IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 14: I’M IN YOU

I cannot believe how long it has been since I last did one of these posts.

Well, I’m back baby.

Again.

Listen, let this be a bit of information for all you scribblers of any sorts, you can always go back to it. You are the rules, so hop back in.

I got the vinyl going today, sitting at my desk with the front door open to let in the Los Angeles version of chilly weather. It’s delightful.

I rearranged my “office” a few weeks ago, and now the record player is right up against my desk. Let me get you a photo:

Oh, mama, lookie who is there, just looking at me. He’s positively smoldering at the sight of me! I honestly don’t know if I’m worthy. But he seems to think so.

I’m In You, the album you see there, is a very underrated album. First of all, 1970s albums that are less hard-rock, but still rock, have that sort of high-pitched, lightly plucked sound that I think of sort of orginating with Jefferson Airplane, like “Love, Lovely Love.” It comes across as a spring sound to my ears. So if you think of The Beach Boys and etc. as the sound of summer, Frampton could win for sound of spring, because he does that soft, twang guitar and laid back sound I just love. I grew up in Philly, where I always think the best season is spring, because it’s cool but not humid. Fall can be too hot and humid even as the leaves change, or freezing cold, but spring is delightful, and, I think, from the 70s to now, has probably shortened by a month or so as summer heats up sooner each year, in my anecdotal experience. If you’re lucky enough to live in Los Angeles you are luck to have that humidty-free, winter-is-not-here-to-stay feeling from, typically, November through July. July, August, and September, unless you’re on the Westside, you’re going to want to be indoors and as naked as possible, but the rest of the year you can float along on this light jacket daytime weather that turns to sweater weather at night, and it’s fantastic. IT makes me get a feeling in my skin that I’m young, that life is full of possibility, that the air smells of flowers. It makes me come alive. Like Frampton.

For this post I want to highlight not a single song per se, but the whole of I’m In You. The album has the gentle vibe of spring weather, full of possibility, but also chill. I want to highlight a song that really hasn’t ever gotten the attention it deserves: “St. Thomas (Don’t You Know How I Feel).”

I could argue that Frampton, who wrote “Do You Feel Like I Feel,” was a bit obsessed with the word feel, because he uses it at least 14 times in this song, but that just makes this song easier to sing along to. The point is not the lyrics. The point is the vibe. This song is a feeling more than a message. There’s a fantastic solo in the middle. And Frampton is a great guitar player. It’s a gentle rocking of a song. Take a listen and see if it doesn’t make you think of spring.

Did your blood pressure just drop five points? You know it did.

Of course, we cannot go forward without mentioning the title track. “I’m In You.”

“I don’t care where I go when I’m with you
When I cry you don’t laugh cause you know me

I’m in you 
You’re in me
You gave me the love, the love that I never had

You and I don’t pretend; we make love
I can’t feel anymore than I’m singing”

And what I always just loved about this song, aside from the idea of me and Frampton being in each other, was the opening line, “I don’t care where I go when I’m with you,” that also ends the song, but I’m gonna make the guess that the final word of the song is “with” and the “you” is not sung, but played by the guitar, which is super cool, and makes it more emotional. It ends on that high note. Frampton seems to be merging the physical with the sound. It’s working for me:

Those 70s guys, damn:

How great was that? So chill.

I have to point out one more song on the album that I have never been able to get enough of, “Signed Sealed and Delivered.”

It’s a Stevie Wodner song, in case you didn’t know, and I am a huge Stevie fan from his 60s and 70s catalogue, and I love this song by Stevie, but I also loved the cover by Frampton. (By the way, my last “it should be half an hour” post was on the Red Hot Chili Peppers who also covered Steve beautifully: “Higher Ground.”)

But, back to Frampton:

I saw this comment on YouTube:

Peter Frampton’s 1977 – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered … I’m Yours” – on his album I’m in You. His version also contains instrumental elements from Wonder’s hit “For Once in My Life” Mick Jagger is featured on backing vocals. Frampton’s version was released as a single. Motown Soul delivered from England’s Peter Frampton. With this re-make of the Classic Stevie Wonder Hit, Frampton topped The Billboard “Hot 100” at #18, and #13 on the Cashbox Top 100, also #13 in Canada.

So, today, as I enjoy the “Punxsutawney Phil Was Wrong” feel of the great Los Angeles weather, I want to offer you the thought to give Frampton a listen. You think The Beach Boys own that nice-weather vibe, but spring is better than summer any day, and Frampton is a great ride you may have missed.

Check out his Tiny Desk concert too:

I don’t know Frampton, but his whole vibe is “gentle soul,” and I love that about him.

Enjoy….