When you are 14 and you just smoked some pot and the record player is emitting sounds of "do you feel like we do" played through some voice synthesizer, all you think about is some Charlie Brown special where the teachers are doing that wah-wah-wah voice and you keep saying to yourself, if I had just asked for Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak instead, I'd be rocking out to The Boys Are Back In Town instead of pretending to like the music of just another pretty face.
Yet, for some reason, Frampton Comes Alive makes an appearance on every list of top albums EVER. It's not. It's two albums consisting of three overplayed songs, a bunch of crap and some pictures of a really hot guy.
And that's why FCA makes my list for most overrated albums ever Next up: Why The Wall isn't as grand as people make it out to be (and a big middle finger to those who think Dark Side of the Moon is overrated).
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Rodney Welch
Oh come on -- that's too easy. Everybody knows Frampton Comes Alive! was a masterwork of marketing hype. I don't know of anyone who reveres it. I've never heard anyone my age mention it when talking about great albums from 30 years ago. It's one of those records everyone has in their collection and never plays. If you want to talk about "overrated albums," consider focusing on Bob Dylan or the Stones or the Beatles or the Who or Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young. Find a sacred cow and draw blood.
2 - michele
I'm going to draw blood on Springsteen eventually. I have some Pink Floyd blood coming up, though. Hope that sates you.
3 - Shark
While it's fun to cook sacred cows, it might be more helpful to focus on most *UNDERrated albums.
I'll get to Shark's list soon.
4 - michele
Well that's a whole other topic, isn't it? That's like someone posting about the best rock albums of all time and you coming and asking where the best disco albums of all time are.
Regardless, I have an "underrated" list in the works.
5 - Tom Johnson
I'll agree on The Wall being overrated, but Dark Side is too. Animals, however, that is way underrated, and remains the only Pink Floyd album I consistently go back to time and time again.
Expect to see another comment just like this when you post your piece on The Wall . . . I'll probably forget I'd already stumped for Animals by that time.
6 - Rodney Welch
I like Animals, too, and it was roundly shat upon by the critics when it came out. They thought it was a long, droning bore -- which, frankly, I was more inclined to think about The Wall, which I don't think I've sat down and listened to all the way through in many years. Animals has more of a texture to it that makes it fascinating to return to, time and again.
7 - michele
I guess I should post the Pink Floyd piece now or you'll all run out of comments before I get to it.
8 - andy marsh
I've smoked entirely too much....tobacco...yeah yeah that's the ticket...to this album to EVER not like it! The funny thing is I didn't like any other Frampton album.
9 - Shark
Shark got to it.
Michelle: "Well that's a whole other topic, isn't it? That's like someone posting about the best rock albums of all time and you coming and asking where the best disco albums of all time are."
Well. Touchy, ain't we?
re: Most overrated albums - Michelle, picking Frampton Comes Alive is sorta like shooting fish in a barrel, ain't it?
Meanwhile...
Shark's most overrated:
EVERYTHING BY:
Prince
REM
Dylan after 1965
Clapton after 1969
10 - Dawn
Shark - there are people who genuinely feel that "Frampton Comes Alive" is without a doubt the best album ever. In fact to listen to our local rock station, it is the only album.
So, it was quite reasonable to set the record straight. I for one, look forward to the Pink Floyd fest to come.
I *can't wait* to see the abuse Michele gets for that one.
(can't wait meaning, watch the idiots come out of the woodwork)
11 - Rodney Welch
Dawn -- But you and I both know those are people without taste; they were the same people who referred to the Eagles as "cutting edge" and Hotel California as a "masterpiece." These are music fans with very uninteresting points of view.
12 - JR
"Hotel California", the song, is a masterpiece (with acknowledgment to Jethro Tull).
Hotel California the album is great too, as is Frampton Comes Alive. Not top ten great, and by no means cutting edge, but great nonetheless. The best thing about Frampton's live album is that you can hear genuine interaction with the audience. The problem with a lot of live albums (for instance The Eagles' live album from a few years later) is that the audience sounds like stock footage overdubbed onto the music. "Do You Feel Like We Do", on the other hand, is a great example of the audience responding to and adding to the dynamic of the performance.
13 - Lono
Shark, while you are entirely correct about your Dylan assesment... we must ackowledge the exception to that rule - 1974's Blood on the Tracks.
but yes, everything went weird for Dylan in 65. He had that very very servious motorcycle crash, found god, and went electric.
Michelle, sorry to hijack the post. oh, and here is my vote for the most overrated album to never happen
Chinese Democracy
14 - Rodney Welch
Actually, there are several major exceptions to Shark's rule, number one being that the greatest of all Dylan albums -- or at the very least one of the top three -- Blonde on Blonde, was released in 1966. The next year came the last of Dylan's great discs of the 1960s, John Wesley Harding.
After that, a bit of a downturn, comparatively. The albums became spotty. Nonetheless, Nashville Skyline, Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, and Desire all have a lot to recommend them, as does his recent work.
15 - michele
I can't join in the Dylan discussion, as I think everything he's done is overrated. Never cared for his music.
16 - Eric Berlin
I'm going to make a major admission here: the first time I ever heard of Peter Frampton was when I saw the first Wayne's World movie. When he laughed at Frampton Comes Alive at his girl's apartment, I had no idea what the joke was about.
Michele -- I love Dylan. I'm not sure that it's possible for his stuff to be overrated. At least for me. Well, this is all subjective, of course.
17 - Eric Berlin
Shark -- REM is not overrated!
But we've been through this one before...
18 - Rodney Welch
Michele -- You do realize, of course, this colors my view of you to some degree. With every opinion you put forth from now on, I will have to take into consideration that you reject Bob Dylan completely.
19 - The Proprietor
Back in '77, I remember seeing Frampton at Madison Square Garden crooning a bunch of ghastly tracks from the follow-up album "I'm In You", and bringing out R2D2 onstage for some inane reason (to thunderous cheers from the audience). The show was insipid, but his guitar playing was absolutely fierce on the few songs where he was able to tear a few riffs off (one of the more interesting bits I remember from that evening was that he played a Stratocaster far more that show than the Les Paul Custom enshrined on the cover of "Comes Alive"). I went home and listened to Humble Pie "Live At The Fillmore", and had my faith restored in Frampton. The fairly recent "Live In Detroit" set it a good document of how PF can be given a chance to stretch out and keep the teenybopper stuff in the background, and a recent local appearance showed him to be still firey.
20 - Mark Saleski
if i wasn't on vacation, sitting here in my hotel room contemplating whether i should first:
1. begin listening to The Duke's latest web album or..
2. open the new bottle of scotch
...i'd have something to say.
maybe later.
21 - Dawn
Rejecting Bob Dylan is definitely a bold move, unless it's for a blowjob or something. I would reject giving him a blowjob, he's really old and kind of grungy.
22 - Sean
Didn't Frampton play guitar on some bowie albums in the early eighties? you know, the really sucky ones.
23 - Eric Berlin
What about Dylan circa '65, Dawn?
24 - Dawn
Maybe if he did an accoustic "Lay, lay Lady lay, lay across my big brass bed."
Yeah, I might have fallen for that.
25 - Eric Berlin
Yeah, for real, me too...