What am I missing when it comes to English pub rock legends Dr. Feelgood? That’s easy—the pub. I’ll bet you I’d be in seventh heaven if I were hearing them live in a packed public house called The Plough and Merkin, chugging a pint of lager without bothering to remove the cigarette from my mouth, but I’m not. I’m sitting alone in my apartment, with nary a lager lout, football hooligan, Dickensian street urchin (how’d he get here?), or slumming Tory MP in sight. Where are my mates? And the blowsy matron with a bad red dye job, lost in reminiscences of loo knee-tremblers past? And where’s Charles Shaar Murray? He never misses these guys!
But what do I know about the goings-on in English pubs? I’ve only ever been in one, The Blind Beggar in London’s East End, where legendary gangster Ronnie Kray (one of Morrissey’s last of the international playboys) shot and killed George Cornell, and I was there in the middle of the afternoon and the place was as dead as, well, George Cornell. Deader even.
No, Dr. Feelgood is a purely British phenomenon—like Cliff Richard, the Bob’s your uncle and Spotted Dick, and as close as I can come to an American equivalent is the J. Geils Band sans Magic Dan’s showboat harmonica. Except Dr. Feelgood never made the big time thanks to songs like “Love Stinks” and “Centerfold,” and good for Dr. Feelgood says I.
They were meaner and leaner than the J. Geils Band too—they sounded like the aggro-soundtrack to a bit of grievous bodily harm. They were hard men playing hard music, and while they certainly didn’t give you the impression they’d just picked up their instruments and they weren’t calling for anarchy in the UK, they kept things primally simple enough that it wouldn’t have surprised me a find a young soon-to-be Sex Pistol in that imaginary pub of mine, taking notes. Which is why a British journalist wrote of the band, retrospectively, “Feelgood are remembered in rock history, if at all, as John the Baptist to punk’s messiahs.”
Basic, bad-to-the-bone, maximum R&B played with manic intensity by hard-touring musicians who’d honed their chops—that was Dr. Feelgood’s bailiwick, Neo-traditionalists who’d paid their dues, and who’d systematically excised the superfluous from their music, they delivered the raw goods, like the ‘64 Stones except these guys were grown men and would never have condescended to shake their bums. They weren’t selling sex to little girls. They were selling sweat, raw power, third-rail electricity, and a good time to be had by anyone lucky enough to be at that night’s venue.
But outside the pub, something gets lost. Lee Brilleaux’s vocals still have more muscle than (to cop an image from the great Vivian Stanshall) two separate gorillas, and it’s hard to escape the queasy-making impression that his tonsils could beat you up. Wilko Johnson’s choppy guitar riffs have lots of Bruce Lee judo in them, and the rhythm section of John “The Big Figure” Martin on drums and John B. Sparks (aka “Sparko”) on bass kicks like a boilermaker, but something gets lost in translation in the studio. As is almost always the case when you sever a great bar band from its audience. Synergy isn’t a solo act.
Although all is by no means lost, mind you, which is why Dr. Feelgood’s early albums, like 1975’s Malpractice—their second full-length—are well worth a check and see. And which isn’t to say their music wouldn’t enliven a raucous house party. Get arse over tits trollied, crank the volume knob up until the family photos fall off the walls, and you may just have yourself a riot in cell block #9. Songs like “Rolling and Tumbling” and “I Can Tell” still crackle with menace—these guys weren’t fucking around. Listen to it while you’re sitting on your ass, on the other hand, in a room with your cat, and you’ll be missing the point. Although your cat may do the frug.
But here’s the thing. I am sitting on my ass, alone in a room with my cat, and you know what I’m feeling? Left out. Like there’s a great rock ’n’ roll party going on somewhere else and I’m not fucking there! The blowsy redhead isn’t going to invite me into the Gents for a shag, no one’s going to crown me with a pint glass, and the lager lout and the skinhead aren’t going to settle their differences by means of some truly awe-inspiring ultraviolence. There’s no one sprawled, dead drunk, on the snooker table—I don’t even have a snooker table. Who has a snooker table? I’m missing the fun! No one’s going to vomit on my shoes. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow feeling like (to quote the great Withnail) a pig shat in my head. Fact is, I feel kinda lonely playing it.
What you get with Malpractice are eleven party starters—or enders—most of which have something to offer. This is, despite everything I’ve said, a solid album, all bricks held together by a mortar comprised of sweat, electricity and maximum amplification. On opener “I Can Tell” Dr. Feelgood jack up the Bo Diddley original on steroids, Brilleaux may as well be singing “I’m a Man” he sounds so manly, and Wilko Johnson’s guitar chews up the scenery and spits it back out in neat little bursts of sheer fury. “Going Back Home” has some Exile on Main Street running through its veins—Johnson’s guitar echoes “Shake Your Hips,” while Brilleaux’s vocals have that echoing chateau cellar sound. Call it British boogie and shake it, baby. Johnson’s “Back in the Night” mines a blues vein but doesn’t produce much ore, and monotony soon sets in—it’s chug-a-lug is the sound of a train carrying coal to Newcastle.
I’m betting Johnson’s “Another Man” packed a wallop live, but here it sounds a bit too… well-mannered, with Brilleaux only getting pugnacious on the choruses. The song feels downright enervated at times, and it’s good the rip-snorting “Rolling and Tumbling” (original by Muddy Waters) is there to back it up. Brilleaux’s surlier than a junkyard dog, Johnson’s guitar could tear a telephone book in half if you could still find one, and the rhythm section takes the song’s title and throws it down the stairs. “Don’t Let Your Daddy Know” (again by Johnson) has swing but is a bit too easy going: Brilleaux plays nice, and once again you’re left wondering what this one would have sounded like live. What it sounds like here is an overly respectful cover of a song recorded in 1962—call it retro-emaciated.
Dr. Feelgood’s cover of Bobby Parker’s hipster-friendly “Watch Your Step” is full-bore cool; Brilleaux lets his tonsils off the leash, the rhythm section doesn’t so much cook as set fire to the kitchen, there’s this mad harmonica break, and Johnson plays his guitar like it’s a deadly weapon. Still can’t escape the notion that this would have knocked me dead live, though, and the same goes for the slinky syncopated cover of Huey “Piano” Smith’s “Don’t You Just Know It,” which features lots of very happy-making vocal call and response and some nice honky-tonk piano from guest Bob Andrews. A very nice blast from the past, this one, with lots of muscle-flexing guitar by Johnson.
The monstrous stop-time riff in the band’s cover of “Riot in Cell Block #9″ tears the bars off the cells, and here comes Brilleaux (sounding like he’s singing from solitary) like the meanest con to ever stick a shiv in your guts. This one’s big, mean and probably went down for murder, and Dr. Feelgood builds up a head a steam that carries over to the Johnson/Nick Lowe/Sparks composition “Because You’re Mine,” on which Johnson plays some guitar that’s so felonious you’ll think it’s an escapee from the previous number.
He does this chukka-chukka thing, fires off flurries of notes in between, and in general takes over, and when Brilleaux barges in he reminds me of one M. Jagger, only with burlier vocal chords that make me think if he’d been at Altamont the Hell’s Angels would have behaved themselves. Closer “You Shouldn’t Call the Doctor (If You Can’t Afford the Bills)” features Brilleaux and Johnson singing in unison and proceeds in a headlong rush, and in general it’s a lark. A good one for stopping fights, would be my guess—it’s that amiable.
Dr. Feelgood played Animal House music, and Malpractice is a party record to be played to the accompaniment of the sound of breaking glass, some enthusiastic fucking in an upstairs bedroom, and approaching police sirens. Lacking that, you probably won’t play it much. A party of one is no party at all, unless you have a spectacular case of multiple personality disorder or you’re a more interesting person than I am, which you probably are.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
