FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 13, 2012

Which is harder to believe, that Frampton Comes Alive! was once the best selling live album of all time or that it’s been (over) 35 years since that legendary album’s release? Those who grew up to the appealing Top 40 soft rock sounds of Frampton (yes, he rocked out a little more on his albums, but his hits tended to be more adult contemporary focused) may have some nostalgic reactions to realizing how much time has passed, but the FCA! 35 Tour proves that Frampton still can crank out decent solos and sound surprisingly spry vocally despite some interim health issues and the encroaching years that have passed that made him an “overnight sensation” after years of toil and many albums both with groups and under his own name.

The concert is a nice career spanning affair that of course includes some of Frampton’s biggest and most legendary hits (“Baby, I Love Your Way”), but also has a few surprises up its sleeve (a pretty good fuzz guitar laden version of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”, despite some instrumental backing that sounds too much like a calliope). Frampton’s fairly youthful looking band plays with a lot of vigor and energy, and Frampton fans will more than likely be very pleased with some of the extended jams that are presented on several of these tunes.

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening with Peter Frampton is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision (an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment) with an AVC encoded 1080p (yes, 1080p) transfer in 1.78:1. This is a really nice looking concert video, despite the absence of any big stagecraft (or maybe because of it). Though Frampton is clad in black and the stage is often quite dark, there's no evidence of crush and in fact shadow detail is quite admirable. Fine detail is exceptional in close-ups and colors are accurate looking throughout. Whle there is an upstage monitor that frequently has busy lighting arrays, there aren't any real compression artifacts on display, perhaps because of the progressive presentation.

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening with Peter Frampton features both a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix as well as an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Both of these mixes offer sterling fidelity, easily handling Frampton's incisive and almost sine-wave sounding guitar solos. The 5.1 mix does offer a great deal of good separation, though as tends to be the case in these surround mixes, the audience noise is also more present, which may bother some listeners. Both of the tracks are exceptionally clear and precise sounding, despite the tendency for many of these arrangements to mass instruments in the midrange.

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Phoenix (HD; 23:32) is an interesting piece about Frampton's preferred guitar.

FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It can be a little wistful seeing your childhood guitar idols starting to age, but the good news is that FCA! 35 Tour: An Evening with Peter Frampton proves that Frampton has lost little if any of his mojo with the intervening years. His voice is still surprisingly clear and full bodied, and his guitar playing is as evocative as ever. Frampton fans will surely be delighted by this excellent concert. Recommended.