Luna
Live
Arena Rock Recordings
Is it possible to channel the ghost of someone who's not dead
yet? Ask Luna's Dean Wareham — he's been channeling Lou
Reed's spirit for years.
Rock 'n' roll has always been based upon theft — nicking
that brilliant Keith Richards riff and getting away with it is
something of an art form for many guitarists. Luna's particular
diamond mine happens to be owned by the Velvet Underground.
But here's the rub: Luna pulls it off, often with glorious
results. Recorded in 1999 and 2000 at the 9:30 Club in Washington,
D.C., and the Knitting Factory in New York City, the 14-track Live
captures the band's strengths — and its glaring weakness.
Wareham, the band's founder and songwriter, writes little gems
that encapsulate relationships, city life, and the world-weariness
of those who see life through a sea of vodka tonics. Having fronted
the influential and commercially ignored Galaxie 500 in the '80s,
Wareham sports impeccable indie-rock credentials. After that band
imploded, in the early '90s he formed Luna, a group with a shifting
lineup that went on to record five full-length albums.
In a time when guitars bristle with testosterone and sound akin
to sludge factories, Luna's music serves as a sharp rap on the
skulls of those stuck in tuned-down guitar land. Guitarists Wareham
and Sean Eden evoke shimmering tones that hint at psychedelia, the
hallowed Velvets, and Tom Verlaine's Marquee Moon-era Television.
The guitars arc and slide like mercury, amorphous and stunning.
It's complex music executed so masterfully that it sounds
effortless.
Intimate and warm, Live also benefits from skilled recording
engineers who lovingly document a band that is tight, focused, and
completely comfortable with texture and color. Luna's crystalline
moodiness is perhaps best captured on the coda of “23 Minutes
in Brussels,” which features some exquisite, mesmerizing
guitar work that should inspire even the most jaded six-string
junkie.
On “Chinatown,” “Pup Tent,” and
“Bewitched,” tones of tension and release intertwine
with Wareham's dreamy, languid lyrics. Direct descendants of Velvet
songs like “Sister Ray” and “Sweet Jane,”
Wareham's songs translate well to live performance, from moments of
hip cynicism to lines of crisp self-effacement.
Luna's only weakness is Wareham's nasal-sounding voice, which
sounds like a combination of Reed and Verlaine. On Live, Wareham's
mixture of speaking and singing tends to distract, which is a shame
considering his huge talent as a songwriter. Yet just when his
voice threatens to bog a song down, in come those beautiful guitars
like winged angels. Oh, those beautiful, arcing guitars. —
Mark Smith
Rating (out of 5): 4
Peter Frampton
Frampton Comes Alive! (Deluxe Edition)
A&M
As 1975 unfolded, British export Peter Frampton was a moderately
successful 24-year-old solo artist in need of a commercial
breakthrough. A skilled songwriter whose winsome good looks belied
an extraordinary lead-guitar talent, the former Humble Pie leader
arrived at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on the night of June
14, backed by a tight new band and sporting an assortment of
road-tested songs from his back catalog. At show time, engineer
Chris Kimsey snapped on a multitrack tape machine and hoped for a
few good takes.
The resulting document, issued the following January as Frampton
Comes Alive!, forever changed the way the industry viewed live
recording — and made Frampton an icon. Featuring superior
live versions of studio-recorded tunes such as “Show Me the
Way,” “Somethin's Happening,” and “Lines on
My Face,” the double disc spent ten weeks atop Billboard's
album chart, spawned three hit singles, and sold 8 million copies
in its first year alone. The record's chief weapon was — and
still is — the stadium-size “Do You Feel Like We
Do?,” a Frampton's Camel extract that blossomed into a rocker
of epic proportions.
In hindsight, it's not too difficult to understand why Frampton
Comes Alive! (reissued in deluxe form, with four bonus tracks and
an informative essay by John McDermott) became the single biggest
live album in history — or, in the estimation of Wayne
Campbell (of Wayne's World fame), an album so popular that
“it was delivered in the mail along with samples of
Tide.” To his credit, Frampton understood the impact a
well-recorded houseful of unabashed fans might have on the world at
large. Of course, you can't create pandemonium in a vacuum.
Frampton did his part by delivering some of the most melodic and
electrifying guitar accompaniments ever recorded live. Eventually,
the sound of 4,500 ecstatic Winterland concertgoers was enough to
convince 16 million record buyers that they were missing out on
something huge.
The formula was too good to ignore; in succeeding years artists
from Bob Seger to Cheap Trick followed that blueprint all the way
to the bank, even as Frampton himself unraveled from the experience
(regaining his composure in the '80s and '90s). Today it's hard to
get past his cheesecake cover photo, gimmicky talk-box work, and
bizarre lyrics (“I have itchy fingers/and butterflies are
strange”). Yet 25 years later, Frampton Comes Alive! still
sounds better than almost anything else that came out of the
schizoid summer of '75 — and reminds us of the magical
possibilities that will always exist in the world of live
performance. — David Simons
Rating (out of 5): 4
onstage•hotlinks
Luna
Live
www.arenarockrecordingco.com
Peter Frampton
Frampton Comes Alive! (Deluxe Edition)
www.umusic.com
