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

(#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

If I could include 500 tracks, none of them would stillbe frampton

Painfully purged a bunch of stuff as just "not classic rock enough." I've heard all or most of these songs - some of which are some of my favorite in the noms list - on classic rock at some point, and as some have pointed out, some of these 80s acts were welcomed into the fold early as tokens. But, without trying to draw the boundaries too tightly, I gotta limit this thing somehow and there are things that probably just cross the line too far in one direction or the other. It's arbitrary - I'm sure classic rock still plays "Satisfaction" and "Somebody To Love" (Jefferson Airplane, I mean) - but I'm not sure they ever took on the Kinks and Spencer Davis Group, somehow having decided those could be left to be the toughest things played on 'oldies.' Or am I just delusional?

purged as too 60s/mod/garage

Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin'
The Beatles - Paperback Writer
The Kinks - All Day and All Of The Night
The Troggs - Wild Thing
Them - Gloria
Tommy James - Draggin' the Line

(still waffling on "My Sharona" - I think I'll keep it)

purged as too AM gold/bubblegum/billboard rock

Gary Wright - Dream Weaver
Nick Gilder - Hot Child in the City
Orleans - Still The One

(I'm'a keepin' "What A Fool Believes")

purged as too 80s, too punk, too New Wave, etc.

Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love
The Cars - Let's Go
The Cars - Just What I Needed
The Clash - Train in Vain
The Fixx - One Thing Leads To Another
The Kings - This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide
The Police - Message in A Bottle
Toto - Rosanna
Toto - Africa

At this point, I'm in striking distance of a pretty good 150-song ballot. Might now switch to putting the bottom 75 in order and just see what falls off, rather than just trying to cut things. Shit's getting real.

Am finding Zep to be the hardest band to trim down to representative songs for some reason, maybe they exactly ride this line between shit I'm glad to hear on the radio and shit I'm glad to hear on the album. Alternately, I basically just never intend to put Zoso on ever again and have become happy to think of "When The Levee Breaks," "Rock & Roll," etc. as non-album singles or something.

Campaign mode: "Running On Empty" is such essential classic rock: a quarter-life crisis as road epic. So windswept and searching, a hollow man at a ragged moment, the clear goals of a decade earlier having faded. His friends are facing the same challenges, but is this a comfort, or can they only nod at each other sadly, across the painted lane dividers? The live recording is crucial to the effect: some tuning, some isolated shouts in the cold desert, then the band, pounding in, raising the temperature, fighting against an audibly big space. Players, Browne and backing vocalists work to fill the emptiness with warmth and heart: gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive. There's provisional hope, the journey will go on, but I don't even know what I'm hopin' to find - thank god, he hasn't found pat answers or an anthem to deliver.

I kept Spencer Davis Group, because I've heard it a ton on classic rock radio. Didn't realize it was so old.

Hard for me to not vote for every queen song.

Also key IMO, fitting with my insistence that classic rock, bikers aside, still has a lot to do with wide-eyed (but now world-wearier) visions of something bigger out there: ELO's version of "Do Ya": blowsy, sexed-up and hairy Lynne, egged on by his raging guitar hard-on - - - but the sweetness of the strings! Secret weapon: the late chorus where it skips straight from "never seen nothin' like you" to DO YA DO YA WANT MY LOVE!? WOM-AN! It's this careful little wrapped up package of the caveman beating inside the chest of this rainbow-tripping wizard who can see through unstated dreams and untold things - babies dancing in the midnight sun? Old men crying at their own gravesides?! But that's not his project right now: sure, he's seen lovers flying through the air hand in hand, but as of right now, well, I THINK YOU KNOWWHATIM TRYIN TO SAY WOMAN!! Fucking great.

totally got your back on "running on empty" and making a lot of similar cuts for similar reasons. down to about 160 now.

jackson brown can eat me

somebodys baby is the only song of his that i like

"somebody's baby" is fantastic.

Was going to write-in for Cocaine, 'til I listened to it again. Classic Rock it is not.

may or may not be classic rock but fwiw it's already on the list

I'm sure classic rock still plays "Satisfaction" and "Somebody To Love" (Jefferson Airplane, I mean) - but I'm not sure they ever took on the Kinks...?

― Doctor Casino, Friday, July 4, 2014

nah "Lola," "Destroyer" and "Come Dancing" is a totally legit rock block. sub in "all day and all of the night" or "you really got me" if feeling ROCK.

ha if "destroyer" had made the list i mighta wrote it in. that + "lola" is like the most Classic Rock Radio kinks.

lola def

xps I meant Jackson Browne's Cocaine. Clapton's might be more CR, but it is also awful.

f y'all's i ELP's "lucky man" is a jam

I would probably also vote for ''Destroyer,'' definitely would with a longer ballot. I was thinking more of the mid-sixties rockers, I love ''All Day'' etc. I guess I have to try and remember classic rock as it once was, not only in terms of songs they play now but would never have back then, but also the other way round. Not that this makes balloting any easier...

I've got my hundred, just need to order them now. Last cut: The Faces - Stay With Me. My list is now Rodless.

the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" is definitely getting a lofty position on my ballot.

also just a reminder to the thread that no song hammers as much rock 'n' roll into your ears as "Satisfaction" does

still have 40 to cut. this is horrific. the remaining survivors just had to eat quarterflash.

You'll have to harden your heart and swallow your tears.