Performer: Peter Frampton
Songwriter: Peter Frampton
Original Release: Wind of Change
Year: 1972
Definitive Version: Frampton Comes Alive!, 1976
If you’re a male who grew up in the 70s and lived in the suburbs, you owned Frampton Comes Alive! That simple. Songs from this album were everywhere as I started 7th grade. Back in the day, the Upper Arlington school system had junior high, rather than middle school. So elementary school was K-6, then junior high 7-9, and high school 10-12, which meant that when you started 7th grade, you had to deal with a new school, a totally new procedure, new teachers and new d bags who were more than happy to make the lives hell of any newbie. I hated junior high with the fiery passion of 10,000 suns, and 7th grade was by far the worst.
So I spent a lot of the first half of the school year listening to music, and I’d say that I had this album on my stereo, maybe, I don’t know, 75 percent of the time then. I wore the proverbial groove in it. I don’t have a specific memory attached with this particular song, just vague sensations of lying in bed at night with my headphones on before falling to sleep, listening to the cheery, unthreatening voice of Peter Frampton, as he almost single-handedly invented arena rock. Cheesy and derivative? Perhaps. Funny thing: The songs still sound good 35 years later.
Amazingly, I did not own FCA. But I did have a double-sided 45 of "Show Me the Way" and "Baby, I Love Your Way."
ReplyDeleteWhen Jeff and I were in charge of the stereo for the McKenna Junior High dance, we did play chunks of the LP. This did not please the people who actually wanted to dance....
"This blows! Where's the Wild Cherry?!"
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