Everybody loves The Feelies. And I mean everyone. Show me a person who does not love The Feelies and I will show you an imaginary person, because such a person simply does not exist. I have searched all of my books and everyone in those books loves the Feelies. Captain Ahab loved the Feelies. Even Bartleby the Scrivener, the guy who replied “I’d prefer not to” to every proposition put to him, replied, “I would prefer not, unless you’re talking about the Feelies.” Why even legendarily harsh Village Voice music critic and Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who once wrote off ALL OF jazz as the “impudent swampflowers of negroid pandemonium,” acknowledged that “the Feelies make me feel good, like I’m rolling into Moscow on a panzer tank with my oh so cute Aryan comrades, prepared to declare total victory.”
Because, well, what’s not to love? Their jingle-jangle melodies and cool grooves are every bit as infectious as Lassa Fever, and their hushed vocals provide the perfect topping for said melodies, and on 1986’s The Good Earth they sound like the perfect successors to the later-period Velvet Underground, and how can you go wrong with that? True, the vocals are almost too self-effacing, and remind me of what Jonathan Richman said about abandoning the electric guitar, namely, he didn’t want to hurt the little babies’ ears. But their vocals are, as I mentioned earlier, perfect for their material, which will make you want to dance while sitting still, or stand stock still while dancing, or drive fast but not too fast, because that would detract from their perfection, your driving too fast would detract from the ideal jingle-jangle that they perfected for the good of us all, this band from Haledon, New Jersey, great place, Haledon, New Jersey.
Their soft touch on most of their songs helps you to forget that they have their hard side too, with lots of pneumatic drumming and ferocious guitars and heck even up-front vocals too, such as on their cover of the Beatles’ “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)” on their debut LP, 1980’s Crazy Rhythms. Or “The Last Roundup” on their 1986 LP, The Good Earth. But mostly they put their perfect strumming to the service of outrageously good melodies, such as on “Let’s Go,” also from The Good Earth. They took the sound of the third Velvet Underground LP and in a super-secret act of musical alchemy ran with it, and the result is a more polite, and friendlier, take on the VU’s “What Goes On,” a tune the Feelies cover on their 1988 LP Only Life.
Yes, they could be the only band that took its sound from one song by another band, but if that sounds like a very limiting formula you’re wrong. On The Good Earth the Feelies explored that sound from every possible direction, from the majestic (“Tomorrow Today”) to the purely happy-making (“The High Road”) to the very VU opening of “Slipping (Into Something),” which morphs into a luscious and exotic melody that reminds me of a song by The Dandy Warhols, another band with super-secret alchemical skills to say nothing of a VU-fetish a mile long. And when the band kicks into feedback-driven overdrive on “Slipping” you’ll want to set your hair on fire from pure joy.
It’s virtually impossible to pick a favorite Feelies’ LP because they have so perfected their formula, although I can see why folks might opt for the band’s debut, as it’s an outlier, what with its quirky lyrics, up-front vocals, and more dynamic (read “loud”) tunes. But me I lean towards The Good Earth, because it has a homogenized sound, which may sound like an insult but isn’t, no more than saying that the Meat Puppets’ homogenized sound on Up On the Sun is a bad thing. No strange surprises on this one; just the happy-go-lucky sound personified by opener “On the Roof,” which reminds me of early R.E.M.—no surprise perhaps, as Peter Buck produced the record—and operates according to the interlocking guitar prinzip as practiced by Glenn Mercer (who handled lead vocals) and Bill Million, both of whom played lead and rhythm guitars.
“The High Road” turns out to be the golden road of everlasting devotion, while “The Last Roundup” comes at you with super fast guitars and some great percussion by drummer Stan Demeski, while the aforementioned “Slipping (Into Something)” turns out to be the Rosetta Stone of Rock, revealing as it does what the Velvet Underground might have gone on to do had Lou Reed not been such an egomaniacal, mercurial jerk, and if it doesn’t stone you immaculate what am I to make of you? “When Company Comes” is one long sweet hush, punctuated by some lovely guitar riffage and the sound of someone, who knows who, talking.
“Let’s Go” is more joyous noise, and speaking just for myself, I’ll go wherever Mercer goes, so long as that cool guitar riff keeps going “all night long.” “Two Rooms” is a gallop with a touch of western film movie in it, before it veers left and the chanting begins while Demeski continues to gallop on the drums, like John Wayne would have had he not, as is noted in Repo Man, liked to answer the front door in a dress. The title cut is pure guitar sugar, with Demeski nailing the rhythm to the floor while Mercer and Million do their interlocking thing and Mercer actually raises his voice before the lead guitar runs rampant. “Tomorrow Today” is, as I mentioned before, a sort of triumphant and martial march, with Demeski beating a tattoo while guitars riffs interweave and make love and this one will make you want to join the parade. What parade? The parade of sunshine that is, at this very moment, marching down your street, buglers bugling and baton-spinners spinning their batons and everybody on the sidewalks cheering because the New Age, first harkened in by the Velvet Underground, has finally arrived!
As for LP closer “Slow Down,” it’s meditative and will help you reach Nirvana, especially if listened to on the roof of your apartment building as the sun rises. Some psychedelics wouldn’t hurt either. The song pulsates in a way that I can only describe as spiritual, what with its vague Eastern influences, and right this minute I’m staring at a photo of Master Sivananda, who helped bring Hindu mysticism to Delaware, and his beatific smile is one of approval—he may have died in 1963, but I’m sure he would have loved this shit.
The Feelies broke up and “reunited” in 2011, when they released the great Here Before. And they’ve played together since. The only question is why they’re torturing us by not releasing more LPs—five since 1980 feels like a slap in the face to this fan. But hey, they’re the Feelies, and how could I hold a grudge? I love them. I love them more than an oxycodone/Nyquil highball. And like I say, so does everybody else. Even the adamantine pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, who said that optimism is a “positively wicked way of thinking,” said of The Good Earth, “It makes me feel good. It makes me feeling like picking up a copy of O magazine. And what more can I say?”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
