The Electra Forums

Hi, here is an add from a magazine I bought. I have scanned it for all the Electra Fans here. Electraman, if you don't have this pic and would like to use it for the Electra page go ahead and use it.

Ronnie

Man! That hair! Those bellbottoms! Who would look like that??? Oh wait, I did back then...

Nice guitar though... I wonder what they meant by "there's a little bit of MPC in all the Electra guitars..." Marketingspeak, I guess.

Well, have you seen him recently? Saw him live a couple of years ago. A lot has changed. Straight leg jeans, button up shirt, slumped over from all those years with an LP hanging on his shoulder, glasses, and maybe a total of 20 hairs left on his head. He still had his MOJO though. Good concert and I was darn happy to hear all those old classics of his once again.

Your welcome. I'm going to frame this one. I still miss my bell bottoms. They have made a small comeback around here though.

I have a similar Jeff Lynne Electra ad at home. I'm a big ELO fan. I'll try to get that scanned in for you guys sometime soon.

Matthew

Rock and Roll is a rough profession I guess, but ya gotta give the guys credit for sticking with it. So many go "poof" after a short run. Peter can still "git it" and I imagine that's what counts for old fogeys like me that remember when he hit the scene.

...and that live album was my first LP. It got played to shreads but I still have it.

I never seen him live but I recently saw him on the Simpsons

Hey guys,

I bought that same ad on ebay last year because I have a 340 and was a Frampton fan back then.

First heard him in the winter 1972 or spring of '73 when the "Winds of Change" album came out. A couple of the guys in my college dorm were really into acoustic guitar and they turned a lot of us onto this first solo album after his Humble Pie days. The music on that record was a lot mellower and "woodier" sounding than what it evolved into in the next couple of years. Anyway, Frampton toured the States in the summer of '73 with a small band and he was hitting small venues because he hadn't made it big yet. I told my brother about him and we went to see him at the Hammond, Indiana Civic Center--a shoddy barn of a building that held about 5,000 max. Frampton was actually the lead act for Foghat! Most of the people came to see Foghat and had no idea who Peter Frampton was. The P.A. was shoddy, Frampton's band was rough (maybe they were just getting to know each other, but they certainly weren't the caliber of musicians he later played and toured with,) and the audience got pretty rude shouting for Foghat to come on. My brother thought I was nuts for talking this guy up so much, and I had to do a lot of talking to get him to listen to "Winds of Change." In the next couple of years, Frampton brought out three more albums, toured and tuned his stage act, and brought out the live album and the rest is history. Incidentially, Frampton has said that the first time they were headliners was when the live album was recorded.

Funny thing is, I never liked anything most of the stuff he brought out after "Winds of Change" and a few of the songs on the next three albums nearly as much as that material, and while I enjoyed the live album, never went to see him again.

Fast forward to the new milennium. I've seen Frampton perform on TV and my impression was the same as some of the other replies here: he's male pattern bald with a ring of hair, wire rim glasses and jeans. He's playing by himself and while he still sounds good, he's a mild-mannered a shadow of himself from 1976.

BUT, Frampton came to Summerfest (one of the great original multi-act music festivals in America, that lasts 12 days) in Milwaukee this past July and I just had to go see him. Man, he has turned back the clock! He completely shaved his head for this tour and with that big electric smile of his he had the old charisma and more. Kind of weird to see him without all the hair in the ad that started this post, but it worked--kind of like a Bruce Williard off steriods, cause Frampton is still skinny as hell. He had a killer band behind him (two other guitarists besides the bass, keyboard, drummer, etc.) and they put out high energy rock for over 90 minutes. No it wasn't the multi-media extravaganza of the 70's, but it was well-staged, well-played with just great music and the crowd went wild. I'm 53 and it was amazing to me to see kids from their teens to early 20's know the words and sing right along with the rest of us old fogey's. Cool thing was, he took a kind of Rick Nelson "Garden Party" type of approach and played a lot of new stuff right along with the oldies. It worked and the crowd loved the new songs nearly as much as the ones from the past. For that night at least, Frampton was back.

3 weeks ago I wrote that I'd never seen Frampton live. Well, scratch that remark cause I saw him live yesterday.

Peter Frampton played warm-up for Deep Purple and was on stage for just over an hour. None in the audience appeared to recognize any of his newer songs while the old stuff got big cheers. He's got loads of charisma and made lots of jokes about himself not having much hair etc.

To me Frampton stole the show but people I spoke to after the show didn't agree.

Whatdya mean? Humble Pie live at the Fillmore was THE best live album then Allman Bros FIllmore, WHo Leeds, and then Frampton. J Giels Full House gets honorable mention but there are no listenable copies of that left on earth since they were all destroyed at College dorm parties