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

Here's part of a thing I wrote:

Like many teenagers in the eighties, I craved a particular kind of music that I had not yet heard. Before I got to college my access to music was limited, but I'd heard the typical high school music of the Smiths, Cure, Violent Femmes, which had significant angst but was sometimes too fluffy. Anger is indeed an energy and punk fueled it. However, not all teenagers are necessarily political enough at that age to be filled with anarchic rage, or had been savagely dumped yet, let alone kissed. There's other pent up energies, of course. Like nervousness. Fear and frustration that you'll never "grow into" your awkward body, that you'll find anyone who wants to touch it, let alone slather their tongue over it. That you won't become "Somebody." Nervousness, frantic friction, fear of embarrassment, tension and release but no satisfaction. Teenagers push their bodies in various ways beyond pain thresholds and exhaustion, yet the relief from the nervous energy is always temporary. Talking Heads occastionally a touched on that on their first couple albums, as did XTC. There's a reason those bands appeared as dorks on their album art. They understood a different kind of tension, whereas perhaps the Type A beasts in school that seemed to be able to drink and screw and bash heads to oblivion enough that they really didn't suffer from that type of pent-up nervousness.

The Feelies were just the band to fill that void. Their nerdy portraits in glasses and preppy pastel outfits emblazoned on a sky blue background, they looked like their audience. They were named after the high-tech virtual reality movies (and perhaps porn) that people were addicted to in Aldous Huxley's paranoid classic, Brave New World. The first song on their 1980 album was called, appropriately, "The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness." The song started with silence, followed by faint percussion. Blocks, toms, and then bass gradually entered the picture, growing increasingly faster. Once the dry, brittle, furiously strummed dual guitars started (three times the speed as a Lou Reed), The Feelies were a rogue train veering off its wheels with no brakes. It sounded exactly how a I felt. Running with nowhere to go, crescendoes without climax, wildly repetitive action without end. Their sound distilled a perfect aesthetic sensibility, and really sounded like no one else...

Classic (It's work-related, boss!)

It's so good to hear some good recordings of their covers. I especially liked the deadpan delivery of Brenda on "Dancing Barefoot" - a great version. The version of "Sweet Jane" is a recording on which the Feelies back up Lou Reed! I've read about this happening but until now I'd never heard recorded proof.

I do hope Coyote/TT are reissueing the albums soon, an extra disc with covers and a live one would be terrific...

Tyler - I'd love to get my hands on one of those bootlegs, esp. the one with Richard Lloyd. Maybe we can arrange something?

I almost fell down from my chair!
and what about the Smithereens soundtrack!

Arden, for some info/recordings of live and/or other stuff you might check this site and contact the person who keeps it up.

Just posted some video of the Hoboken gig:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv7LM_jLUsw&search=the%20feelies

arden's activted a myspace-page last year, on which some late 70's live tracks can be heard.
www.myspace.com/crazyfeelies

just read on mercer's page(www.myspace.com/glennmercer
) that he's releasing a solo album this week. both tracks that are featured on the page have that gorgeous pastoral the good earth-feel to it. looking forward to late night summer listenings..

Wait, I never posted on this thread? What the hell is wrong with me. Then again most everything that needs to be said has been. (I think my AMG review of this is still up, I'm not sure...)

It's been, what, four years since I last heard this? Gen-you-wine classic -- "Moscow Nights," of all things, used to make a few love song comps.

Nice review of The Good Earth, Ned! It's a record that is a little easy to overrate.

HEY Y'ALL CHECK IT OUT

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Rhythms-Feelies/dp/B000Z7G7KU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200960575&sr=8-1

ABOUT FUCKING TIME

I can finally actually own this! I lost my burned copy so long ago...

so there's nothing extra on this? HMMM.

This record is greatness. The story I heard was that they'd plugged guitars directly into the mixing board, instead of recording them through miked amps, to get the crisp dry constant tone that's all over this record. Can anyone confirm?

Paint It Black on here has always bugged me. It shouldn't have been tacked on, it's from a later period, is mixed much louder than the rest and doesn't sound like it belongs, kind of sabotages the end of the CD.

agreed, I would never wanna hear that after the glorious end of this record.

i saw the feelies open for rem @ the felt forum (LOL), must've been 87 or so. they were a little dull, and rem were ok until someone got smei-crushed because people were crowding the stage and michael stipe left in a huff. that's pretty much the moment i stopped giving a shit about rem.

semi

I was at that show and in that pit! REM did a cover of Set Me Free that was pretty sweet. But confirming your take that the Feelies were dull that night I had totally forgotten that they were the openers. Weirdly I was more impressed watching Yung Wu do a few songs off Crazy Rhythms a couple years later.

wau, small world. the Felt Forum is like the greatest venue name of all time.

Yeah, dad a, I believe they did record the guitars that way.

xxxpost

One thing I love about this album is the liner notes, the way they painstakingly itemize every instrument used and who-played-what. Anal folks like myself LOVE having all that information at their fingertips.

Thanks MVB! (So gershy, I suppose you're not in love with Felt Forum's current rebranding as the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden?)

oh, i haven't lived in nyc for years, last i heard it was the paramount. aren't there plans to build another msg a few blocks over?

Listened to it today! "Raised Eyebrows" ftw!

That's news to me gershy. The Felt Forum Feelies/REM show was the only one I ever saw at MSG so I can't say I'd feel sentimental about the loss, especially since the place was so square they handed out Stagebill-type programs before the show, listing an unimaginably bad season lineup of concerts, just to make it clear that good shows were the exception and not the rule.

The cover art to Crazy Rhythms is like a perfect arty counterpoint to the Ramones NYC-brick-building four-on-a-wall debut.

I lived in Montclair for a year and got pretty excited to find that there's a record store called Crazy Rhythms in Verona. My excitement instantly evaporated when I asked the proprietor if there was any connection and he made clear that no, he didn't care for the Feelies or about them. Do not shop there.

here's an awe-inducing clip of the feelies performing crazy rhythms in 1980

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.