« Back to Top Level | Feelies, The

The Feelies - Pine Street November 4 1988 (1988)

Track listing:
  1. Egyptian Reggae 2:31
  2. On The Roof 3:08
  3. Original Love 2:23
  4. Fun To Be Happy 2:28
  5. Were Going To Have A Real Good Time 2:48
  6. She Said She Said 2:24
  7. Mannequin 2:00
  8. See No Evil 2:58
  9. Two Rooms 2:16
  10. The Last Roundup 2:46
  11. Fa Ce-la 1:35
  12. Run Run Run-european Son-what Goes On 4:43
  13. Everybodys Got Something To Hide 3:40
  14. I'm A Believer 1:21
  15. Roadrunner 2:27
  16. Powderfinger 4:08

Notes

Portland, OR

THE POP LIFE; AFTER A SIX-YEAR WAIT, A NEW FEELIES ALBUM
By ROBERT PALMER (NYT) 923 words
Published: June 4, 1986


A JAPANESE television crew set up cameras and lights in Maxwell's, the Hoboken rock club, earlier this week. They had come to capture a performance by the Feelies, the frequently elusive band from Haledon, N.J., and although it was a week night, the group also drew a large and enthusiastic audience. After spending the better part of the last decade leading a hit-and-run existence - venturing forth periodically to perform in a New York or New Jersey club, then scurrying back to Haledon for the next several months or years - the Feelies are entering a more active phase.

Back in 1980, the Feelies made a lasting reputation with their first album, ''Crazy Rhythms,'' released by England's Stiff label. But there were problems with Stiff. ''We told them from the first that we consider a whole album as a single piece of music, that we didn't intend to try for hit singles, and then they called us in and played us one of their hit singles and asked us to do something like that,'' the Feelies guitarist Bill Million recalled after the Maxwell's show, his expression still tinged with disbelief. ''We wanted to produce ourselves and they wanted to bring in an outside producer. We decided we needed to find a different kind of situation to work within, and now we think we've found it.''

The Feelies' Bill Million and Glenn Mercer, working with Peter Buck, the guitarist from the popular Georgia-based band R.E.M., as co-producer, have at last completed a second album, ''The Good Earth,'' for Hoboken's independent Coyote label. (Distribution is by Twin/Tone Records, 2541 Nicollet Avenue South, Minneapolis 55404.) The Mercer-Million partnership that is responsible for the Feelies' distinctive songs and arrangements has not been standing still during the years since ''Crazy Rhythms.'' The music on the new record has more emotional depth, and a powerful, focused intensity that cuts like a laser.

On the album, and on stage at Maxwell's, the Feelies' music achieves its effects with a rigorous economy of means. The interlocking guitar parts contributed by Mr. Mercer and Mr. Million lean heavily on the simplest chords - major triads and the like -and many songs have a one-chord drone at their root. The bass parts, played by Brenda Sauter, are solidly functional. The percussionist Dave Weckerman and the drummer Stan Demeski play the rhythmic accents prescribed by Mr. Mercer and Mr. Million with a dedicated exactitude.

''We like to keep all the parts really simple,'' Mr. Million explained. ''We've always felt anyone could play them. The percussion parts we come up with for the songs are kept simple, too; sometimes they're similar to rhythm-guitar parts. We have the most fun arranging the songs, trying to fit the parts together.''

Glenn Mercer plays melodious lead guitar, and the lyrics and vocals are his responsibility. On ''The Good Earth,'' his singing is soft, sometimes almost a whisper. One listens harder, and gets pulled into the imagery of the songs. Some of the lyrics are personal, dealing with moments of doubt and moments of decision. But one of the album's strongest songs, ''The Last Roundup,'' doesn't have any people in it at all, just disembodied voices that seem to call from abandoned automobiles and darkened cellars. The effect is spooky and surreal, like one of Giorgio De Chirico's ominously depopulated landscapes.

But like other Feelies songs, ''The Last Roundup'' draws its inspiration from closer to home. ''The lyric came from the highway we ride into New York or Hoboken,'' said Mr. Mercer. ''It goes by all this wasteland and some swampy kind of areas, and one night when we drove by real late there was this flaming car out on the highway. That stuck in my mind, and I guess it triggered the song.''

At Maxwell's, the band seemed nervous, to begin with; in the bright glare of the television crew's lighting, tempos were rushed and there was tension in the air. But by the third song of the set, the tempos settled down, and the band turned the tension to its own advantage. The music sprouted razor-sharp edges and jangly surfaces that contrasted effectively with the richness of the guitar sounds and the precise dovetailing of cross-rhythms.

The two guitarists were dancing in place, and Mr. Mercer executed some high jumps worthy of the Who's Pete Townshend. Finally, having played most of the songs from ''The Good Earth'' and several from ''Crazy Rhythms,'' the Feelies performed a typically quirky pair of cover versions - a Velvet Underground medley, followed by the Monkees' ''I'm a Believer.''

One gets the impression that Mr. Mercer and Mr. Million live largely in a world of their own; perhaps only the Feelies would explain a six-year wait between albums the way Mr. Million did, by asserting that ''a lot of bands that put out second albums shouldn't - it's too soon. We wanted to make sure the timing was right.'' ''The Good Earth'' comes none too soon, but it was worth the wait. And live performances by the revitalized Feelies are not to be missed.