the groundwork for the ultimate live album. Yes, "Frampton" contains not only "Show Me The Way", but "Baby, I Love Your Way".<\/p>\n

I’m confused.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it’s the financial crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 But the change of centuries has pulled the wool over our eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 With no name for this decade, we’ve been unaware of the passage of time.\u00c2\u00a0 1990 was almost TWENTY YEARS AGO!<\/p>\n

Let me make this clearer.\u00c2\u00a0 When I discovered "Frampton", it was in a friend’s apartment on Dorothy Street, in 1975, in Brentwood.\u00c2\u00a0 Down the building lived a hot single mother with no visible means of support and her high school student daughter.\u00c2\u00a0 That little girl is gonna be 51 this year.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I’ve seen her in decades, but I remember.\u00c2\u00a0 We all remember.\u00c2\u00a0 The accumulation of mental detritus slows us down.\u00c2\u00a0 The baggage prevents us from being early adopters, we can’t square Twitter with getting our own phone in our parents’ house.\u00c2\u00a0 Texting?\u00c2\u00a0 Most of us never learned to type.<\/p>\n

And then there was that reader who came to visit me in the early nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 When she first made contact, she was a nineteen year old college student.\u00c2\u00a0 Today she’s a thirty six year old mother of two.\u00c2\u00a0 The Brat Pack is approaching fifty!<\/p>\n

I know none of this is new.\u00c2\u00a0 But our math got screwed up.\u00c2\u00a0 If it were still the last century, say 1999, and something had happened in 1980, we’d see that as a long time ago.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s like the clock got reset at midnight January 1st, 2000, and time has marched on unnoticed ever since.<\/p>\n

There’s gonna be a day of reckoning.\u00c2\u00a0 When we finally hit the next decade, and people refer to it as the "teens".\u00c2\u00a0 Then we’ll realize how much time has passed.<\/p>\n

Napster was ten years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 "Thriller" twenty five.\u00c2\u00a0 The boy band peak was a decade ago.\u00c2\u00a0 And it seems like we’re just beginning, but no, this era of chaos has been our lives for a long time.<\/p>\n

And I’m overwhelmed.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s too much music to listen to.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost none of it sealed with the imprimatur of someone trusted.\u00c2\u00a0 Do I listen to it all, do I try to appear hip, or do I listen to what I already know?<\/p>\n

When I’m at loose ends, I dial up the old stuff.<\/p>\n

And this morning, I got an inkling to hear Peter Frampton.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the latter-day lost period, after his manager Dee Anthony told him to play to the little girls, but before that, when he was playing to us, the musos.<\/p>\n

I thought of "Wind Of Change", but it seemed too downbeat and depressing.\u00c2\u00a0 I felt "Frampton" would be a bit more upbeat.<\/p>\n

And it was.<\/p>\n

"Day’s Dawning" had that 10 a.m. groove, when you finally realize you’ve got to get in gear and face the day.<\/p>\n

I can tolerate the original "Show Me The Way", without the screaming meemees, with the fuzzbox part of the song as opposed to the dominant factor.<\/p>\n

But then came "One More Time".<\/p>\n

"All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" made it to the live album.\u00c2\u00a0 Albeit in an acoustic, castrated, yet satisfying version. But "One More Time" didn’t get recut.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t overplayed, it wasn’t the song of choice of newly nubile girls.<\/p>\n

When an artist does something great, he knows.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t have to hype it, he doesn’t have to set it up, he just needs to play it.\u00c2\u00a0 And he’ll watch conversation stop, he’ll see people’s heads lift towards the sky, when the song is over, someone will ask to hear it again.<\/p>\n

We know great.\u00c2\u00a0 Because we so rarely hear it.<\/p>\n

By time "One More Time" came over the Sonos system this morning, I’d already tuned out, the music was background.\u00c2\u00a0 But suddenly, I had to stop typing, stop surfing, I could only listen.<\/p>\n

The intro is like mid-period Beatles, but played through a seventies filter.\u00c2\u00a0 The verses are informal, Frampton is not trying to convince us, he’s not working hard.\u00c2\u00a0 But then comes the change…<\/p>\n

And nobody knows how I’m feeling<\/span>
Just not healing_<\/span>
We’ll do it again one more time<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s the conundrum, the human condition.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re surrounded by other human beings, but quite alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody knows how we’re feeling, they can’t read through our uniforms, through societal preconceptions.\u00c2\u00a0 One cannot see the guy covered in tattoos wearing engineer boots loves to cook.\u00c2\u00a0 One cannot perceive the woman with prim and proper attire loves metal music.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re looking to connect.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s almost impossible.<\/p>\n

But there’s a halfway house.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s music.\u00c2\u00a0 The music seems to understand us and give us the power to bond with others.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what going to the rock show in the seventies was about.\u00c2\u00a0 Bonding with the others in attendance. The music broke down the barriers.<\/p>\n

We’ll do it again one more time<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s what I yearn for.\u00c2\u00a0 That one more time.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like it used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 When acts didn’t shrug their shoulders and say they had no choice but to tie in with corporations.\u00c2\u00a0 When tickets were cheap enough that you could go to the show on a regular basis.\u00c2\u00a0 When music was the most powerful art form.\u00c2\u00a0 When journeymen could play for years, and when they seemed completely lost in the wilderness, suddenly break through to almost everyone.\u00c2\u00a0 Based not on a marketing plan, but the intimacy, the sheer joy of their music.<\/p>\n

\n
Peter Frampton – Frampton – 03 – One More Time<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

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‘Cause nobody knows how I’m feeling I discovered Peter Frampton the last week of May 1971.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s when I purchased Humble Pie’s "Rock On", in preparation for seeing the band open for Lee Michaels at the Fillmore East.\u00c2\u00a0 This was regular procedure.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought Fairport Convention’s "Full House" the year before, when they opened for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-tw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1832,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}