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Richard Barone, like Richman of the Modern Lovers, is one of the great musician/song writers that deserved a wider audience.
The Feelies? They're the band in Something Wild: if you like guitars, you'll love these guys.
Follow Ups:
Assuming you can somehow manage to be civil, I'll offer a couple of ideas here.There were some other bands that figured into a pop scene in Hoboken in the early 80s--the Individuals, for instance and some other NYC-area bands . Like the dBs, and, earlier, the Shoes, power pop just didn't have much traction. It wasn't punk, and too fey & uncool to the cliques that had formed after punk led to hardcore, and an urban scene bred a suburban fan base. It wasn't arena rock, it wasn't Billy Joel, it wasn't Southern Rock, it wasn't the Eagles, it wasn't Led Zeppelin, and it didn't get played on the radio (with the exception of wider formats like Long Island's WLIR). The Go-Go's broke through, but would they have if not for a Terry Hall song? The commercial rock in the early 80s was pitiful, and a lot, if not most, of the other pop stuff that was popular with the masses came from the UK & bridged rock, pop, and dance: the New Romantic stuff, technopop, and the other 'new music' that was watered down New Wave. Later, the Smithereens did break through, but they always sounded like a very-watered-down version of the Hoboken scene, at best. Far more popular were bands like the Hooters.
I don't know if this has any validity or not, but I've heard it suggested that local critics may not have covered these bands in this scene quite as much as they would've otherwise had it not been more or less Hoboken-based. People get funny about getting on the PATH train more often then they have to. Sure, these bands played in NYC a lot, but the scene had fragmented & I think there was a lot of stuff going on in Hoboken at the time that only had so much of a buzz.
I didn't see the Bongos until after they'd signed with RCA, which was probably too late. I remember this guy who looked a bit like Paul McCartney (Barone) driving up in a Corvair. They were okay, but nothing great. I wasn't familiar with Drums Along The Hudson at the time...though I did have what seems to remain an incredibly obscure record called Start Swimming!, which is a live album from 1981 with two songs each by the Bongos, the Raybeats, the dBs, the Bush Tetras, and the Fleshtones. To my knowledge, this album has never made it to CD, which is incredible. A great record, and an amazing document of a woefully overlooked scene. The Bongos' songs on that record were In The Congo, and Telefoto Lens, both of which are as good as any of Barone's songs that I've heard, though I haven't followed his career all that closely.
The Feelies is a whole other ball of wax. Their first album, I think, is better than any other record any of these other acts managed to put out. Drums along the Hudson is good, and the first dBs rec is real good, but the Feelies' rec I did think put them in a different category. Then they couldn't follow it up for 6 years; they lost Anton Fier; and they went with a major during a time that was a black hole for good indie/alternative bands that never made it, like the Replacements & Husker Du. A lot of bad luck & bad timing all around, but for them in particular.
Just kidding... really. As the brits say, I just like twisting your tits (I'll try and be better with just the occasional pinch).
Good insights, thanks.
A few points: it's a bit unclear from your wording.... you're not saying the Shoes are from NJ or NYC, right? I believe they were from Ohio (going on memory here but I think I'm right).
Power pop seems to have been a difficult market, you're right. The Records did ok but not to the level of its talents.
I couldn't compare the relative talents of Bongos and Feelies: they're too different.
I love the Beatle-esque pop sounds of Richard Barone... he had a couple of solo efforts after Bongos that were damn good. I caught both the band and him solo: I guess I'm just a sucker for beautiful pop songs. Hell, I always thought Matthew Sweet would be a "monster," too.
Of course, I'm not detracting anything from your exalting of the Feelies: they're up on a pretty high pedestal to me.
Now, if I could only find a CD of the Elevators...
Another Jonathan Demme film. Great soundtrack too with Sinead O'Connor, and the Feelies, and New Order, and Chris Isaak, and even a rare 80s Brian Eno vocal recording. Includes "Too Far Gone" from the Only Life album.Still lots of influence on many of todays bands. Did you hear the Electrelane album from last year? Called "The Power Out" and recorded by Steve Albini with tons of dynamic range and well mastered by Steve Rooke at Abbey Road. Very nice job with a lot of Feelies influence in the sound. Four girls from Brighton, UK.
And lots of that great Velvet Ubnderground via the Feelies guitar sound in David Kilgour's solo stuff too. Check out the brilliant David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights from 1997 as a low cost NZ import. Or the latest couple albums available from Merge in the US.
Great sound as we meet Ray Liotta at the high school reunion dance!
Along with the Monkees "I'm a Believer" and the few snippets of originals they play, I think Crazy Rhythms" is one of them.
But at least Demme kept them in mind :-)They have been around in various incarnations for most of the time since their last album in the early 90s, but not much for the last few years. They kind of reformed into a band named Sunburst with Demeski and Weckerman and Glen Mercer along with a couple guys from another band, and I remember talking some about them with a few people. And at the time there were a few songs for download, but guess they must've never got a record deal. Too bad. The songs were pretty good. Crazy Rhythms really is a classic, and seems to be pretty well acknowledged as such nowadays.
After the Feelies, Demeski played the drums in Luna for quite a few years. Their original incarnation was Demeski, lead singer Dean Wareham from Galaxie 500, and bassist Justin Harwood of The Chills.On a side note, if you like this type of music, you might try The Chills "Submarine Bells". IMO, it's one of the top-10 pop albums ever.
Yea, good advice boa. Love all those Feelies and Clean descendants, although I'm still working on getting some Tall Dwarfs. Any recs along those lines? I was just talking to a buddy on another site about that whole Clean/Yo La Tengo/Feelies/Chills/Luna/etc type of music with an emphasis on the recent David Kilgour solo stuff and he had one rec.
Excellent link. I've heard some of The Shins, and really like them as well.Other (semi) related sounds:
Death Cab for Cutie
Freedy Johnston
Eric Matthews (I know, the comparison is a stretch)
Modest Mouse (killer production, inventive pop)
The Bats - Another great NZ pop groupMartin Phillips & The Chills - "Sunburnt" (with Dave Gregory of XTC and Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention, etc.) is a fantastic album.
Yeah, more good suggestions. Before Eric Matthews went solo he had a partner in the Cardinals by the name of Richard Davies that went on to put out a big favorite of mine around 1998 called Telegraph. Beautiful LP that comes with a bonus 45, and not so bad on CD either. This was his second solo after the split with Matthews. There was one more after this in 2000, and then he seemed to vanish. I heard a rumor a couple years ago that there was a new album almost ready, and another rumor that he'd given up music and gone back into law practice. Just checked and it's fun to find that most of the reviews at amazon are 5-star. Guess there's a few of us old Richard Davies fans around. Some of that quirky goodness of Robyn Hitchcock, mixed with Nick Drake's emotional introspection, and Van Dyke Parks literary imagination.NP: Listening to the audio track from the new Lucinda Williams Austin City Limits DVD from a 1998 show. Wow, what a great band and you know the material is first rate because they do most of Car Wheels, along with some of her other best stuff. Really cookin' 8:30 workout on Joy. From the opening thank you until the closing thank you, totally cool.
If you're a Cardinal fan, you must know of the recent re-release of that CD. It is my understanding that it has been re-mastered, and there are additional songs as well.If you like this genre of music, you may also enjoy the solo work of Mark Lanegan, who was the lead singer of Screaming Trees.
One of my favorite albums last year. Like all his stuff. He also appeared on Greg Dulli's last Twilight Singers release too. Blackberry Belle. Great stuff. So much fantastic music in the last few years that is just under the radar. Fun times.
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Always loved The Slider for its maturity and self evaluation and great sound quality on both the original UK vinyl and the excellent 1997 Demon Records CD remaster* ...while at the same time continuing that same boogie spirit from Electric Warrior. Both essential.*1997 Demon Records remaster was transferred (according to the liner notes) using the Prism Sound 20-bit A/D and dropped to CD resolution using Prism's SNS system. Very nice job. Don't know how the newer remasters sound but I would be very surprised if they did this good a job. But if given the choice I would still opt for the original UK vinyl which sounds even better, even though this CD has three bonus tracks including the excellent Cadillac which I think was the B-side of Telegram Sam. Great song.
back in the 70's during a recording for the Don Kirschner Rock Concert series, It was sorta funny, as they stopped the show, so Marc could switch to some cheap-azz gutiar, which he preceded to smash up...My fav has always been Electric Warrior, I dig every song on it!
Don't know how good he was technically, but I always loved his playing. I think Johnny Marr always talks about what a big impact he was for him. A real guitar freak. Might be the same song over and over as some say, but what a song!
dad
With the Feelies, I count 4 albums over 11 years. Probably a lot of shows over this period. They made some money. Probably supported themselves with their music during that time. Probably make a little money on royalties now.There are gazillions of bands that don't come close to this level of success. Look at all the one single wonders from Fuzz Acid and Flowers website.
Of course the Feelies never had the megahits and stadium shows of Eminem/U2/etc. One can only speculate why a particular band or singer or actor or any artist becomes a megastar. The odds against this are extremely long.
...you'll find Stanley Demeski on the LUNA cds. It makes me realize how big a part he played in the Feelies sound.
Did you ever hear the Talking Heads cover on the Luna EP? Probably the last thing they recorded with Demeski as the drummer since it came out of the Penthouse sessions, but it's great. Really has the Feelies feel with that machine gun drumming. Very cool.
...as I've only discovered LUNA over the past year or so. I think the EP and the LIVE CD is all I'm missing. Oh well, it's off to the used CD web sites.
but I like them all. The EP does repeat one of my favorites from Penthouse, Sideshow by the Seashore, but I actually think it sounds a tad better on the EP. Maybe just better mastering on the EP since Penthouse had a tiny bit of edge to it. But subtle. They actually have a few EPs, I think three (at least that's how many I have). One has the great cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch", and another a great cover of Beat Happening's "Indian Summer", and the other has that great cover I mentioned above, the leadoff track from my favorite Talking Heads album. Doncha hate it when you discover a band you really like, and then find out you have to buy a whole boatload of stuff to get all their best? Some of it is available on nice sounding vinyl as well. And of course, then there's that whole other career of Dean's before Luna in Galaxie 500, but they didn't have as much Feelies feel ;-)But now that I typed it all out, I think we may have already talked about all this over at that other place . Oh well ...
Slider,
On the Luna site, there was (maybe still is?) a section in the biography of guitarist Sean Eden, where it says that the drummer of the band in which Sean was playing joked that he should try out for Luna, because they were advertising for a second guitarist. That drummer was me. Why'd I open my big mouth?!!!Sean wrote Sideshow by the Seashore, as well as two phenomenal songs on the newest album, track #'s 6 & 9. We played together in a band in NYC, and to this day I believe his songwriting and playing skills are among the best I've ever heard. His own songs are a melding of The Who, Bob Mould, & Dinosaur, Jr. Truly amazing musician, he is.
Great 'chatting' with you today.
Great chatting with you too. Always fun to talk about all those bands and people. It's funny, sometimes you don't realize it at first, but so many connections surface when you dig a little deeper. A lot of those VU inspired bands do tend to get involved with each other at some point in their careers. Brings to mind that whole big jangle rock family spawned by the Dream Syndicate and their friends. Lots of great music. The Days of Wine and Roses was finally reissued by Rhino a few years ago after being so long oop, including the EP as bonus tracks. Really nice. And Steve Wynn put out a great double LP at about that same time that went mostly unnoticed, but what a great album it is. Here Come The Miracles .But now I'm curious about your connection to Sean. Have to look it up since I don't know from where he came, other than what I said in one of those linked threads about him being a "displaced Canadian living in NYC who was added to the lineup after the first album was recorded" :-)
Sean was born in Canada, grew up in Houston, went to the North Carolina School of the Performing Arts (actor/musician), and then moved to NYC. We were in a few different bands together in NY, and remain good friends to this day. When Luna's first album came out, we both thought they were kind of boring, and too VU-ish. So I joked at practice one night that they were advertising for a second guitarist, and that Sean might want to try out. A few weeks later, he announced that he'd joined the band. Their first big tour, alternating headline spots each night with Screaming Trees--an odd combo, huh? 13 years later, Luna just toured for the last time, and we saw them in SF and Sacramento. Pretty cool story, and one excellent band, in my opinion.
Funny, I always loved that first Luna album from the start. Or Luna 2 (with the superscript) as they were at first. Just hit me with a sound I was really missing at the time, I guess. But I did also really love how the sound opened up on Bewitched with Sean too. That's where they established what would be their sound for the remainder of their career. Too bad that they didn't sell enough records to get much beyond cult status, even though they did have a major label run there for awhile. Wonder if Dean and Britta are gonna keep recording together?
I always loved the song "Slide", but I think in the beginning I was both snobby about their VU-ish sound, and also upset at losing Sean to a different band. Also, as a drummer, I never much cared for Stanley's mechanical style. Justin is a killer bassist, however. The band was always fortunate to have a champion at Electra, who kept them on despite average album sales. I always felt that they could have reached a bigger audience had Dean been more charismatic, and had he stopped claiming to the very end that he couldn't see the connection between them and VU, other than them both being NY bands. C'mon! Everyone hears the homage immediately when they hear Luna.I believe that he and Britta will continue recording together. That's what I'd heard some time back, anyways.
The world gets even flatter. I've done some lurking there lately but don't post much anymore. I wish it was more dynamic. I'm whining, I know, as others could say I've only myself to blame.
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