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In Wayne's World 2, there is a moment when Wayne and Cassandra are discussing about Cassandra's old records:

CASSANDRE: Isn't that great? You've heard it?
WAYNE: Have I seen this one before? Frampton Comes Alive? Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive. If you lived in the suburbs you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of "Tide".

I don't know much about this artist, except his famous hit Baby, I love your way so I didn't know he was so famous that "Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive". Or is this irony and nobody cared about this album?

So what is the joke about Peter Frampton's album?

Dom
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Bebs
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1 Answers1

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This entire answer is from the perspective of someone who was 15 when this album was released - right in the target audience at the time for such an album.

The joke is actually in the exaggeration, rather than the statement itself.
That everybody in the US received a free copy in the mail along with other spam is just part of that exaggeration.

Frampton Comes Alive! was a colossal international hit, yet appeared to come from nowhere. At the time no-one [of our age group, ref above] really knew who he was or where he came from. After a while we discovered he used to be in 'Humble Pie' & 'The Herd' but we weren't quite sure who they were either.
There was no Google in 1976.

And yes, at the time, it did seem that absolutely everybody had a copy. Even your parents would like it - which would ordinarily be a bad thing.
You would hear it played wherever you went; parties, supermarkets, every radio station... it became hard to get away from after a while.

It was possibly the world's first 'coffee table album' [complete opinion on my part, no evidence.]

For me "Show Me the Way" was the big breakthrough single from it.

From the first couple of paragraphs of the Wikipedia p[age...

Frampton Comes Alive! is a double live album by English rock musician Peter Frampton released in 1976. It is one of the best-selling live albums in the United States, and considered by many to be one of the finest live rock recordings of all time. Following four solo albums with little commercial success, Frampton Comes Alive! was a breakthrough for the artist.

Released on January 6, 1976, it debuted on the charts at 191. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200 the week ending April 10, 1976, and was in the top spot for a total of 10 weeks. It was the best-selling album of 1976, selling over 8 million copies in the US and becoming one of the best-selling live albums to date, with estimated sales of 11 million worldwide.

Frampton Comes Alive! was voted "Album of the year" in the 1976 Rolling Stone readers poll. It stayed on the chart for 97 weeks and was still No. 14 on Billboard's 1977 year-end album chart.

Personal opinion as to why it never had a famous follow-up... by 1977 the UK was ruled by Punk & no-one would even admit to owning Comes Alive any more, let alone buy the next one.

Tetsujin
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  • Remember when 15 year old people was target audience for rock music? Pepperidge farm remembers. – Bebs Jan 25 '17 at 09:08
  • target audience for 'rock' was 15 - 25 iirc at the time, so yes, we were lower end of the range, but still in it. The 'Pepperidge farm' reference means nothing to me, I had to Google what it was. Never heard of it in the UK. – Tetsujin Jan 25 '17 at 09:12
  • It became a meme on remembering good old days :) – Bebs Jan 25 '17 at 09:21
  • AH, OK; I get it - though it never crossed the 'pond'. Not a known product over here. – Tetsujin Jan 25 '17 at 09:32