the feelies - classic or dud?

Has anyone ever heard this!!!??? The demo they made for Stiff???

Does it still exist? Holy Toledo!

And does anyone know why there has never been an actual Smithereens soundtrack released??!!! Was there ever a bootleg??

Anyone with info on those early bootlegs please let me know. I've wanted to hear that stuff for years and years. I heard they were really punky originally. Slipping Into Something from 1977? Damn.

They were so good live. I saw them open for REM, Lou Reed, and 2 or 3 times in Philly by themselves and they were always wonderful.

I used to have a great bootleg video of a show in new york where either Bill or Glenn (i can't remember who) got sick and had to run off the stage to throw up and they did the rest of the show without him. Even that was great.

only life is good but i find i actually play good earth much more.

I've been doing my best to get the word out on one of the better kept secretly not out-of-print albums: The Good Earth is in print, via Twin/Tone records. It's on custom burned CD (not CDR) and sounds great. You don't get the cover art...boo hoo. Also available is the Yung Wu album (never before on CD) and that EP that came after The Good Earth. If memory serves, the website is twintone.com.

They were probably my favorite live band of all time.

Totally classic. The best New Jersey nerd rock nervous nitwit band ever.

Except for their lousy job of publicising this, it's a great way to keep a back catalog available that might not justify a new printing.

I have the potential of being a total Deadhead when it comes to Feelies live/demos. Someone really ought to initiate a Dicks Picks-esque series.

but OMG classic times a million. i like some of the good earth stuff, but anton fier makes the band for me, and so crazy rhythms is the only one thats really brilliant. nonetheless, that is more than enough to get them such highly classic status in my book.

funny that theres a dB's and feelies c/d resurrected in the same day - by the same person? i got into those two groups in the same month or so...

Both.

WTF? This cut out my entire second sentence. I said: "Weird. One of the guys from Spiral Jetty was a professor at William & Mary when I was there. They had a minireunion show on campus."

it is kind of a weird coincidence — I might be wrong, but I think the YLT "barstool" predates the Feelies doing it.

compared to the covers they’d done so far it doesn’t really seem like a song in the feelies wheelhouse. i know they did some other neil concerts later but i think the feeliesest to try would have been sedan delivery or white line.

Your hunch is right, they did “Sedan Delivery” on some ep or other, its definitely a good fit

yep the No One Knows EP, also featuring "She Said She Said", from the mid-80's Good Earth era

I think the YLT "barstool" predates the Feelies doing it.

I just heard/learned about this for the first time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFpK4AUWbG8

If someone told me it was new/fake I'd believe them.

Reminiscing about seeing Lou Reed in 1989 on the Pazz and Jop thread, I'm reminded that the best song in the Feelies' incredible opening set was "Dancing Barefoot", sung by the bassist.

Very envious. To see the Feelies open for Lou on that tour would've been all-time. As it was, we had Mo Tucker with Half-Japanese as openers. Which was merely great.

I saw that show in LA, Lou joined the Feelies for What Goes On.

You guys are killing me

Saw that show in Detroit but don’t recall “Dancing Barefoot.”

Band was a lot of fun last night. Most of the covers were pretty expected, or at least not shocks - Yardbirds, Beatles, Neil Young, Zombies, Kinks, VU - but a couple surprised me. Namely a cover of Wire's "Mannequin" and a cover of David Bowie's "Speed of Life." Of course those are in the band's wheelhouse, and maybe they've done them both before, but still were pleasant surprises to me.

yeah I saw them do Mannequin back in the 80s! it was great.

I enjoyed listening to this: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/life-of-the-record/id1487396757?i=1000710040883

I hope this podcast covers more LPs I’m interested in.

yeah "mannequin" seems practically made to order for the feelies to cover! but i think they are one of those special bands who have their own distinct powerful eternal sound that absorbs the past present future with ease.

"American Ruse"! MC5 cover — that's a new one for them, i think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkVyLZQUaWM

I guess I didn't recognize that one, but I only know the one MC5 song, to be honest, lol.

Shaking Street was great

acoustic like the Babes in Arms version

I almost went to this - IIRC they had tickets available up to show time - but I already had dinner plans beforehand, and it soon became clear that I wouldn't be able to bolt early to go to the show. I caught them at Brooklyn Made a couple of years ago, which was great, so I didn't feel too bad about missing it.

Did they open acoustically as "The Willies"? I wasn't sure if that was something they did regularly or if it was just something for the Brooklyn Made show.

Show definitely wasn't sold out. They opened as themselves, just an acoustic Feelies set.

Oh wait, they did two MC5 covers? I should listen to the MC5.

Love the MC5. Pretty compact catalog, so they're easy to explore - three studio albums and a handful of non-LP singles (not counting the usual things that attract hardcore fans like bootleg material).

Thought about going on Friday as well but it's been ages since I went to two rock shows in a row

Trying to remember last time I saw them. Was probably in Kingston a long while back.

the feelies - classic or dud?

If they open with an acoustic set, especially if they’re sitting down, especially if they play instrumental covers,and especially if any Trypes are pitching in, that’s the Willies.

They play so much around NYC that it's easy to take it for granted: White Eagle Hall in March, The Racket and the Bowery Ballroom before that...

Come to LA, we'll make it special for them!

xxpost Huh, if I knew about the Willies guide I'd forgotten, but the other night pretty much seemed like the Feelies acoustic. Not that stranger or different, just quiet, like Yo La in acoustic mode.

The Willies don’t sound that different from the Feelies. A few years ago the billed the Willie’s as the opening act for the first time since the 80s probably and that’s what it was. Obv doesn’t matter what they call it, but that’s what the Willies are. The Feelies playing acoustic instrumental music opening for the Feelies.

Do they ever play or open as the Trypes or Yung Wu? Yung Wu is where I first heard that great Eno/Manzanera cover.

Ahem, acoustic Feelies is not the Willies — the Willies are electric / instrumental. I think that show at white eagle hall in late 2022 is the only time they’ve done a full Willies set in the 21st century.

Yung Wu pops up occasionally but not often. I think the Trypes have only played a handful of times in the past two decades though (around the time Dan put out that great reissue?)

They are billed as the Willies in Something Wild, right?

Yes!

I’ll plug my epic Willies oral history, still available— https://thirdmanrecords.com/products/issue-9?srsltid=AfmBOorU1OX9PGIdun2cvSETneLp1xay_UeFUlp5P0yb9fnSRWHHAM1t

I was at that white eagle set. Assumed if they were still opening up doing instrumental it was Willies. I defer to Tyler! Around the time of our reissue, there was a Trypes/Yung Wu show at the elks lodge in South Orange. It was wonderful. I’m also the only time I’d ever met Stan who I only knew from Facebook. We made eye contact and I went to introduce myself figuring he didn’t know who I was but he must’ve because he walked up shook my hand and said “where’s my royalties mother fucker.”

Trypes also played one of the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah shows a few months before that I think. Chris Elliot was the comedic guest, he just played a cartoon he had made that was about to premiere.

I enjoyed listening to this: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/life-of-the-record/id1487396757?i=1000710040883🕸

I hope this podcast covers more LPs I’m interested in.

Writer Michael Azerrad in his Substack says the May weekend gigs the Feelies just did at the White Eagle in Jersey City may be their farewell gigs

They did say those are their only gigs this year. So I guess at least in theory, it could be the end.

oof. they sounded epic. I skipped them this time.

I did see them at Brooklyn Made a few years ago. Wish I saw them at MHOW - White Eagle is just way too far for me. Brooklyn Made closed up last year and I heard White Eagle is closing after this year (as if we needed a greater sense of finality here).

Bill Million was interviewed by Mark Caro - it sounds like it could be the last ones because of the difficulty of getting together, but only in the sense that it plays out that way, not because they want to designate this as their farewell and end the band.

https://www.caropop.com/caropopcast/episode/2b4056ce/bill-million-the-feelies

(Man, I haven't seen or thought about Mark Caro in years, had no idea he was married to Mary Dixon #insidebaseball)

His podcast has everyone on it, and I think he’s back to occasionally writing for the Trib.

Dunno — in a recent Mercer interview he suggested they were working on a new album (slowly of course). It
But who knows! They are all getting older. Clips from last weekend’s shows looked/sounded great.

tbf since they do so few shows (and of late, it's been like one or two in the NYC area every year, i.e. they aren't going anywhere else), it's good to motivate people to come to these shows if they want to see them while they're still playing and healthy, but given the way the band's set up, I don't think there's any need to officially break up or not. It's only a small part of their lives - important, but not something that dictates what they do on a day-to-day basis, so they're basically free to come together whenever they're able to.

They do occasionally play Philly/D.C./Baltimore (even Bethlehem!) as well, which is how I’ve seen them five times.

relistening to Crazy Rhythms now for the first time in ages. I admit when I first heard it I associated it with Weezer due to the cover which made me think all the weird decisions like the severe undermixing of the vocals (at least on the first track) were supposed to be ironic but listening to it now, I think they just didn't like hearing their voices on tape! such a cool album, especially knowing its such an outlier in their all-too-brief discog

actually it makes me think of an ancedote about the Barenaked Ladies, apparently they would record one song every album buck naked, so there was always one track at a sort of insane tempo compared to everything else, because everyone was trying to do their part as fast as possible, anyway every song on this album sounds like it might've been recorded that way

ew