Things we like: Savoy Brown, Peter Frampton

A few years ago, the fella who fixes my guitars asked if I thought the music I play is obsolete. I hemmed and hawed, but in my heart of hearts, I knew he was right: guitar-based rockaroll isn't the cultural force it once was. Reading the spate of bullshit internet articles on topics like "are bands dead," or even "are genres dead?" I have to say that for today's pop audience (whatever that is), whatever takes their favorite performer/producer's fancy to sample is probably fine, and it makes sense that in an economy like the one we're living in today, hip-hop and electronic music are the dominant influences. Entry costs are relatively low, and it doesn't require extensive training (lessons, practice) to get started. 

In retrospect, the '70s have proved to be the high water mark in terms of working class kids having access to the things you needed to make bands. As funk scholar Dr. Scot Brown points out, good-paying union jobs made it possible for Black working people to own homes with basements where their progeny could hold band rehearsals, and have disposable coin to buy instruments and PA systems. (I look forward to reading his book-in-progress about the Dayton funk scene.) Same thing was true in the German-Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood where I grew up. We took rockaroll as our birthright. Nowadays, even young folks who can afford band equipment are up against gentrified real estate markets when it comes to trying to find a spot to rehearse. (Rehearsing at home is either an imposition on neighbors, an invitation to thieves, or both.)

Because I am on social media, I am aware that the leader of the appropriately-named Strokes doesn't dig blues rock -- a genre that is problematic, these days, because of the right-wing politics of many of its fans, not to mention performers like the guitarist whose name I shall not speak, who created an online stir by posting Confederate flags on his website (the irony of which evidently escaped him, and his stage dad). Myself, I grew up on the stuff. Back in '73, I bought new LPs by Johnny Winter, Beck Bogert & Appice, and Iggy & the Stooges on the same day; Johnny's was the one I kept. That summer, I missed going to the Watkins Glen festival because my best buddy from 7th grade and I wound up spending the weekend at some kid's house playing endless versions of "Smoke On the Water" and "Savoy Brown Boogie," and I broke the seal on my tinnitus leaning over in front of a Vox Super Beatle. (As my wife points out, this established the precedent for me preferring playing to watching anybody else play.)

As late as last year, I was jamming "Street Corner Talking" with some guys before Covid shut everything down. For my two cents, you still can't beat the SB lineup, fronted by Chris Youlden, that cut Blue Matter, A Step Further, and Raw Sienna. (I also used to sell records to Lonesome Dave and his Foghat bandmade Rod Price when they lived on Long Island in the mid-'70s.) In a way, those records are steeped in the hipi bullshit I was so happy to see dispensed with when I moved to Texas and saw bands like the Fabulous Thunderbirds. But '60s-'70s Brit blues has its own distinctive charm -- a richness of sound to compensate for its rhythmic clunkiness -- and the more creative versions, of which SB was one, touched on both jazz and heavy rock. (The most authentically legit-as-blues was, of course, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, before poor Peter lost his mind when confronted with financial success and LSD, giving way to the eventual ascendancy of the money-making Menlo Atherton HS lineup.)

Not really a blues band, although they played some, Humble Pie was an early obsession of mine. Their double live album Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore was the next record I had to hear four times a day (well, sides one and four, anyway) after Live at Leeds, and the cover with all the live shots was one of my favorite guitar-gawking opportunities along with the first MC5 and first two Yardbirds LPs. As a terrible tyro, I particularly dug Peter Frampton's guitar for the way he drew on influences (Django Reinhardt, Kenny Burrell) besides the usual blues suspects in the same way Ritchie Blackmore played Bach progressions and Rory Gallagher at least demonstrated an awareness of Ornette Coleman. 

By the time Rockin' the Fillmore's version of "I Don't Need No Doctor" (which owed more to Frampton's driving riffage than Ray Charles' original) became a New York FM radio staple, Frampton was already out of the band and embarked on a solo career. I saw him live in '72, middle of the bill between Slade and J. Geils, supporting the Stevie Wonder-influenced Frampton's Camel LP (probably his early best, IMO, with a keyboard player who went on to play with Ian Dury and the Clash). When the electric piano broke a couple of songs into the set, instead of retreating backstage while it was repaired, Frampton said on the edge of the stage and talked to the audience, and I thought to myself, "This guy is going to be huge." Only time in my entahr life I ever called that correctly.

The mega-success of Frampton Comes Alive! made it radio-ubiquitous enough that I wouldn't have needed to own it even if I hadn't been a snob -- the kind of elitist who doesn't like anything that's too popular. In fairness (and hindsight), it was actually a pretty good synopsis of his first four solo recs, well performed, and holds up well even now. (My Ugly American moment: In Korea, playing an acoustic in a store, I encountered two Korean kids who shyly asked if I could play "Show Me the Way." I said no, sorry, I don't know it. Of course I did. Asshole.) The follow-up, I'm In You, truly was as lousy as everyone said it was, a fact that Frampton freely cops to in his memoir, Do You Feel Like I Do? (cleverly named for his most famous song, the set-closing talkbox raveup that I saw him do at the Academy of Music back in '72).

For my two cents, Frampton's book is a more engaging read than those of bigger name rockers for a couple of reasons. One, he's a likeable bloke and tale-spinner (early patronage by Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, touring with the Who, and uncredited session work on All Things Must Pass are just three highlights, for those interested in such). Two, his career trajectory has had enough ups and downs that it's far from the narrative of unremitting success and consumption that tends to make the second half of such tomes such a bore to stick with. 

Frampton's open and humble about his substance abuse history and relationship failures, and there are a couple of compelling subtexts -- his loss of, and subsequent reunion with, his famous black Les Paul, the Phenix; and his diagnosis with a degenerative muscular disorder and subsequent retirement from touring. Basically, he comes across as a nice cat who really loves to play guitar, and a perfectionist who likes working with reliable people (which could spell "asshole" to some folks). Never a cutting-edge figure, but it's enough to make me curious about his latter-day music (since his diagnosis, he's released an album of blues and one of instrumental covers). 

The music of the '60s and '70s has enjoyed unusual longevity. Whether it's due to the actual merit of the stuff or the fact that m-m-my generation's been so long-lived and affluent remains to be seen. Perhaps it will be swallowed up in the collective sample libraries of the world, or fade away the way Dixieland jazz has. Either way, I won't care when I'm with the ancestors. For now, I'm just curious to read Richard Thompson's memoir, which drops in a couple of weeks. All I ever need is something to look forward to.