Guitar Onslaught

I should be eating Humble Pie for thinking this show would be merely "OK". It wasn't; it was among the best I'd seen at this venue where I work a few shows a month.It was clear why Framton's career didn't bloom until he put out a live album that outsold every live album before or since. He's a performer.Don't get me wrong, I appreciate artists. But face it, an artist who is not a performer is best heard at home in comfort. Performers, entertainers are at their best before an audience. The music takes on an urgency not present in the sudio, and the performance punctuates the music. The music takes on commas, semi-colons and exclamation points. Music merely played on stage, on the other hand, is dense with small print and footnotes.Peter Frampton was all that. A guitarist who can mesmerize and make the blood pulsate, and a showman who knew how to entertain the audience.He was a grown-up who played his old hits with a self-deprecating humor, letting the audience sing the memorable parts (as if most of the people there didn't have the whole song memorized). And he immolated the stage when he played his new material.For me highlights were: Old material - "Baby, I love your way" and "I don't need No Doctor"; new material - "Float" and "Black Hole Sun".Buy the new CD!Photos courtesy of Paul Mamolou's cell phone