Doctor Feelgood: heroes of pre-punk, or the Canvey Quo?

I find that a whole album of Feelgood - even a greatest hits - is too much. Though that may be the result of all the Feelgood I have being 80 minute comps, rather than a taut 35-minute album, with a break halfway through to change sides. A band who were made for vinyl above all formats ...

Wow, those youtube clips and the trailer for the doc have made me completely rethink a band I guess I had completely written off unfairly. Thanks!

Those youtube clips are quite cool. I checked out the clips and am giving the UA Years Singles compilation a shot.

I also went out and checked out some Eddie & The Hot Rods and ordered their first two albums.

Thanks ILM!

I can't stop listening to "she does it right" and "roxette" - but hearing the whole first record it's pretty hard to escape the bar-band/blueshammer baggage of all the blues and r&b covers and rewrites. Maybe it's unfair to them, but even a great take on Route 66 is still Route 66 is still Route 66. Nothing wrong with that really but at this point in my life anyway, pretty hard to get all that jazzed about. The doc does look great though - the tag line "the best local band in the world" seems very apt - and again, those youtube clips are mesmerizing.

Another great clip from that Kursaal show, married to a good song ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvCRKJc8xF4

very nice, indeed. the guitar play and the singing match perfectly. they are both really raw in a primitive, tribal kind of way. one of the great half forgotten english bands of the seventies. they beat about any punk band in terms of power and rawness. except early joy division maybe. the difference to punk was that punk usually was a lot faster and less rooted in african rhythm music.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/21/pub-rock-dr-feelgood

Blimey, you're quick!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLlKq8uUWM

there was a lovely interview on radio 2, sounds of the seventies yesterday with wilko.

http://thequietus.com/articles/03658-oil-city-confidential-dr-feelgood-wilko-johnson-and-a-spot-of-word-association-review-and-interview

Dr. Feelgood has become synonymous with pub-rock. The band became the movement’s most visible and successful act, and its slashing, choppy, pick-less guitarist Wilko Johnson has been cited as an inspiration by everyone from Joe Strummer to Paul Weller, whose first album with The Jam, In The City, bears a strong pub-rock influence. The only problem: Dr. Feelgood’s music is actually pretty damn bad. Bland, brittle, and mechanical, it sounds like blues-rock pumped out by technicians rather than musicians. The energy and chops are evident on hit albums like 1975’s Malpractice and 1977’s Sneakin’ Suspicion, but even the group’s live record, Stupidity—which hit No. 1 on the UK charts in 1976—lacks anything resembling wit, personality, or memorable songs. After a dose of Dr. Feelgood’s tuneless, monochrome R&B, it’s a surprise most listeners didn’t go running for the nearest Yes album. It’s a sad irony that the most prominent pub-rock band is the last one newcomers should check out—not that they really need to bother at all.

Which arsehole wrote that?

Terrible misjudgment by that writer on the AV Club. It's not that I particularly like Feelgood, but the writer is completely missing the point of what their purpose was, and why they endured. And hasn't bothered looking at the live footage they link to.

Who cares what their purpose was, they came out 35 years ago. I listen to music cuz it's good, not for its "purpose" or historical import or the context it was made in. Only one question: does it sound good to me? And I've never heard these guys, so I have no dog in the fight.

I think you would like them bill

Based on your recommendation, I will give them a shot!

start with Down By The Jetty

Well, if no one cared what Feelgood "meant" then they certainly wouldn't have endured, so in this case it is relevant - see MikeTD's posts upthread.

Really? Maybe they would have endured cuz the music sounded good. Which I dont know, because I havent taken Herm's recommendation yet.

I don't listen to anything in 2010 just because it may have meant something or had some cultural impact in '72 or '82 or whatever, when I was 2 and 12 respectively. I listen to it because it sounds good to my ears. And because I've never heard Dr. Feelgood, once I do, it's like it was just recorded yesterday to me and I'll judge it that way. Mind you, this is coming from a guy whose favorite decade in terms of what I listen to is overwhelmingly the 1970's.

Everyone says Down by the Jetty is the best Dr. Feelgood album, but I also like Malpractice and the live album, Stupidity, a lot. I think I like Malpractice better than DBTJ, in fact. The one thing I will say against them is that the songs Wilko Johnson sings are usually major momentum-sappers. He just doesn't have anywhere near the vocal aggression of Lee Brilleaux.

I can see that, Wilko is all about the guitar really. I don't think the albums really do him justice but if you squint you can hear him slashing the fuck out of that guitar

Oil City Confidential is available on iplayer and is fecking fantastic http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00s2y91/Oil_City_Confidential_Dr_Feelgood/ someone should give Wilko Johnson his own show, absolutely fascinating, funny, mesmerising individual.

Finally watched Oil City Confidential last night and am instantly in love with this lot. Temple's best film by far.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-City-With-Wilko-1974-1977/dp/B0076WFTS8/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1332076784&sr=1-1

I assume this is pretty much all the essential material by the band Dr Feelgood. With the exception of the Oil City Confidential documentary.
& whatever bootlegs from the Wilko era are around.

Think i might finally indulge in buying something by them. Not sure why i haven't already. Did enjoy the doc when I caught it on BBC4 or whatever.

300ft GOLD LEE BRILLEAUX

http://focalpoint.org.uk/e-petition/

oooh that boxset looks very tempting ..

Just been sent the boxset. Very nicely packaged. Stupidity sounds great so far, though possibly not the sort of thing I'd want to listen to again and again. It's easy to see how spare and aggressive it must have sounded at the time. Also, the DVD appears to have all the live material that was cherry picked for Oil City Confidential.

Also ... when I was 12 or 13 or something, I remember my dad asking me if I liked Dr Feelgood. This would have been 81 or 82. I think he must have heard the name because of the frequent assertion in news stories that they were Princess Diana's favourite band. But at that point, it's hard to think of a band who sounded more out of date and irrelevant than them - even allowing for guitar rock's mainstream unfashionability, they seemed this old man's abstraction of an idea about being hard and tough, compared to NWOBHM, which I was listening to at the time. A bit like a kid in 65 who liked the Stones and the Who being asked if he liked Fats Domino or something. Ageing, of course, accounts lots of my perspective change, but it does make me wonder: was the early 80s the time when blues-based rock was at its lowest ebb? Later in the decade you'd get the emergence of bands like Black Crowes, Quireboys etc whose R&B debt was explicit, but was there anyone with any cultural capital mining the blues in the early 80s?

maybe rory gallagher? or was that earlier?

Rory Gallager was out in the margins by the early 80s.

George Thorogood, certainly. Dire Straits, at a push?

The were quite a few non-mainstream bands who were fueled by the blues in the 80s, from Captain Beefheart (Doc at the Radar Station, Ice Cream For Crow) on through stuff like the Birthday Party, the Gun Club, the Scientists, the Cramps.

If you're looking at bands coming out of pub rock though, Dire Straits put out Making Movies in 1980 and then obviously went huge from there onwards like what Anagram said. Quo were still scoring plenty of hits, although their harder, blusier songs were behind them, but I sort of think ZZ Top as picking up the boogie baton in the charts from Eliminator onwards. Never exactly trendy this second bunch of bands though.

in america there were shitloads of those types of bands - mojo nixon, flat duo jets, pussy galore (if you have a wide definition of blues haha), but roots stuff really NEVER goes away in america, it's always there

los lobos....eric clapton i remember being really popular in US as a kid...john fogerty had a big album...the fabulous thunderbirds

stevie ray vaughn, robert cray

the movie Roadhouse, jeff healey band

marty mcfly and chuck berry's band

lee atwater

famous dave's BBQ restaurants

paul reed smith

Want this box really, really badly.

I remember reading in New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and Others, 1974-1981 by Gary Valentine that people from Blondie, Television and Talking Heads were spinning the first Feelgood record at parties a lot. It was one of the few things that had a pretty spare, clean sound. I wonder if they ever played any gigs with Motörhead? Lemmy may have been influenced by them some.

Motörhead's On Parole was what I was thinking of. I guess it was recorded in 1975 but not released until later.

Kinda like AC/DC's '74 Jailbreak too!

Need more Wilko in this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVAVuHLH3vg

Man that Telecaster is like a +10 to kick ass. Apparently recorded in a schoolyard somewhere in France, 1976,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Q9Zc7nZjw

Best part of this is that Feelgoods drummer Big Figure himself starts replying to the YouTube comments. (and folks call him Mr. Figure)

Me on the Feelgoods' only number one (live) album: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/dr-feelgood-stupidity.html

pushing this one back up for Sunday morning readers.

rightly.