Shit That’s Good! Crap Albums I Love # 55 – Peter Frampton, Startrax

From time to time I like to share some stories about albums I love that are duds – either I’ve found a way in to appreciate it through sheer stubbornness – or I just loved it on first listen.

Peter Frampton, Startrax, 1990

I normally focus on albums for this series, rather than compilations. But this one gets a special nod — it was actually the very first Peter Frampton album I owned. And the first time I ventured out to hear anything by him, beyond of course Frampton Comes Alive!

Frampton Comes Alive! is such a big album in my life — it was the record my parents played to help put me to sleep (explains a lot, you say, fair…) It was mind-blowing to me — hearing the man make his guitar ‘talk’ — when I was a toddler and all through primary school. I’d drop the needle on it myself after school, often introducing friends to it — they possibly weren’t interested, but like that mattered.

I listened to Frampton — the whole family listened to Frampton. I still have the original double-LP my dad went out and bought in 1976. The album is as old as I am, and alongside my Muppet Movie Soundtrack, it’s one of my most cherished vinyl artefacts. Just such a touchstone in my life.

So, all that said, when I I joined the World Record Club in 1989/1990, and swiftly started ordering cassette tapes to the house with my pocket money, I couldn’t believe my luck to see in the printed catalogue that there was something else by Peter Frampton. There was no internet. And my folks only cared about Comes Alive! They were no help when I asked them if he was a big deal or had done other things. I just guessed he was a big deal because the crowd was cheering.

So I was invested instantly — Startrax was on the way, and I could not wait.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t really up to much. I knew 70% of it from the live album, but in many cases it had the inferior studio versions. Still, it was a good education. The songs ‘new’ to me were easily the worst. Which was a total bummer, and started to make Comes Alive really feel like a fluke. But when you had a month (or more) with the album and nothing else to replace it you did the work, you kept listening. You made yourself ‘like’ it. Suddenly I’m mowing the lawns with this tape (to earn money to buy more tapes!) And I’m kinda singing along to I’m In You, which is as ghastly as its title sounds.

made me hunt out more Frampton on vinyl, so that I could see where songs like Breaking All The Rules came from (turns out, on an album called Breaking All The Rules).

Sure, I loved the riff of Breaking All The Rules, and I loved the ‘idea’ of hearing the studio versions of all the songs I knew and loved from Comes Alive, but I couldn’t really get on board with any of it — beyond the fact I felt I had to.

And this carried on. I bought most of the albums from the 70s and 80s on vinyl (they were second hand store staples, possibly still are, I know my copies all ended up back there). I even bought Startrax again on CD. I kept listening to it. Looking for the secret.

There is no secret. And Frampton seems like a great guy. And I love that he had enough of a (delayed) second act to release Frampton Comes Alive II - which, seriously, features a 20 minute version of Do You Feel (with even more guitar ‘talk’). And that he got to go on the road with Bowie for the Glass Spider tour. He wrote a pretty fun memoir, and gives good chat in the interview, earnest, and calm and kind. And I just kinda love all of that about him.

And it makes me still want to like this album more than I actually do…