this thread is for reaffirming the classicness of the feelies' crazy rhythms (do not read if you hate the feelies' crazy rhythms)

Don't forget the other albums! I actually prefer the Good Earth...depending on my mood.

Nabisco, so NOT OTM!

(not that there is anything wrong with tom petty)

so do I. I always read raving reviews of their live shows, with all those great covers, and I just hope someone will finally release all their back catalogue. (in a rather pathetic move, I bought the "Something wild " dvd just to see them play for 30 seconds...)

I was recently wondering why someone hasn't resurrected the Feelies sound circa Crazy Rhythms. I play in a weird cover band that does "The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness", and chances are the people we play in front of have never heard it before, but they dig it. They don't really dig it when we do "Lady Godiva's Operation" though.

Time For A Witness is a truly underrated record.

i don't hear that AT ALL. their sound is so introverted and seemingly unconcerned with "reaching out" to any particular demographic.

thank fucking god, and bout fucking time.

I'd probably take Feelies most days. I love Television but am more often in the mood for Feelies.

everybody keeps telling me so and I'm fucking jealous of all of you.
also, about their later albums: they are so unpretentious, subtle, simple without being simplistic. they had this marvellous, almost ascetic understatement. and songs like "deep fascination", "invitation", "find a way" are just so good.

Age, I guess. And maybe a little bit of disappointment.

I've been dying to hear the early live "punk" Feelies stuff, and would assume that compared to that stuff, Crazy Rhythms already shows them moving in a different direction.

But I stand by the belief that, at least with the Good Earth, the structure, the energy, the sound, the aesthethic, isn't as different from Crazy Rhythms as most people assume, it's just a slight shift in the arrangement.

Let's hear it for the Trypes EP and the Yung Wu record as well. I've been looking for the Dave Weckerman solo 7" of Shore Leave for a while...I think you can still order Young Wu and maybe Good Earth as CD-rs from Coyote/TwinTone.

i like the good earth as much as it's only life. i always kinda seperate the first album from everything else. they are all great.

They're from New Jersey. They weren't chic downtown cool hipsters; they were dorks from across the river. They were a populist band, whether they were successful at it or not (see Something Wild).

wild xpost

I don't think the later stuff, or at least the Good Earth, is necessarily "safer", some of it as angstful as Crazy Rhythms, maybe it's just a bit more subtle, and a bit more acoustic. Otherwise I think the songs aren't that different. But it's also the production...Crazy Rhythms being marked by much electric guitar played direct, whereas Peter Buck's production of the Good Earth is more conventional.

Dan your comments re: the Good Earth are OTM. I thought it was just a sort of more acoustic/more straight forward Crazy Rhythms. It doesn't have the immediacy of youth, but it does have the warmth of experience.

Fantastic.

i have that Shore Leave 7" (autographed, even!) somewhere...

I'd guess that if the Feelies had remained together and recorded an album or two between CR and TGE, the difference between the two may not have seemed so glaring.

http://www.geocities.com/thefeeliesweb/images/disc/noone.gif

see: http://www.geocities.com/thefeeliesweb/disc/disc.htm

I agree - when I say "safer" I dont mean less risky, just literally retreating in their hometown (sorry if I'm not able to express myself a little bit more clearly). The difference between the two albums is all in the "perpetuous nervousness" of CR and the "slowdown" of Good Earth (with everything this title also implies).
Anyway, please reissue these albums soon!

http://www.oxfordcollapse.com/

the aforementioned oxford collapse do this. i highly suggest everyone checks out butterglory's rat-tat-tat for more.

I should throw Crazy Rhythms on again. I love it so much.

The Tom Petty thing is wrong in the sense that they didn't become Petty-esque, but I can see the later Feelies stuff as being closer to Petty than their earlier stuff. It's not OTM but its aspiring to OTMness, a state Nabisco would achieve but two years later.

i thought they were live. what do i know?

i liked the one oxford collapse album i heard okay. the one band that really reminded me of them was groovski. they are polish/polish-american. they changed their name to grovski though, cuz everyone thought they were a jam band. it was a good move. groovski is a pretty bad name even if you are polish. or at least their guitars had that satisfying jangle. they reminded me of the wedding present a little too. none of you will ever hear them though, so, um, nevermind.

Really, this would be something. I missed 'em the first time. They played Maxwells, I think, when I was in high school in NJ and I almost went but I didn't have wheels.

I've got the old CD - is there much difference between that and this reissue? Any plans to reissue the later albums? I need The Good Earth as well.

i havent listend to this awesome record for too long.
now it's time.

The Feelies are probably my all-time favorite live band, but I can definitely see them losing something in an arena setting.

i saw an rem/feelies arena show at that time in...connecticut, i think. and feelies were great. not nearly loud enough, obviously. but they were definitely into it. saw them open for lou at the tower in philly and that venue was AWESOME for them. smaller, but still really big and the sound was great.

i was really hoping they would bust out what goes on or something at that lou show, but nothing doing.

Saw them three times — all amazing shows. Last time was at the Blue Pelican in Newport (which, before it closed down, was the ONLY reason ever to venture into that lame city, besides the folk and jazz fests) with the late, great Boston band Lifeboat opening. They all jammed on "What Goes On," which was also in Lifeboat's repertoire.

Crazy Rhythms was in Montclair but closed years ago.

I was there last June. From my one visit I gathered that it's the same guy running it, same store name (he named it after the jazz standard), just moved further up Bloomfield Ave to a hole in the wall in Verona.

the old cd is incredibly quiet. anyone have the vinyl?

i have the vinyl. sounds fab.

art, is your CD on Line Records? I know a lot of people with gripes about their dB's reissues.

er, i have old vinyl. there was a vinyl reissue, wasn't there? mine's on Stiff.

all my feelies is on vinyl. i need a copy of the last album though. maybe i'll break down and buy a 20 dollar cd on amazon. i had the tape, but it got lost.

a&m i think (xpost)

and i do wanna get the new glenn mercer cd too.

i haven't heard time for a witness in so long it will be like having a new feelies album!

best thing about time for a witness is the reversed photo in the cd booklet that makes everyone in the band look like a lefty. that warms my lefthanded heart every time i see it.

second best thing is the la's-esque pop of "doin' it again."

but as feelies albums go, it's very meh.

i remember being really excited when it came out, but i didn't play the tape much.

seriously, if there are feelies fans who don't own wake ooloo's hear no evil, they should buy it. i love that album. i'm ashamed to say that i don't own the other two wake albums. i'll get around to it, i swear!

i dunno, i'll rep for Time For A Witness -- definitely the most straight-ahead of the Feelies records, but it has a great guitar sound and some nice tunes. But I love everything those guys have done. they should be headlining coachella, amirite? Anybody else pick up the Glenn Mercer solo CD last year? It might have a bit more of a "Feelies" sound than the Wake Ooloo stuff. More subdued than anything else he's done but pretty nice all the way through ... any news on them putting out the pre-Crazy Rhythms stuff mentioned upthread? PLEEEEZE.

Great band, and one of the most consistently listenable, too. There's rarely a time when they don't fit the mood or setting.

All four records are strong, I can't even pick a favorite.

hay i just ripped my cd so i can listen on the computer. it was a conicendece

and what about the Smithereens soundtrack!

I first heard about / saw part of this film last week. Here is one of many notable things about it: at the very end, the van is occupied by a bunch of hookers, among whom is a tranny hooker played by a young Chris Noth.

So if anyone ever challenges you to a degrees-of-separation thing where you have to get from Sarah Jessica Parker to Richard Hell in one move, there you go

The Glenn Mercer album is pretty good, though not on the level of The Feelies at their best or Yung Wu. I kind of like the cover of Within You Without You/Love You To. It's on emusic.

This album didn't make any sense to me until I played it EXTREMELY LOUD and fairly drunk. Then it became one of my favorite albums ever.

I always recommend this to people who like Marquee Moon, though to me Crazy Rhythms > Marquee Moon by a nose

When the hell is that deluxe vinyl reissue deal supposed to be coming out???

see here for that news plus exciting reunion news:

the feelies - classic or dud?

just posted a Crazy Rhythms-era live show over on the blog: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/ so good

playing this live in September at ATP of course :-)

GRRRRR!!!!

haha, yeah, that's how I feel. wonder how it'll sound? probably great, but it didn't seem like they played all that much off of Crazy Rhythms during the reunion shows last year -- just the title track and "Raised Eyebrows" I think ...

Tyler, you have the best blog. Thank you. More feelies!

I seriously considered making a pilgrimage to maxwell's with Mrs. Staggerlee for those shows. Alas, do not have an extra $2000 lying around.

ALAS.

awesome, tylerw, thank you

i went for a run that lasted the duration of 'crazy rhythms' not long ago. i found it exhausting

http://www.tomwarren.com/music/images/feelies_30.jpg
crazy rhythms recording sessions! more here:
http://www.tomwarren.com/music/Feelies.html

good lord, this band was/is(?) perfect.

nothing here that hasn't circulated previously, but a cool way to approach the pre-Crazy Rhythms years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HjrcAhmH_U

I was dancing round the shop when I found the Stiff "Crazy Rhythms" in our local Oxfam for £2, early last year.

those ork records version of fa ce la and forces at work are so good

I think of this record sort of like Wire's Pink Flag - an atypical debut whose style they never exactly returned to.

I saw them opening for Lou Reed in 1989, and if they were not the best band I've ever seen live, they were certainly the best whose music I didn't know before seeing them. They covered "Dancing Barefoot" as someone mentioned above, and either said nothing or no more than "thanks" to the audience.