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

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.

Why assume this?

To me, early REM pwnz all over the Feelies for scope, breadth, passion, etc.

i saw them open for lou once too, and they were better than lou! and they probably would have been better than lou even if rem were lou's backing band. no, really, they were GREAT live. and rem could be really good too. i only saw them (rem) twice a zillion years ago, but they were always entertaining.

Jim DeRogatis wrote about the Feelies in his book about psychedelic rock, and suggested that the Feelies mostly produced themselves on The Good Earth. Since DeRogatis has connections to the Feelies (he was Speed the Plough's drummer on their first album, which Bill Million produced), I'm thinking he wasn't just making this up but probably knew something. I've read similar stories about Crazy Rythyms - that the band produced themselves on thatrecord. The Trouser Press article from 1980 included on that Feelies fansite suggests as much.

Track list:
1. The High Road (Mercer/Million) 4:20
2. She Said, She Said (Lennon/McCartney) 2:49
3. Slipping (Into Something) (Mercer/Million) 5:57
4. Sedan Delivery (N. Young) 2:57

Line up:
Glenn Mercer (guitar, vocals)
Bill Million (guitar, vocals)
Dave Weckerman (percussion)
Brenda Sauter (bass)
Stan Demeski (drums)

Notes:
Produced by: Bill Million, Glenn Mercer
Engineered by: Don Sternecker
Recorded at: Mixolydian Studios, Boonton, NJ

i'm not saying that buck didn't lend an ear though. he probably did. it's only life, which million & mercer produced, doesn't sound THAT much different. they had more money to spend. that's about it. i'm sure rem helped them get on to a major. no doubt about it.

Why don't I ever know about these things?

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.