Frampton@50: In the Studio 1972-1975 Limited Edition Vinyl Box Set: https://shorturl.at/wzJSZ
1
I bought my records on Friday.
Friday is a school holiday, after classes end. Sunday is a work day, studying, at least when I was in college and law school. But by Friday at noon I was free. Free to do what I really wanted to do, to follow my interests, which was not the paradigm when I was growing up. There were not courses in popular culture, you studied the classics, or classically, and delayed fulfillment to time in some distant future, certainly after college. We were working in a coal mine and we didn’t think we had an option.
But we had interests we squeezed in.
Now the sixties were all about Beatlemania and the following British invasion and then the San Francisco scene and then Hendrix and Cream and the heyday of album rock. By the seventies the business was mature and respected. Newspapers reviewed and respected rock music. The financial world recognized the record world, because of the immense profits being thrown off, in excess of those of the movie studios, and in the parlance of the techies, music scaled. The cost to produce the millionth album was de minimis compared to the first. In other words, once recording costs were recouped nearly every dollar was profit.
Now of course, the heyday was the eighties, when not only did MTV blast acts to the moon, but CDs were sold at double the price at the old vinyl/tape royalty rate to the musicians. Those at the labels thought it would go on forever, they didn’t foresee the internet coming along and blowing their model to hell.
Now people still buy vinyl records today, you can’t help but reading about the resurgence. However, in truth it’s a tiny sliver of overall consumption. And most people don’t have the equipment to truly extract the sound from these discs, assuming they play them at all. Oftentimes vinyl is seen as a souvenir, a collectible, but back in the day it was all about what was in the grooves. After all, one of the most famous Beatle albums had nothing on the cover at all.
Now there were records I had to buy, always albums, I gave up singles back in the mid-sixties, all serious collectors, all serious devotees did. Albums were the essence, statements, platters from gods, and we devoured them.
After we paid for them.
So the new superstar release, you purchased. But more interesting were the records you’d heard about but had never heard. That was part of the process, taking a risk.
And one album was not enough. You’d walk through the store with a pile under your arm. And you’d extract and replace and ultimately bring the final count to the cash register.
And then you’d go home and break the shrink-wrap, which was an indelible part of the process. From the store to you. After you’d slice the shrink-wrap you owned the LP, you were involved.
And then you put it on the turntable and dropped the needle.
Which you had purchased from the standalone stereo shop with all your money.
Hard to believe stereo shops were plentiful. They were meccas. You’d walk the aisles and contemplate what you wanted and what you could afford. And some purchased their system all at once. Others built their system component by component, after reading “Stereo Review,” “High Fidelity” and even “Audio.” This was when information was scarce and we wanted all we could get.
And the goal was to get as close to the sound as possible. To eliminate all the static, all the possible distortion between the act and you. One of the relevant statistics was Total Harmonic Distortion. The key was a clean, rich sound. That you could play at top volume without distortion.
And on Friday afternoons, after breaking the shrink-wrap, deciding what album to play first, I’d drop the needle, turn up the volume so it filled the entire room and stood back and listened. There was no multitasking, not at first. This was a message from God, this was a religion, listening to these albums was the most important part of your life, at least mine. You were waiting for the surprise, ready to go on the adventure, because usually most of what you heard you’d never heard before. I can still remember hearing “Gimmie Shelter” for the first time. And “Hotel California.” Totally cold. No context. It was personal, and astounding.
2
Now I don’t understand vinyl versions of digital recordings. Technically that makes no sense. What you end up with is a distorted version of the original, it’s a fetish, because vinyl is inherently compromised. It does have a warm sound, but if you want to hear the record exactly the way the act recorded it…
And digital recording can be very cheap.
But not analog. Most acts never made it to the recording studio. What you needed was a deep pocket to fund recording. Which is what the label provided. And at first you got a limited budget and a limited amount of time. But if you proved your mettle, which meant selling a lot of records, you got more money, which yielded more time. And more experimentation. More risk. A greater desire to capture lightning in a bottle. As years went by and time went on you could punch in and fix mistakes, which many saw as the beginning of the end, eliminating humanity from the discs, but that was late in the game. Going to the studio was like going to the lab. The engineer was a mad scientist, the producer akin to an orchestra conductor, about creativity and feel more than tech, and the goal was to lay down something that had an indescribable element that would make people want to buy and listen.
And most times the creators failed. Most records did not succeed. But some did. Some were instant hits and were instantly forgotten, seen as disposable. And then there were those that had a limited audience, which grew. The act toured after every LP, and if you wanted to hear the songs from the latest album, you had to go, because some of them might never be played again. And you didn’t connect with your compatriots on social media, you just sat in the hall knowing you were on the same page, and that was enough. And concerts were not casual, and not parties. The venues had seats and when done right you had a direct connection to the performer, and it was just about the two of you, no one else mattered, the music set your mind free.
3
Most people sold their vinyl not long after the CD was introduced. Back when CDs sounded poor. A ton of improvement was done over the years, ergo the remastering, before it became a gimmick, a dash for cash.
And, in truth, vinyl is a pain in the ass. We know all the album tracks because we didn’t want to get up off the couch to return the needle to the hit, we let the side play out. And back then the arm returned all by itself, you didn’t have to worry about that endless click of the needle in the runout groove. And if you had a Technics direct drive turntable you could dial up the number of times you wanted to hear the album repeated. But we never stacked our records, we respected our records, they were our most important possession. We might not even have a car. And an auto was mute in a way records were not, we loved our records.
But I’ve still got all my vinyl, I’ve still got my big stereo, and I enjoy cranking it up, but honestly I rarely do, because it’s too much of a pain, hi-res digital through the Genelecs is not only convenient, it sounds incredible.
But those early Frampton records were cut analog. One can argue quite strongly that the proper way to listen to them is on vinyl, and that’s what I’m doing right now with Intervention Records’ remasters.
4
Now the first time I listened to “Wind of Change,” I’d never heard it before. No one else I knew owned it, I don’t think anybody else in the dorm knew who Frampton was. He was part of Humble Pie who were suddenly successful with a hard-rocking, party-oriented double live album. But Peter was gone by then. And “Wind of Change” wasn’t a completely different direction, “Shine On” was a harbinger of what was to come, but when I dropped the needle on “Fig Tree Bay”… I realized I was on an adventure, a journey to somewhere I’d never been before. That’s what a great album provided. And, once again, it was completely personal. Unless you were right there in the room with me, there was no communication other than with the performer, and that was enough.
So I broke the shrink-wrap on this triple album vinyl set, and of course the first cut I wanted to hear was “Fig Tree Bay.”
But my fully manual turntable was set to 45 RPM, and unlike in the old days I just couldn’t flip a switch, I had to turn off the motor, lift off the entire platter, move the belt to a different part of the flywheel and then Peter sounded like who he was, and not a chipmunk.
Now after listening to these vinyl records you get used to the sound, but at first it’s a shock, because the records don’t resemble today’s digital productions. They breathe, they were cut before the loudness wars and they sound exactly like what they are…recordings of people playing in a recording studio, a room. The guitar is full-bodied. It’s not straight from the axe to your ear, rather the sound is captured in a space that makes the end result three-dimensional, once again it’s hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it. Let me analogize… You can look at people in photos all day long, but when they’re right in front of you, it’s completely different. They exist in space, they have shape, they evidence personality, you’re suddenly involved instead of removed. That’s what it was like listening to “Fig Tree Bay.”
I flipped the vinyl over to my favorite Frampton cut, “All I Want to Be (is by your side),” and it was the same effect, the same feeling. There was a human being inside the system, coming out of the speakers, it was not 2-D, and the sound was human in a way that digital can never be. Sure, it’s a sound, but even more it’s a feeling, on this early Friday evening in April. My work is done. Now my time is mine. And suddenly I’m in the space I’ve been in so many times before in my life, but a long time ago. I don’t need to tell you how great the record is, I don’t really have to tell you anything other than the feeling I’m having. One of completeness, of the music being enough, not feeling bored, but my mind floating in and over the music on a trip no other medium can take me, that has me relaxing and cogitating at the same time.
“Can’t you see what it’s doing to me”
Maybe you can’t. But it doesn’t matter.
Because Frampton just came alive, as a matter of fact he’s always alive, whenever I want to drop the needle on this vinyl. And he’s only alive in my house, on my stereo. Vinyl is not a portable medium, nor the stereos of yore, upon which I’m listening. I’m parked, having an experience, maybe you understand what I’m talking about.
