CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS POLL voting thread -- deadline July 15 -- VOTING CLOSED

I browsed around the rest of the Spotify list while I ate breakfast and found a few more rerecordings.

Dobie Gray - "Drift Away" -- looks like the original isn't available on Spotify, but it's on youtube --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIuyDWzctgY

The John Lennon and Ringo Starr tracks, but the originals aren't available. Ditto "Games Without Frontiers"

Kiss -- "Beth" -- I've never been a Kiss fan so I don't know for sure, but this one sounds a little off somehow.

Orleans - "Still the One" -- scroll down to the one that says "45 Version," track time is 3:55

Ozark Mountain Daredevils -- "Jackie Blue" -- the original is on 20th Century Masters: The Millenium Collection, track time 4:12

Pilot -- "Magic" -- get the version on Anthology, track time 3:07

Stealers Wheel -- "Stuck in the Middle With You" -- the original is on the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack

Basically I looked for all the 70s one-hit wonders fucked by the music industry. I was surprised that Blondie did a bunch of rerecordings.

listening to Jailbreak for the first time rn

growing up i always loved "The Boys Are Back In Town," but i couldn't place Phil's accent, and ended up picturing Arnold Schwarzenegger delivering the verses, which still entertains me to this day.

Just noticed a nom that was disallowed -- I'm going to make room on my ballot for the write-in, hope y'all will too.

*Amie - Pure Prairie League*

Aw, nuts. I would have totally voted for this but I already submitted my ballot. I LOVE this song.

Amie write-in campaign? Count me in.

WC's suggested playlist changes implemented, cheers!

I'd heard "Amie" certainly, but I never knew who'd done it (to be fair, I haven't looked very hard). This is a great song, though!

oh man, didn't notice that wasn't on the list - that's a crucial omission

"Jailbreak" shld have gotten nominated too

It did...I remember ctrl+f'ing the nominations thread for it...but it didn't make it to some dude's final list.

::puts feet up, takes nap::

For a while, maybe longer if i ---LONGER IF I DOOO A HOOOOOO

thanks to this poll i had "green eyed lady" stuck in my head last night & this morning woke up with "caught up in you"

If anyone mod-edits "Amie" into the noms list above, it wasn't me! I only thought about it...

see this is why i'm not making the Spotify playlist collaborative

lol, wise move

Do you want the ballots numbered, un-numbered, or it doesn't matter?

each vote submitted on individual rolling papers

lol

I've already smoked my ballot. Fuck.

Kickin' Sugarloaf bonus track that never made it over to CR radio: their followup hit, five years and three albums later, the kinda sorta funky music industry kissoff "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You," with very Derringer-esque vocals and a sheepishly acknowledged lift from "I Feel Fine."

(#9 hit on Billboard, but apparently not beloved enough to rate inclusion on any oldies format, or Sounds of the Seventies commercials - never heard it til I was specifically trawling Billboard countdown-type CDs.)

numbered ballots would be helpful but not necessary

My ballot will be on a spread sheet, using decimals, so I can actually vote for 1000 songs.

A key question: what's the bona fide, signature Frampton hit? Always thought "Baby I Love Your Way" was a slow-dance snooze in search of an ounce of energy; the other two, in equally shambling fashion, hold up key parts of the classic rock belief system. "Do You Feel Like We Do?" wins for me despite the sheer pointlessness of much of the 'jam' (read: the band gets drunk and almost falls asleep); the use of the talkbox is at its most epic, the "BWEEWEEEEEEEEEAAAAEEEEUUUUUHHHH!" coming back in from the wind-down is awesome, and while "Show Me The Way" hits that key vibe of searching that's key to classic rock, "Do You Feel Like We Do?" portrays the equally important epic bender and besides has a really perfect, stupid "are you hip/high" kinda title. REAL GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT. I HOPE YOU HAAAVE A GOOD NIGHT.

Show Me the Way is the biggest of the three imo. It's the only one I ever hear on the radio, anyway.

Oh man, really? I definitely hear that one most, but back when DJs DJed things, "Do You Feel Like We Do?" was in that Stairway joke-category "DJ wants to go to the bathroom" etc.

I heard all three to death when they were new, but when they passed into CR status, "Do You Feel Like We Do?" seemed to drop out of favor.

It's pretty terrible imo. Show Me The Way is great though. But tbh I've never understood how he got to be a huge star, with Simpsons appearances and all.

"show me the way" has the perfect combination of being lost and lonely and different ("no one to relate to except the sea"), searching and dreaming ("show me the way"), and still maintaining a hgh degree of swagger ('i want YOU").

"do you feel like we do" should have been on the who's tommy, side four.

*high* degree of swagger

Best part of "Show Me The Way," besides the talkbox hook, is the way he sings the last lines of the verse, e.g. "I watch you when you're sleeping... and then I WANNA TAKE YOUR LOVE!" although now that I now that's what he's saying, it's a lot less appealing.

I sort of figured that part of the shambling, basically sloppy quality of all three Frampton hits was just down to them being live and everybody being wasted and sunburned or something, but I just checked out the studio version of "Show Me The Way" and it's awful - slower, sluggish, kinda empty. "Do You Feel Like We Do" also lacking tons of energy - I'd forgotten in my post above how 'Alive' the band does sound during the breakdown as it picks up steam, banging away at the drums and the keys. No talkbox, either! Weird.

"Do You Feel Like We Do" is the one i'm voting for. the way everything hushes for that little improv section, and then the talkbox goes OUUUUEWWWWWWWWWWW into the final chorus, so awesome.

haha oh yeah Doc already said that

I'm going to Paypal one American dollar to the voter whose top-10 tracks looks most like my Worst Songs ballot.

IDG frampton, never have.

I don't either, but I'm giving the albums that aren't Frampton Comes Alive a spin on Spotify right now just to see if I can figure it out.

no way i am trying to figure out peter frampton now or ever
he has always seemed like a drip

Not much to figure out really

Frampton falls in the Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton category for me, in that they garner praise to the heavens for some guitar playing that sounds incredibly anonymous and dull to my ears.

Oh really? I never knew anyone classed him with those guys. More like Ricky Nelson.

Frampton just seems lucky as fuck to me - his songwriting's generic and his band isn't stellar, but for whatever reason that live album caught the Zeitgeist or something. I mean clearly the novel sound of the talkbox against the usual beige mid-70s festival rock did something. But since they did become canonical, I heard the songs a lot, and there's a fondness that comes with that to the point where I do totally enjoy them for all their ordinariness. Have never been even slightly interested in the rest of his career; I owned "Frampton Comes Alive" for ages and I'm sure I put it on a few times but again, can't recall a thing about the rest.

Frampton is best heard on the early Humble Pie records, particularly Town and Country (one of the most intriguing/effective UK responses to Music From Big Pink).

As a soloist, he gets into modal areas that few (if any) of his contemporaries explored. But there isn't much of that on Comes Alive!

Beck is one of the odder CR dudes in that almost none of his songs ("For Your Love" maybe?) gets any radio play, but everyone who listens to CR probably knows who he is. Plus he put out some Electronica albums I listened to a bunch.

I love Show Me The Way, could give a shit about Frampton otherwise though

There's a pretty interesting chapter in the otherwise uneven-as-fuck The Mansion on the Hill about Frampton's manager Dee Anthony. The strategy was to keep Frampton on the road constantly, for years on end, and then cash in with a live album. Dee had had success with this approach with Joe Cocker and Humble Pie, but it obviously paid off beyond anyone's expectations with Frampton.

Is Beck even on For Your Love? I always thought that was where Clapton got pushed one step too far. Not that the guitaring on it is at all of note.

For me Jeff Beck basically existed as this name that would constantly get in the way when browsing for Beck.

That's interesting, Tarfumes - so the idea was basically to sell to people who had actually seen the guy in concert? This was the golden age for huge double live albums, I feel like (At Budokan, Over America, etc. etc.) - dunno if that has to do with recording equipment, or actually just the size and scale of the concerts, with better speakers and shit, to where you would really believe you'd missed something by not hearing the live versions. I mean they existed before, but I don't feel like they were as much of a "thing" before the mid-70s, though I'm probably missing some huge obvious examples.

That's interesting, Tarfumes - so the idea was basically to sell to people who had actually seen the guy in concert?

I think it was partly that, and partly to capitalize on whatever word-of-mouth was generated by those who'd seen him. He kept putting out studio records while he toured, and each charted higher than the last, but nothing sold anywhere near what Comes Alive! did -- his previous record topped out at #32.

(Also, At Budokan was a single LP, and originally intended for release only in Japan; when CBS saw how well import copies were selling, they released it in the US.)

I love Show Me The Way, could give a shit about Frampton otherwise though

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, July 4, 2014 4:02 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ this