Cut live at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City in October 2018, The Feelies Some Kinda Love: Performing the Music of the Velvet Underground, is a full-throated homage to one of the indie pioneers’ foundational influences. Founding Feelie Bill Million joins us for an all-things-Velvets chat, with digressions into The Beatles, The Willies, future plans, and more.
Category: The Feelies
The Feelies :: Some Kinda Love: Performing The Music Of The Velvet Underground
The Feelies connection to the Velvet Underground goes long and deep. As gawky teenagers, Glenn Mercer and Bill Millions put VU on the same tier as the Beatles. Their jittery, drone-y, laconically delivered Crazy Rhythms sounded like no one else, except possibly the Velvets. The band covered “What Goes On” on their 1988 album Only Life, and, about the same time, got a chance to play a show with Lou Reed at the Orpheum Theatre in New York City. Reed himself once told Bill Millions that the Feelies were the only band that ever “got” the Velvet Underground.
Brenda Sauter (The Feelies, Wild Carnation) :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
After The Feelies splintered, bassist Brenda Sauter formed Wild Carnation. Tricycle, Wild Carnation’s 1994 debut, is an under-heralded classic of Garden State folk rock. Feelies fans will find plenty to love — and much more. Tricycle is getting deservedly spruced up in a remastered/expanded form by Delmore Recordings for Record Store Day this month, so Aquarium Drunkard hopped on the phone with Sauter to get the behind-the-scenes details. Like any good New Jersey saga, it features Maxwell’s, Yo La Tengo and a Sopranos cast member.
Transmissions :: Glenn Mercer (The Feelies)
If you’re a fan of jittery guitar-driven indie rock, you’re probably most familiar with our guest today, Glenn Mercer from his work with The Feelies. While this episode of Transmissions doesn’t skimp on Feelies discussion, Mercer also discusses the diversity of his catalog, including work The Trypes, whose 40th anniversary edition of Music for Neighbors was released earlier this year, and his solo canon. Along the way: the Velvet Underground, The Dead, Peter Buck of R.E.M., his tribute works to David Bowie, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, and Marc Bolan, plus even more.
The Feelies :: Look At Me
50 years ago a different Feelies, predating the Jersey bred post-punk demigods by seven years, approached perfection for three minutes and thirty seconds. The opening bass riff is a misdirection, […]
The Feelies :: In Between
They celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2016, but compared to other bands of a similar vintage, the Feelies’ discography is relatively slim. That’s OK. Each Feelies record is a gem, […]
The Feelies :: Only Life / Time For A Witness (Reissues)
Like so many of their peers, The Feelies made a stab at wider commercial appeal in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Fortunately for us, this move didn’t result in watered-down music. […]
The Feelies :: CBGB – NYC, December 14, 1977
Let’s take a trip to the Bowery, shall we? By the time the Feelies emerged in late 1976, CBGB was already well established as the epicenter of the era’s cutting-edge rock music scene: […]
The Feelies :: Paint It Black
The 2009 reissue of the Feelies 1980 debut, Crazy Rhythms, nixes the inclusion of their cover of the Stones ‘Paint It Black” — a track which was tacked on to the 1990 […]