When The Feelies started nearly half a century ago in New Jersey, nobody expected they’d be playing well into the second decade of the 21st century at full strength.
Looking like twitchy, shy, bespectacled kids on their influential 1980 debut—best described by the title of the frantic track that kicked it off, “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness”—they nowadays more resemble professors emeriti. But at a big sold out show at the Black Cat in DC, they seem even more shy than ever—or at least start their shows that way.
Over the din of the crowd Saturday, they quietly took seats for an opening acoustic set some may not had realized had begun. The frantic strumming and entwining rhythms were there, if one listened, but the vocals were so low in the mix, one could stand right next to the club’s biggest PA and still strain to hear Glenn Mercer’s baritone.
By their second number, a cover of “Sunday Morning,” the crowed quieted enough to pay attention. After all, the track kicks off the band’s release last fall, Some Kinda Love: Performing the Music of the Velvet Underground, chronicling a 2018 show.
It was just one of three songs performed from that salute, however. It was as if a song that had so internalized that band’s tone, intensity and simple, poetic lyrics (not to mention Mercer’s Lou Reed-like deadpan) there was no need to further reference their biggest influence.
Even with sound lapses that began with Mercer singing six inches away from the microphone, their other well-chosen covers amid the 14-song sit-down acoustic set made the case for their kind of driving chords shooting through rock and roll history, from Buddy Holly’s “Everyday,” to MC5’s “Shakin’ Street.”
The set also included the Modern Lovers’ enduring instrumental “Egyptian Reggae” and a Beatles song that is almost never covered, “The Inner Light,” George Harrison’s B-side to “Lady Madonna.” It was a Feelies side-project, the Trypes, that covered it a 1984 album.
It was the Feelies reinvention of The Beatles’ “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide But Me and My Monkey” that helped make their debut album so lively. They closed the acoustic set with that feat, paired with The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.” “After the break the Feelies will be out here,” bassist Brenda Sauter joked, as if the opening act was some other band altogether (a Trypes reunion?).
The dozen songs in the electric set—with the frontline of guitarists now all standing—were all Feelies tunes from their six albums—and more from The Good Earth and Only Life than from the debut Crazy Rhythms, though its songs got the greatest initial responses. All their songs, though, showed a power, a point of view, and a harmonic singularity that placed their canon as the essence of the downtown rock scene since the Velvets.
Still, there’s something about their stage presentation that could be streamlined. Only a couple times toward the end of the electric set were they confident enough to go from one song to another without taking the wind out of their sails so Bill Million could tune for a minute or so—even after a patient roadie had already tuned a guitar for him. The songs were sonically seated on his rhythms Million played. When Mercer wasn’t joining in on them, he’d stomp on a pedal to provide the electric leads.
Behind them, Stan Demeski would pound out the beat on drums (though for the opening acoustic segment he bongos atop a teeny bass drum from a hilarious kids’ size set) while ever-focused percussionist Dave Wackerman made the best use of an array of woodblocks, pulling out maracas, a recorder, tambourine, or rainstick as the song required.
It was already a long and rewarding show even before they came back to perform five (!) encores. The Feelies might be the toast of Hoboken, but they seem to be taking cues from Asbury Park in presenting a remarkable three hour, 36-song show with one intermission.
Of the five encores, with two songs a piece, they paired their “Slipping (Into Something)” with the Velvets’ “I’m Waiting for the Man”; returned to do a couple from Crazy Rhythms; came back a third time coupling the Yardbirds “Heart Full of Soul” with Wire’s “Mannequin”; and appeared a fourth time for the surprising Bowie instrumental “Speed of Life” that kicked off Low, followed by The Stooges’ anthem “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”
For the final encore, they made the connection they’d been making all night, drawing the direct line from The Beatles to the Velvets with “She Said, She Said” followed by a song one would usually put at the beginning of a great show instead of the end: “We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together.”
SETLIST
When Company Comes
Sunday Morning
Egyptian Reggae
The Inner Light
In Between
Everyday
Let’s Go
The Undertow
Shakin’ Street
Nobody Knows
Find a Way
Invitation
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Paint It Black
On and On
On the Roof
Change Your Mind
Higher Ground
Decide
Two Rooms
The Final Word
Away
Doin It Again
Too Far Gone
Raised Eyebrows
Crazy Rhythms
Slipping (Into Something)
I’m Waiting for The Man
Original Love
Fa Cé-La
Heart of Stone
Mannequin
Speed of Life
I Wanna Be Your Dog
She Said, She Said
We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together
