homage: New Order - Western Works 9/80

Today was going to feature my favorite live Joy Division tracks. But, as you should be expecting by now if you're a loyal PoIT reader, we're detouring yet again.

Why?

Because picking my favorite live JD tracks is proving harder than I thought. That and it takes a lot of time that I've not had lately. So instead, I've got a better treat for the loyalists.



As you know (or should know), Joy Division ceased as a living, breathing entity when singer Ian Curtis removed himself from existence early in the morning on May 18, 1980 - the day before the band was to fly to New York to start their first US tour. Having long had an internal pact to cease trading under the Joy Division name if any member was to leave the band (probably not expecting the harsh finality of Ian's leaving, but there you go), the band found themselves in another "having to change the name again" situation.

So after an appropriately short mourning period, the survivors regrouped and punched the big red RESET button. Finding themselves bereft of Ian-less material, they wrote a few new songs, tightened up a couple new "unrecorded" Joy Division tracks that had just been written in the weeks prior to Ian's death as "bridge" tracks, and played a few mostly-unannounced gigs in July/September 1980, prior to flying to the US for a very brief East Coast tour and recording session in late September.

As Joy Division, they were close with Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire, having shared several gigs and compilation records with the Cabs. At some point, JD was going to work with the Cabs in the Cabs' own Western Works Studio in Sheffield, but this opportunity had not yet come to pass at the time of Ian's death.

Suddenly with no lead singer and a wide-open new beginning, the survivors (now known as New Order) took the Cabs up on their offer and decamped to Western Works on 7 September 1980, just two days after their third gig post-Ian. Safely away from the spotlight, and with no Martin Hannett to impose his will on the session, the band laid down several tracks with the Cabs' Chris Watson engineering.

(Due to a date mixup dating back to the early 1980s, this session had long been thought to have taken place in early July 1980. It was only with the release of Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton's notebooks in 2008 that we learn this happened on 7 September 1980, and not July as previously thought. Which makes sense in a way, these are a lot of tracks to write from scratch in the few short weeks between Ian's death and early July.)

These tracks show the band's emotions - both musical and lyrical - laid out to bare themselves to the world. Hesitant yet brave, restrained yet oddly forward-looking, New Order find themselves seeking the path at this very early stage - a path that would not be truly explored publicly for at least another 12 months - that would lead them out of the Joy Divsion shadow into completely new realms of songcraft.

This material has been circulating amongst New Order fans since the early 1980s but never before heard by the general public in this release-ready quality.

Kind souls, who wish to remain anonymous rescued this material from a 1/4" reel of tape that was up for auction on eBay, advertised as something else, and it was only in the reel transfer that it was discovered what this reel actually contained. It's been theorized that if this is not the master reel itself from the studio mixdown sessions, it's at the very least a direct, professional copy of it. The band could release this today, as-is. So I am honored to present it here.

First we have two different mixes - but the same base recording - of "Dreams Never End". The first version is the common version that had already circulated - albeit in much poorer quality - amongst the fans. The second version, however, is a heretofore-unknown alternate mix featuring much louder guitars than the original take - but besides that, it's identical to the first take. Both takes slower than the version eventually recorded for the debut LP in 1981, this track even moreso sounds like bassist (and singer on this track) Peter Hook's own little memorial to Ian. "A long farewell to your love and soul" indeed.

Then we have the musically very JD-like "Homage", with Bernard Sumner on hesitant vocals, laying bare his emotions for all to see. It's blatantly obvious why this track didn't survive past September 1980 - all you have to do is listen to the very bare, emotional lyrics. Notably, you can understand them for the first time ever:

This smile the unborn child reaction's taken, forsaken
These scenes pervaded me in a way that
People seldom see

This is the only time that I thought I had
Seen the signs and I wait, I'll never know

In this room
The blind pass through
In this room
I think of you
In this room

In this room

Darkness will vanish soon
I awake, always in this room
All days will fall and rise
Helplessly, I watch these figures cry

This sense of needless rejection
Always the sense of reason
Carelessly lead me astray

In this room
The blind pass through
In this room
I think of you
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room

People always ask for dreams
Revelation in a dream

A life that is so scared

This is the only time that I
Thought I had seen the signs
Well, I did... I'll never know

In this room
I think of you
In this room
I think of you
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now

The next track is drummer Steve Morris' turn on lead vocals with a very interesting take on "Ceremony", one of the last two Joy Division tracks written just prior to Ian's death. Famously having no written lyrics they could use (if Ian wrote them down, they weren't available to the survivors at the time), New Order had to run the Joy Division rehearsal recording of this track (which you can hear in the previous post on the blog) through an equalizer to attempt to pick out Ian's lyrics. Considering that even with modern audio software it's nearly impossible to extract Ian's vocals, or at least make them clearer, it's impressive what they were able to pull out of it. Steve sings lead on the verses, with Hooky taking over a chorus as well. Interestingly enough, when the time came three weeks later to record this track "officially" in New Jersey's Eastern Artists Recording Studio with producer Martin Hannett, the lyrics Bernard Sumner sang started off markedly different - which makes one wonder if they were rewritten by New Order.

Steve continues on with the lead vocals on "Truth" which, even at this early stage, is remarkably similar to what they'd end up doing with the track when recording it for their debut LP in 1981 (except with Bernard on vocals). I particularly like this version though, it's much more poignant, fragile and spacious - as it should be - than the released variant.

And then we have the biggest revelation of the reel: A heretofore-unknown new New Order track, or rather, a collaboration with the Cabs and New Order, featuring none other than NO manager Rob Gretton on lead vocals! This has been confirmed by a New Order member directly to your humble blogger, and furthermore, this same member revealed that it was entitled "Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This?" and was just one of two collaborations they recorded with the Cabs, with the other (still unknown) sounding much more New Order-ry than this track. What is special about "Are You Ready" though is that, Rob's vocals aside, musically it shows the band taking great liberties with the established Joy Division sound - and the early New Order sound - and is very much so a signpost to the musical path the band would further explore starting with fall 1981's "Everything's Gone Green".

I feel this material is too important to release as MP3 so please enjoy it lossless as FLAC (two RAR files as usual).

01 Dreams Never End (mix 1, quieter guitars)
02 Dreams Never End (mix 2, louder guitars)
03 Homage
04 Ceremony
05 Truth
06 Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This?

Files here (2012 version; see neworderarchive.blogspot.com for details.

edit: 8 May 2009 followup

enjoy!

this is the way, step inside: Joy Division part I

Not a lot to say about this legendary band Joy Division. Simply one of the greatest bands of all time, what these self-described oiks from Manchester/Salford/Macclesfield were able to do within the framework of their time (1977-1980) is nothing less than astounding.



Chicago Tribune chief music writer Greg Kot once referred to their two studio records UNKNOWN PLEASURES (1979, Factory FACT 10) and CLOSER (1980, Factory FACT 25), in an email to your humble blogger, as "postpunk's holy-grail albums". Obviously I concur.

I suppose this post would be more apropos closer to the 28th anniversary of Ian Curtis' death, but as it were, we find ourselves just days short of the 28th anniversary of the band's second-to-last-ever gig, at Derby's Ajanta Cinema 19 April 1980.

While this band has been duly anthologized via the four-disc HEART AND SOUL box set, a proper - in your humble blogger's opinion - one or two CD "Best Of" has yet to be compiled. One man's best is another man's scrap heap, or something. There have been two separate "best of"-type compilations released, 1995's PERMANENT (odd song choices, and really terrible mastering), and 2008's THE BEST OF JOY DIVISION (again, song choice is a bit wacky).

So allow me to present The PoIT's DIGITAL: Joy Division 1977-1980, in two parts.

Part 1 - this week - is my version of a best-of, featuring tracks pulled from their various studio sessions. I was intending this to be a single disc's worth of tracks, but as usual I wasn't able to restrain myself. So it'll take two. And even beyond these 34 tracks, honestly, is there such thing as a duff Joy Division track? I'll leave that conversation to the peanut gallery to discuss.

Part 2 - next week - will feature my favorite live Joy Division tracks, from a variety of live gigs.

CD1

01 Exercise One
02 Disorder
03 Insight
04 Digital
05 Atrocity Exhibition (Closer version)
06 Colony
07 Autosuggestion
08 Candidate (Piccadilly version)
09 New Dawn Fades
10 Heart And Soul
11 Dead Souls ("Sordide Sentimental" version)
12 Incubation
13 Komakino
14 Transmission (rejected single version)
15 Chance (Atmosphere)
16 Love Will Tear Us Apart (A-side version)
17 I Remember Nothing

4 / Cargo Studios, Rochdale 10/78 (Factory Sample FAC2)
3 / BBC Studios, Maida Vale, London 1/79 (John Peel session 1)
1, 2, 7, 9, 17 / Strawberry Studios, Stockport 4/79 (Unknown Pleasures sessions / FACT 10)
8, 15 / Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham 6/79 (Piccadilly Radio session)
14 / Central Sound Studios, Manchester 7/79 ("Transmission" session 1, unreleased)
11 / Cargo Studios, Rochdale 10/79 ("Sordide Sentimental" sessions)
16 / Strawberry Studios, Stockport 3/80 ("Love Will Tear Us Apart" sessions / FAC 23)
5, 6, 10, 12, 13 / Brittania Row Studios, Islington, London 3/80 (Closer sessions / FACT 25)

CD2

01 The Sound Of Music
02 Isolation
03 Transmission (single version)
04 These Days (Piccadilly version)
05 Shadowplay
06 The Kill
07 Dead Souls (original attempt)
08 From Safety To Where...?
09 She's Lost Control (12" version)
10 Twenty Four Hours
11 The Eternal
12 Decades
13 Ceremony (rehearsal version)
14 Atrocity Exhibition (Piccadilly version)
15 Atmosphere
16 Love Will Tear Us Apart (B-side version)
17 As You Said

5, 6, 8 / Strawberry Studios, Stockport 4/79 (Unknown Pleasures sessions / FACT 10)
4, 14 / Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham 6/79 (Piccadilly Radio session)
7 / Central Sound Studios, Manchester 7/79 ("Transmission" session 1)
3 / Strawberry Studios, Stockport 7/79 (final "Transmission" session, FAC 13)
15 / Cargo Studios, Rochdale 10/79 ("Sordide Sentimental" sessions)
1, 16 / Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham 1/80 ("Love Will Tear Us Apart" session 1)
09 / Strawberry Studios, Stockport 1/80 - 3/80 (FACTUS 2)
2, 10, 11, 12, 17 / Brittania Row Studios, Islington, London 3/80 (Closer sessions / FACT 25)
13 / Rehearsal rooms, Manchester 5/80 (Peter Hook cassette)

as usual , multiple RAR files, you need to grab them all to extract the set....

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

enjoy!

do you want new wave or do you want the truth?

Corndogs, they were.

High on the American postpunk/indierock pedestal sit San Pedro, California's MINUTEMEN, legendary for singer/guitarist D. Boon's girth as well as his goofiness. Thunderstick (bass) master Mike Watt continues to ply his spiel throughout the land, and surfer-turned-legendary-drummer George Hurley does what he does.



I can't even begin to blog about what this band meant to me as a teenager in the 1980s, it was amazing that this band - an SST artist at that - could sound so, well, un-SST'ish and cool. Put anything from WHAT MAKES A MAN START FIRES? next to 3-WAY TIE (FOR LAST) and you say "this is the same band?" - and it was. They were truly on the brink of something special when tragedy struck the band in December 1985, when Boon was killed in a car crash.

There are two things you need to know about this band.

1) They were fucking corndogs.

2) They laid the groundwork for the indie/punk DIY movement. "Start your own band, write your own book, paint your own picture" are words to live by indeed. They jammed econo, and they lived by what they said. Ethical to the core. The records were the flyers for the gigs. Their band could be your life.



I'm done spieling. Just listen. My favorite Minutemen selections, in no particular order, all a-jumbled (just like the band).

These are the tracks, I'll at least note what releases I pulled them from. So in the DIY spirit, here are my favorite tracks for you to use to assemble your own Minutemen compilation.

And if you haven't seen the spectacular "rockumentary" full-length feature on the band We Jam Econo you best hie yourself to amazon.com or your favorite bricks/mortar retailer and purchase the DVD post-haste. I cannot recommend it more highly.

- - - - -

PARANOID TIME (1980)



Joe McCarthy's Ghost
Paranoid Chant


THE PUNCH LINE (1981)



Search
The Punch Line
Song For El Salvador
History Lesson
Gravity


BEAN-SPILL (1982)

If Reagan Played Disco
Futurism Restated


WHAT MAKES A MAN START FIRES? (1983)



Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs
Fake Contest
The Anchor
Sell Or Be Sold
Split Red
Plight
Life As A Rehearsal
This Road


BUZZ OR HOWL UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HEAT (1983)



Self-Referenced
Cut
I Felt Like A Gringo
Little Man With A Gun In His Hand


DOUBLE NICKELS ON THE DIME (1984)
"take that, huskers!"



D.'s Car Jam / Anxious Mo-Fo
Viet Nam
#1 Hit Song
Two Beads At The End
Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
Shit From An Old Notebook
Nature Without Man
Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
Corona
Take 5, D.
My Heart And The Real World
History Lesson Part II
The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts
Themselves
This Ain't No Picnic
Untitled Song For Latin America
Jesus And Tequila


PROJECT: MERSH (1985)
"I got it! We'll have them write hit songs!"



The Cheerleaders
King Of The Hill
Take Our Test
Tour-Spiel


3-WAY TIE (FOR LAST) (1985)



Price Of Paradise
The Big Stick
Courage
Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
The Red And The Black
Spoken Word Piece
Stories
Ack Ack Ack
Hittin' The Bong


BALLOT RESULT (1987)



Bermuda
No One (remix)
Ack Ack Ack
This Ain't No Picnic


MISCELLANY

Little Man With A Gun In His Hand (from Double Nickels vinyl, cut from CD issue)
I Felt Like A Gringo (alternate studio version)


Three RAR files, as usual, you gotta grab 'em all...

Part I
Part II
Part III


VIDEO

This Ain't No Picnic (1984)
Hard to believe this was once played on MTV! Best video ever.

Corona (live)
D. Boon's mad hopping slays me every time. Fantastic.

The Anchor (live)
Taken from We Jam Econo - I can watch/listen over and over and over.

the good part II: WILCO More Like The Moon

I referred yesterday to Wilco's MORE LIKE THE MOON EP, which was (and still is) freely downloadable from the band's website - as 192kbps MP3's. As far as I know, the only non-lossy source for these 6 tracks was a bonus "tour edition" CD that was included in some copies of the Australian CD release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It has also been referred to, by the band and others, as the Australian EP and the Bridge EP.

I have that disc, and here are the six EP tracks, lossless for your pleasure. You can download each of the three different covers (for the three different titles for the EP - Australian, Bridge or More Like The Moon) the band has up on the website.

Since they're freely available on the band's website, there should be no issue putting lossless versions here for you.



So onward....

01 Camera
02 Handshake Drugs
03 Woodgrain
04 A Magazine Called Sunset
05 Bob Dylan's 49th Beard
06 More Like The Moon

Part I
Part II
(need to grab both files to extract, RAR files as usual)

These are losslessly compressed using the FLAC format - conversion software (for WAV/AIFF/mp3 etc) can be found at flac.sourceforge.net (grab the FLAC frontend). Alternatively, you can just download mp3s from the band directly, but why not get it lossless from your humble blogger instead?

Tracks 1 and 4 are identical to tracks 6 and 32, respectively, in the YHF SuperDeluxe package in the preceding post - except they're glitch-free for starters. Oddly the "Camera" track on the EP has the same tape spinup sound as found on the Engineer Reference leak. Conspiracy theorists may say that when the band went to compile this EP, they pulled a copy of the Engineer Reference material to choose from (amongst other sources), and a copy of said material escaped the band's grasp at this point (hence 2 of these tracks appearing in identical form on the subsequently-leaked Engineer Reference material).

Nobody has determined, to the best of your humble blogger's knowledge, the provenance of the rest of the tracks. Were they leftovers from the YHF sessions? Were they recorded after Jay Bennett's firing, and therefore the first recorded output of the new 4-piece Wilco? The band stated in interviews post-YHF that they spent time in the studio working on a project they referred to as "Decibels Per Minute" (dBpm) but we don't know what happened to all that material - some of it may be some of these EP tracks, some might be material that was later included as a companion CD to a book the band put out, some might have been left by the wayside. Who knows.

But most consider this EP material as part-and-parcel of the YHF era, hence me blogging it now. Enjoy!

the good part: WILCO Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, etc.

Last week we featured the "Classic" Wilco, the band that still maintained (sometimes) tenuous ties to its alt.country lineage. This week we veer with the band into the more adventurous, undefined territory that dovetails nicely with the story of the band as well.

We left off at Wilco's SUMMERTEETH album, a lush, dense record that left the band at the "What now?" point that all bands seem to reach at some point in their careers. Given the chance to write a fresh batch of songs to match with more Woody Guthrie lyrics, the band then contributed a number of songs to the second MERMAID AVENUE record, one of which ("Someday Some Morning Sometime") was a key signpost to the path the band would take. Leaving the denseness of SUMMERTEETH behind, the sometimes-ghostly, ethereal "Someday Some Morning Sometime" was the first hint towards a more atmospheric, moody path the band would often revisit, refine and expand in the 2000s.

Then everything went berserk.



Short version:

Band starts writing songs for their next record, and starts recording them in their own loft studio space with their own Jay Bennett (guitars/keyboards/songwriting) engineering the sessions.

Band agrees to be filmed during the recording sessions, for a future feature-length film on the band and the making of this record.

Band then fires their original drummer Ken Coomer, replacing him with (admittedly superior) Glenn Kotche. This happened the very same day filmmaker Sam Jones showed up with all his gear to start making the film.

Band finishes the record (after a long, drawn-out mixing process pitting multi-talented Jay Bennett against Tweedy's choice to mix, avante-gardeist Jim O'Rourke, in which what was initially sounding like SUMMERTEETH Part II became much more intimate, experimental and unique), turns it in to their label Reprise (an arm of Warner Bros Records), and promptly gets dropped from the label. This conversation - where Reprise drops the band, and tells manager Tony Margherita so - is caught by Sam Jones' cameras. Initially the band was to pay $50,000 to get the rights to the new record back for themselves, but eventually Reprise lets them go for free.

Before signing a new deal, band fires the aforementioned Bennett - losing a key songwriter, guitarist, and superb keyboardist. They're now down to a four-piece: Jeff Tweedy (songwriter/guitars/vocals), John Stirratt (bass), Leroy Bach (keyboards/guitars) and Glenn Kotche (drums/percussion).

Band then signs to another Warner Bros imprint Nonesuch, essentially getting Warners to pay twice for the new record - which eventually sees release in April 2002 entitled YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT.

This post was initially to feature your humble blogger's favorite Wilco tracks from the immediate post-SUMMERTEETH era through today - but after writing the above, I've decided to go a bit more out there.

We will be recompiling the said YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT record, but from the various demo/engineering sample versions that leaked out shortly after the record's release. I'm excited to do this post, because this record (as it was released) is easily my favorite Jeff Tweedy-related record, by a country mile.

Taken from two unique demo/engineering leaks, and the final record versions as well, this is a fascinating listen - especially if you compare the "befores" to the "afters". The befores often feature the track as it sounded with former drummer Ken Coomer, while the afters feature Glenn Kotche. Furthermore, if you sequence the record including the tracks that ultimately were dropped from the final running order, you really do have what could have been SUMMERTEETH Part II - which, obviously, Jeff Tweedy had no interest in making.

In fact, I'll make it easy. I'll compile 'em all here - including the versions on the record as it was finally released.

So on with it, links down there somewhere....

KEY:

"Demo" - taken from the 21-track leaked demo CD, supposedly from tracks recorded before drummer Ken Coomer was fired and replaced by Glenn Kotche. The drumming, to me, is much more Ken-ish than Glenn-ish, which is hard to explain beyond that the drums are less, say, nuanced than Glenn's drumming.

"Engineer Reference" - taken from an unknown-lineage leaked CD that supposedly was used as a mixing reference during the final mixdown sessions with Jim O'Rourke. It is unknown who the drummer was on these tracks, I suspect it's Glenn but I have nothing to back that up - though the drums do sound more Glenn-ish than Ken-ish, and they sound far closer to the final mix versions than the earlier demo versions. Please note that these are taken as-is, and that the Engineer Reference disc did feature some glitches as initially leaked (and no better source has turned up). I present these tracks warts-and-all, including the tape spinup sounds you hear at the beginning of some of the Engineer Reference tracks.

- - - - - -

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
01 Demo
02 Engineer Reference
03 Final album track

Kamera
04 Demo, take 1
05 Demo, take 2
06 Engineer Reference
07 Final album track

Radio Cure
08 Engineer Reference - vocal, entitled "Corduroy Cutoff Girl"
09 Final album track

War On War
10 Engineer Reference
11 Final album track

Jesus, etc.
12 Final album track
(no known demo version has leaked)

Ashes of American Flags
13 Demo
14 Engineer Reference (Glenn drums?)
15 Final album track (Jay Bennett drums - it's been confirmed Jay's rough-mix drums were used on the final album track)

Heavy Metal Drummer
16 Demo
17 Engineer Reference
18 Final album track

I'm The Man Who Loves You
19 Demo
20 Engineer Reference
21 Final album track

Pot Kettle Black
22 Engineer Reference
23 Final album track

Poor Places
24 Demo
25 Engineer Reference
26 Final album track

Reservations
27 Demo
28 Engineer Reference
29 Final album track

* * * * Bonus "unreleased" (see note below) * * * *

A Magazine Called Sunset
30 Demo, take 1
31 Demo, take 2
32 Engineer Reference

Not For The Season
33 Demo, take 1
34 Demo, take 2

Shakin' Sugar
35 Demo, take 1
36 Demo, take 2
37 Engineer Reference

Nothing Up My Sleeve
38 Demo
39 Engineer Reference

Venus Stop The Train
40 Demo

Cars Can't Escape
41 Demo
42 Engineer Reference
43 wilcoworld.net Roadcase official download version

Won't Let You Down
44 Demo
45 Engineer Reference

The Good Part
46 Engineer Reference
47 B-side to "War On War" released track

Corduroy Cutoff Girl
48 Demo - instrumental, take 1
49 Demo - instrumental, take 2

Let Me Come Home
50 Demo - instrumental
51 Engineer Reference - vocal


Split into 5 RAR files, as usual, you must download all of them....

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

- - - - - -

Tracks 6 and 32 saw official release on the More Like The Moon EP (extra CD with some versions of YHF, also freely downloadable from the band's website)

Track 51 was released on the benefit CD Amos House Collection Vol. 3

"Not For The Season" was remade as a Loose Fur track (Tweedy/O'Rourke/Kotche) and retitled "Laminated Cat", with a much sparser sound

"Shakin' Sugar" and "Venus Stop The Train" were re-recorded and released by Jay Bennett on his debut solo release The Palace at 4 AM

- - - - - -

Jim O'Rourke's final mixes - as heard on the final album track songs - are clearly more defined, less sprawling, and, frankly, better than the original demo versions or the Engineer Reference variants. Just compare the three versions of "Poor Places" - the upbeat, honky-tonk Demo variant is miles away from the final album track - and it's much better for Jim O'Rourke's involvement.

Next posting will address the rest of Wilco's career to date. Enjoy!

box full of songs: Wilco 1994-1999

Ahh, the joys of self-publishing. I had this really nice, detailed (and lengthy, as usual) post all worked up about what I'd planned as the next featured band here on The PoIT, and this entry here isn't it.

Why?

Because I just wasn't feeling it, man.

I don't want to create any preconceived notions about that band I was going to blog about, so I won't divulge who they are. Just know that some entry, at any given point in the future (but not this band featured today), could be that already-written post about the band that just didn't strike me as post-worthy at the last minute.

However... by no means is this a substitute post, not at all. How could a post featuring one of my absolute all-time favorite acts be a substitute? There are almost zero bands I would suffer a cold Chicago January winter day outdoors, in line with nowhere really to go, all day from 7am until showtime at 8pm (maybe a bit later than 7am but it was definitely before lunchtime), for the chance to see them in a tiny, beloved shithole of a venue, performing as the world's greatest bar band.

Wilco, I did. And I'd do it again.

You know the story by now, or well you should. Smalltown act makes it "big" singing songs of the downtrodden man, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders yet they're barely old enough to drink. Said band shatters on the precipice of fame, the two principals starting two new acts from the bloody remains. One act is said to be the torchbearer, the act the smart money is on to make it huge. The other act, well, we'll sign 'em too and see what happens, but who are we kidding?

The first act makes a record, the critics are falling all over themselves trying to see who can label it with the most superlatives, the songwriter is heralded as the second coming of, well, something.

The other act makes a record, it sells, but not with waves of tremendous critical acclaim. This other act takes their punches and cedes the first set to the first act.

The first act makes another record and while still really good, it doesn't really advance. More of the same but in different keys, so to speak. The critics love it too, but are a bit more reserved in their praise. Meanwhile, it doesn't sell appreciably more than the debut, in fact it may have sold less.

The other act regroups and recruits a fresh face into the band, a fresh face with amazing talent. With that new talent, they tour and make their second record. This time it's different. The world expects Debut Album Part II, instead the world gets Great Exciting New Beginnings, Part II. This time, it’s the other act the critics are fawning over, outdoing themselves with superlatives. The little band that could. Other band continues to record exciting albums, participates in a stellar project celebrating the words of perhaps the world's greatest folk songwriter, and continues to redefine themselves with every record.

The first act ends up sputtering to a halt, regroups time and time again, but nobody jumps for joy when they put a new record out. Well, not like they do when the other act does.

I'm sure you don't need me to spell it out for you, but of course the smalltown act that shattered on the precipice of fame would be Uncle Tupelo (from Belleville, IL, on the outskirts of St. Louis), the first new act would be Son Volt (led by Jay Farrar), and the other act would be Wilco (led by Jeff Tweedy). Farrar (he of the world-weary outlook, with that voice from the depths of time) was the smart money pick for the two post-Tupelo acts, his Son Volt was expected to become alt.country's Rolling Stones or some such nonsense. Tweedy's bastard stepchildren leftovers Wilco was expected to be entertaining, but not much beyond. So nobody would have predicted it would be Tweedy and Wilco critics rave about today and the music-buying public embraces, with Jay Farrar on the sidelines watching the world pass him by.

What is it about Wilco that is so spectacular? The lineage - the direct point A to point Z progression of their records - explains it all. The sound of Wilco's second record BEING THERE doesn't sound at all like the record that would logically follow the debut A.M. - it's as if we aren't hearing two records that came between them, that explain the giant, majestic leap in songwriting, emotion and rawness from record #1 to record #2. And it doesn't stop there either - each Wilco record is a sea change from the preceding record.

It doesn't hurt matters either that Wilco was involved in the Woody Guthrie archive project with Billy Bragg, where Woody's daughter Nora asked Bragg to set some unseen Woody lyrics to new, contemporary music, and Bragg thought Wilco was the perfect rootsy, post-Woody and post-Dylan act to help bring it all back home. The results speak for themselves - the two MERMAID AVENUE records are among either act's top sellers ever, and breathe new life into the dustblown Woody Guthrie legacy.

We will celebrate the music of Wilco in two parts. Part I will focus on the 1990s, starting with 1994's debut A.M. (and the songs surrounding it), and wrapping with 1999's SUMMERTEETH.

So... we present, in 3 RAR files linked below (as usual, gotta grab all 3 to extract):

PROMISING:
Selected Wilco 1994-1999

01 The TB Is Whipping Me (Wilco & Syd Straw)
02 Promising
03 Box Full of Letters
04 It's Just That Simple
05 Passenger Side
06 Dash 7
07 Blue Eyed Soul
08 Thirteen
09 Misunderstood
10 Far, Far Away
11 Monday
12 Outtasite (Outta Mind)
13 Red-Eyed And Blue
14 I Got You (At The End Of The Century)
15 What's The World Got In Store
16 Hotel Arizona
17 Sunken Treasure
18 Someone Else's Song
19 The Lonely 1
20 California Stars (Wilco & Billy Bragg)
21 At My Window Sad And Lonely (Wilco & Billy Bragg)
22 One By One (Wilco & Billy Bragg)
23 Another Man's Done Gone (Wilco & Billy Bragg)
24 At My Window Sad And Lonely (Jeff Tweedy solo version)
25 She's A Jar
26 A Shot In The Arm
27 I'm Always In Love
28 Via Chicago
29 My Darling
30 In A Future Age
31 Student Loan Stereo

Yes there's a lot of Being There tracks, but it was a double record, and each track I pulled here is essential listening.

Sources:

01 released on the Red Hot and Country benefit CD, 1994
02 is a demo recorded in May 1994, ultimately released in 2002 on the soundtrack to the movie Chelsea Walls
03-07 from the debut LP A.M.
08 written by Alex Chilton (Big Star), recorded and released in 1997
09-19 from the LP Being There, 1997
20-23 from the Wilco / Billy Bragg collaboration Mermaid Avenue (unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics set to new Wilco / Bragg compositions)
24 was a B-side on the "She Came Along To Me" CD single from the Mermaid Avenue sessions
25-30 from the LP Summerteeth, 1999
31 was a B-side on the "Can't Stand It" CD single from the Summerteeth sessions

Next entry we will focus on Wilco's 21st century efforts. Believe me the story gets even more fascinating from here - they even made a movie about it!

So enjoy. Oh yeah.... you need links don't you ;)

Part I / Part II / Part III (need to grab each one)

boat floating: Our Band Could Be Your Life

No featured band today. Nor any featured genre, or producer, or ...

I've been busy adapting to Vista on this new machine. I have to say audio processing on this dual core machine flies compared to the Pentium III machine I was using before, but the OS is another story in itself. I've at least smacked down UAC, but after 10 days still am lost at times. And I was an expert at WinNT/2000/XP! I administered my own WINS server for chrissakes (if you know about WINS, may god have mercy on your soul). I hear good things about the upcoming Windows 7, here's hoping it makes up for the many faults of Vista.

But that's not why you called.

Many moons ago - er, perhaps a couple years ago - a lil' group I'm a member of had a running theme of "what floats your boat" and shared with the group music that, well, floated one's boat. Your humble blogger, being of the alternative/indierocker sort, decided that rather than post full albums or individual songs, would make compilations based on some arbitrary genre.

Today's is entitled "Our Band Could Be Your Life" - which, if you know your 80's American alternapunkindie history, implies American underground music from the 80's. After all, the title is a line from the Minutemen's classic history-in-a-3-minute-song "History Lesson, Part II". If I were making such a compilation today, I might have some different tracks here and there, but it's fairly representative of the American underground scene back then. Minus the Paisley Underground scene and Black Flag, but SST Records is quite heavily repped here nonetheless. You may also note the complete lack of anything from Chicago (the city, not the artist) - that's because the first boat floating compilation I posted for that group was a collection of songs by Chicago artists. That'll see the light of day here, but I was listening to this particular comp today and decided to blog it.

So enjoy! Download links at the end, as usual, split into 3 RAR files (as usual, you gotta download all of 'em in order to extract the fileset...)

- - - - - - -

01 HÜSKER DÜ / Flip Your Wig
From the 1985 SST LP Flip Your Wig

02 THE FEELIES / On The Roof
From the 1986 Coyote-Twin/Tone LP The Good Earth

03 R.E.M. / These Days
From the 1986 I.R.S. LP Lifes Rich Pageant
From the original vinyl

04 fIREHOSE / Brave Captain
From the 1986 SST LP Ragin', Full-On

05 DESCENDENTS / Silly Girl
From the 1985 SST LP I Don't Want To Grow Up

06 THE REPLACEMENTS / Color Me Impressed
From the 1983 Twin/Tone LP Hootenanny

07 HÜSKER DÜ / Makes No Sense At All
From the 1985 SST LP Flip Your Wig

08 PIXIES / Bone Machine
From the 1988 4AD LP Surfer Rosa

09 MISSION OF BURMA / That's When I Reach For My Revolver
From the 1981 Ace Of Hearts EP Signals, Calls And Marches

10 R.E.M. / Harborcoat
From the 1984 I.R.S. LP Reckoning

11 HÜSKER DÜ / The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
From the 1985 SST LP New Day Rising

12 FUGAZI / Waiting Room
From the 1988 Dischord EP Fugazi

13 THE FEELIES / Slipping (Into Something)
From the 1986 Coyote-Twin/Tone LP The Good Earth

14 THE REPLACEMENTS / Unsatisfied
From the 1984 Twin/Tone LP Let It Be

15 R.E.M. / Kohoutek
From the 1985 I.R.S. LP Fables Of The Reconstruction
From the original vinyl

16 fIREHOSE / Time With You
From the 1989 SST LP fROMOHIO

17 MINUTEMEN / Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
From the 1984 SST LP Double Nickels On The Dime

18 THE CONNELLS / Something To Say
From the 1989 TVT LP Fun & Games

19 CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN / Take The Skinheads Bowling
From the 1985 Independent Project LP Telephone Free Landslide Victory

20 SONIC YOUTH / Expressway To Yr Skull (edit)
From the 1986 SST LP Evol

21 BREAKING CIRCUS / Driving The Dynamite Truck
From the 1986 Twin/Tone compilation Big Hits Of Mid-America Vol. 4

22 THE REPLACEMENTS / Answering Machine
From the 1984 Twin/Tone LP Let It Be

23 MINOR THREAT / Salad Days
From the 1985 Dischord 7" Salad Days

24 R.E.M. / Little America
From the 1984 I.R.S. LP Reckoning

--- cd2 would start here ---

25 THE REPLACEMENTS / Left Of The Dial
From the 1985 Sire LP Tim

26 LEMONHEADS / Mallo Cup
From the 1988 Taang! LP Lick

27 R.E.M. / Driver 8
From the 1985 I.R.S. LP Fables Of The Reconstruction
From the original vinyl

28 THE FEELIES / The Good Earth
From the 1986 Coyote-Twin/Tone LP The Good Earth

29 FUGAZI / Merchandise
From the 1990 Dischord LP Repeater
yes, I cheated - but it was demoed in 1987! ;)

31 PIXIES / Where Is My Mind?
From the 1988 4AD LP Surfer Rosa

32 DINOSAUR JR / Freak Scene
From the 1988 SST LP Bug

33 SONIC YOUTH / Teen Age Riot
From the 1988 Blast First LP Daydream Nation

34 HÜSKER DÜ / Celebrated Summer
From the 1985 SST LP New Day Rising

35 THE FEELIES / When Company Comes
From the 1986 Coyote-Twin/Tone LP The Good Earth

36 fIREHOSE / Understanding
From the 1989 SST LP fROMOHIO

37 R.E.M. / Letter Never Sent
From the 1984 I.R.S. LP Reckoning

38 THE CONNELLS / I Suppose
From the 1987 TVT LP Boylan Heights

39 PIXIES / Gigantic
From the 1988 4AD LP Surfer Rosa

40 GALAXIE 500 / Ceremony
From the 1990 Rough Trade 12" "Blue Thunder"

41 SCRATCH ACID / Mary Had A Little Drug Problem
From the 1986 Touch And Go EP Berserker

42 DESCENDENTS / Suburban Home
From the 1982 New Alliance LP Milo Goes To College

43 THE REPLACEMENTS / Within Your Reach
From the 1983 Twin/Tone LP Hootenanny

44 MINUTEMEN / History Lesson Part II
From the 1984 SST LP Double Nickels On The Dime

45 THE FEELIES / Slow Down
From the 1986 Coyote-Twin/Tone LP The Good Earth

46 R.E.M. / Time After Time - Red Rain - So. Central Rain (medley)
From a live gig 14 Sept. 1987 Muziekcentrum, Utrecht, The Netherlands

- - - - -

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

rocking the forest: Sebadoh (Lou Barlow edition)

Not feeling so verbose today. Perhaps it's because today's feature is Sebadoh, more specifically, your humble blogger's favorite Sebadoh songs written by Lou Barlow (or, a new generation of electric white boy blues).



That and your humble blogger is busily adapting to a new PC and Vista, having come from XP Pro. Not sure what I think of Vista, at least Home Premium, but that's a topic for another blog, another day....



Famously booted out of Dinosaur Jr in 1989 or so, Lou Barlow made his name with the ultra-low-fi early Sebadoh/Sentridoh recordings (a beaten-up 4-string guitar, and a boombox or 4-track recorder) sometimes made with early songwriting partner Eric Gaffney. Then suddenly his songwriting talents blossomed - or that his talents were subsumed in Dinosaur Jr by J. Mascis's admittedly-stellar songwriting...

Aw, hell. I wish I could write like Lou. He's got pretty much exactly the same vocal range as your humble blogger as well. Emotional songwriting (but not "emo", thank god...), great music, the works.

So... I've compiled my favorite Lou songs from the "main" Sebadoh catalog. Oh, there's hundreds more Sebadoh songs, some written by Lou, but others by Eric Gaffney (noisy noisefests) or Jason Loewenstein (noisy, sometimes mellow), but Lou's the main guy and the best songwriter, by several orders of magnitude. I've done you the favor of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

And we're not even touching Sentridoh / Loobiecore / Lou solo / Folk Implosion. That would take another 15 blog entries... Can't say the man's not prolific!

And you gotta love these lyrics....

Started back in '83
Started seeing things a differently
And hardcore wasn't doin' it for me no more
Started smoking pot
Thought things sounded better slow
Much slower, heavier
Black magic melody to sink this poseur's soul

VU, Stooges undeniably cool
Took a lesson from that drone rock school
Manipulate musician hack righteous drool
Getting loose with the Pussy Galore
Cracking jokes like a Thurston Moore
Peddle hopping like a Dinosaur, J...

Rock and Roll genius, ride the middle of the road
Milk that sound, blow your load
Soon it's further than you ever said it'd go
Four stars in the Rolling Stone
Oooh sludge rock,
That's hard-ass harsh

Just gimme indie rock!
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock

Taking inspiration from Hüsker Dü
It's a new generation
Of electric white boy blues
Come on indie rock
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock

Breaking down the barriers
Like Sonic Youth
They got what they wanted
Maybe I could get what I want too
Come on indie rock
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock

Time to knock
The hard rock on it's side
Time to knock
The shit right up a storm
Turn to amaze
With the indie sludge
Grunge!
Aaah!

So enjoy! Split into 3 RAR files, links below, as usual you need to download all 3 RAR's in order to extract...

01 The Freed Pig
02 Scars, Four Eyes
03 Brand New Love
04 Gimme Indie Rock
05 Soul and Fire
06 Two Years Two Days
07 Cliche
08 Sacred Attention
09 Homemade
10 Forced Love
11 Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)
12 License To Confuse
13 Magnet's Coil
14 Not A Friend
15 Dreams
16 Skull
17 Give Up
18 Rebound
19 Mystery Man
20 Together Or Alone
21 Rebound (alternate)
22 Social Medicine
23 On Fire (acoustic)
24 Magnet's Coil (acoustic)
25 Rebound (acoustic)
26 On Fire
27 Ocean
28 Willing To Wait
29 Too Pure
30 Perfect Way
31 Open Ended
32 Weird
33 Tree
34 Flame
35 Love Is Stronger
36 Colorblind
37 Thrive
38 Sorry

Grab 'em here!

tracks 1-2 from 1991's Sebadoh III LP
track 3 from 1992's Sebadoh vs Helmet EP
track 4 from 1992's Rocking the Forest EP
tracks 5-11 from 1993's Bubble and Scrape LP
tracks 12-20 from 1994's Bakesale LP
tracks 21-25 from 1995's Rebound EP
tracks 26-31 from 1996's Harmacy LP
tracks 32-38 from 1999's The Sebadoh LP

halcyon days: Alternative Music Night (a mix)

We're going to indulge your humble blogger's memories here and step back to his university days.

In the early 1990s, I DJ'ed at a weekly event on my college campus that we so uniquely called Alternative Music Night.



You see, this was back in the immediate post-Nirvana timeframe, before the alternative became the mainstream (and later became the alternative again).

Besides MTV's 120 Minutes, and the here-today-gone-tomorrow commercial alternative radio stations that sprouted like weeds in Nirvana's jetstream (and often disappeared just as quickly), the outlets for "alternative" music were slim. True alternative, that is.

So an enlightened group of people took over the lounge in my college's student center one night a week and played the cool music. I took over from the founder due to my stellar musical tastes, hehe. We usually drew a fairly decent crowd, no doubt helped by the free beer and great music.

So in memory of those days, and because while cleaning the house I ran across a flyer from one of those long-gone nights, I'm going to feature the idealized playlist from one of these evenings. Of course it's not exact - I didn't keep records of what I played, and I also know there are some tracks that I no longer own (or even remember for that matter) - but on any given Wednesday night during the 1992/1993 and 1993/1994 school years, you were bound to hear these tracks at least once. The only certainties were two tracks that I played every damn night - Fugazi's "Merchandise" and the closer, R.E.M.'s Lou Reed cover "After Hours" as it was a great closer to the evening's festivities.

As I put this together, I realized I have way too much music to fit in one of those timeslots (typically, each night was 2 hours or so). So pretend this is two nights worth. I did attempt to group songs together as I would have during the DJ set, but due to the mists of time obviously it's idealized. Finally, there's no true mixing - I don't have my DJ equipment anymore - so deal with it.

A few observations... You can see where my head was at this era, there are quite a few Wax Trax!-ish tracks (Ministry/1000 Homo DJ's/etc) as well as quite a few ravers. Some of these I no longer own - I've moved on - but thanks to the magic Internets we can enjoy them yet again.

My average set was good enough for me to be recruited to DJ - for pay - at a local club in the city I went to college in, but alas the guy I was to replace begged for his job back (he was fired, I was to replace him) so I didn't get beyond a one-night stand at the club. The club owners had heard thru the grapevine about my DJ sets, and they sent spies to observe.....

N.B. The guy in the flyer above was designed by a pre-fame Liz Phair, as cover art for a friend's band. This would have been 1992 or so...

Onward we go....

Split into six RAR files, you gotta pull all 6 down before you can extract... links at the end. This time I'm also using a different hosting service, I believe you can download simultaneously, and it's hyperspeed compared to rapidshare...

01 1000 HOMO DJ'S Supernaut
02 PUBLIC IMAGE LTD Public Image
03 SUGAR A Good Idea
04 JOY DIVISION Love Will Tear Us Apart
05 NEW ORDER Regret
06 MINISTRY Stigmata
07 PIXIES Bone Machine
08 LUSH Nothing Natural
09 THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN Reverence
10 PIGFACE Suck
11 NEW ORDER Blue Monday
12 R.E.M. Finest Worksong (Lengthy Club Mix)
13 PETER MURPHY Cuts You Up
14 HÜSKER DÜ Makes No Sense At All
15 JANE'S ADDICTION Mountain Song
16 SONIC YOUTH Kool Thing
17 BEASTIE BOYS So What'Cha Want
18 REVOLTING COCKS Beers, Steers & Queers
19 MINISTRY Jesus Built My Hotrod
20 808 STATE Cübik
21 HAPPY MONDAYS Step On
22 BILLY BRAGG Sexuality (London remix)
23 PARIS ANGELS Perfume
24 SAINT ETIENNE Only Love Can Break Your Heart
25 NEW ORDER Ceremony
26 CATHERINE WHEEL Black Metallic
27 CHAPTERHOUSE Pearl
28 RIDE Taste
29 THE BOO RADLEYS Does This Hurt?
30 TEENAGE FANCLUB Star Sign (edit)
31 MY BLOODY VALENTINE Soon
32 THE CHARLATANS The Only One I Know
33 INSPIRAL CARPETS Commercial Reign
34 THE STONE ROSES Fools Gold
35 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Big
36 JAMES Sit Down
37 SPIRITUALIZED Run
38 JOY DIVISION Transmission
39 MATTHEW SWEET Girlfriend
40 R.E.M. Superman (edit)
41 ELECTRONIC Get The Message
42 PIXIES Debaser
43 DEAD KENNEDYS Holiday In Cambodia
44 FUGAZI Merchandise
45 DESCENDENTS Silly Girl
46 BUZZCOCKS Ever Fallen In Love?
47 BAUHAUS She's In Parties
48 THE CHAMELEONS Swamp Thing
49 THE CURE A Forest (full version)
50 THE SMITHS How Soon Is Now
51 SECTION 25 Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
52 NEW ORDER Temptation
53 WARLOCK PINCHERS Morrissey Rides A Cockhorse
54 MORRISSEY Suedehead
55 JOY DIVISION She's Lost Control
56 FLOWERED UP It's On
57 QUADROPHONIA Quadrophonia
58 FRONT 242 Tragedy > For You <
59 HAPPY MONDAYS WFL (Think about the future)
60 PRIMAL SCREAM Loaded
61 R.E.M. After Hours

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6
(100mb per file or thereabouts)

enjoy!

forces at work: the Feelies

In the beginning, there was the Velvet Underground. A few people cheered at the time.

Then, there was Television and the New York No Wave scene in 1975-1978. Throw in the Ramones while you're at it.

Across the river in suburban New Jersey, there were a few people listening. Bored kids, mostly. What do bored kids do? Form bands.

At least those who listened to the Velvets did, that is. There's a school of thought that says (roughly) only 100 people liked the Velvet Underground in the 1970s, but of those 100, 90 of them formed bands.

Enter Haledon, New Jersey's Feelies.



Skitter-rock. Perpetually nervous music. Over-caffeinated guitars strumming along with wildly ecstatic percussion. I don't know how on earth to categorzie the Feelies except some weird amalgamation of those adjectives.

Picked up on a lark by the UK's famed Stiff Records, the Feelies released an album in 1980 (following a 7" on Rough Trade in 1979, "Fa Cé La" b/w "Raised Eyebrows" - same recordings as on the debut LP) and then got lost in the wilderness of suburban New Jersey again. That record, CRAZY RHYTHMS, was loved by every critic who heard it but bought by about 20 people at the time. Kinda like the Velvets... Unlike anything else out at the time, the clattering percussion and surgically clean guitars intertwine, mesh, jangle and twitter away like some deranged version of the Velvets meeting some backwoods jug band.

(Not released in America until 1986, the record finally saw greater commercial availability in 1990 when their then-label A&M re-released it with a bonus track cover of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It, Black" recorded in 1990.)

The Feelies didn't help their exposure (or lack thereof) by their pronounced tendency to only play gigs on holidays. They also dressed like nerds (reference CRAZY RHYTHMS' album cover photo). But what they did do is create unworldly music that only gets better with time. A lot like the Velvets...

The only consistent members of the band were/are guitarists Glenn Mercer (also vocals) and Bill Million (GREAT stage name!). Mercer/Million were the primary songwriters in the early years, with Mercer taking over more of the songwriting after their second LP. On CRAZY RHYTHMS they were joined by Anton Fier on drums, and Keith DeNunzio on bass. Fier later went on to form the critically-acclaimed Golden Palominos.

After the critical success, and commercial failure, of CRAZY RHYTHMS the band went back underground. Record label Stiff stiff-armed the demos for their proposed second LP, and the various Feelies played in random spinoff bands up through 1984 (the Trypes / Yung Wu / the Willies).

Come 1984, Mercer and Million decided to reactivate the Feelies name, and added Brenda Sauter on bass, Stan Demeski on drums, and Dave Weckerman on percussion (all of whom had been involved in those random side projects as well, so it wasn't a complete shock). Gigging a bit more frequently under the Feelies name, the band also found themselves in front of the cameras as the high school band in Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild (though that appearance on film was credited to the Willies). This expanded lineup eventually recorded the long-delayed second LP THE GOOD EARTH in 1986, with none other than R.E.M.'s Peter Buck behind the console producing.

Buck gave the sessions a much-needed "warmth" injection. Still around are the very dry untreated electric guitars, but the entire record has a more warm feel with gentle acoustics, relaxed harmonies, and just more solid "songy" songwriting than CRAZY RHYTHMS. It's got a really strong pastoral feel, and many consider it to be the band's best release (your humble blogger included). My favorite Feelies tracks are all on this record - from the gentle strums of "The High Road" to the glorious sounds of Mercer's and Million's guitars having sex with each other on "Slipping (Into Something)" to the 12-string freakout "When Company Comes" to the Byrdsian "The Good Earth" to the Citibank-commercial "Slow Down".

Also in 1986, the band released an EP entitled NO ONE KNOWS featuring two GOOD EARTH tracks ("The High Road" and "Slipping (Into Something)"), paired with gonzo covers of the Beatles' "She Said She Said" and Neil Young's "Sedan Delivery". This EP has only been released on vinyl.

1988 saw the band picked up by A&M Records, and the release of their third LP ONLY LIFE. With Glenn Mercer starting to dominate the songwriting, the album has a more pronounced Velvets feel, and is a more considered blend of the skittering CRAZY RHYTHMS sound with the warmth of THE GOOD EARTH. 1991's TIME FOR A WITNESS is a continuation of the same, and was a nice period at the end of the Feelies' sentence with the band calling it a day in 1992.

Fast forward to 2008, when the band announced several reunion gigs (with the late-80s lineup), and the reunion continues into this spring with the band performing at the scheduled R.E.M. Tribute at New York's Carnegie Hall in March.

Sadly all the band's catalog is long out of print. Twin\Tone, distributor of their 1986 releases, sells "custom-burned" CD-Rs of THE GOOD EARTH and NO ONE KNOWS (aren't all CD-Rs "custom burned"?) but Twin\Tone is not known for their reliable accounting to their acts (just ask the Replacements). Word on the street is that CRAZY RHYTHMS and THE GOOD EARTH are going to be reissued this year with bonus tracks, but this has been said the past several years as well and, well, no reissues have turned up. So here's hoping.

In the meantime you can grab all their commercial works here on the blog! What's missing? Some various covers that appeared on various promo releases, and possibly the odd cover that may have been on random compilations.

- - - - - - - - -

the FEELIES
COLLECTED WORKS 1980-1991
(minus compilation/promotional releases)

edit: links removed - all but Time For A Witness are now in print/remastered!


CRAZY RHYTHMS



(1980 Stiff Records)

01 The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness
02 Fa Cé La
03 Loveless Love
04 Forces At Work
05 Original Love
06 Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except Me And My Monkey)
07 Moscow Nights
08 Raised Eyebrows
09 Crazy Rhythms
10 Paint It, Black (Rolling Stones, 1990 bonus track)


NO ONE KNOWS E.P.



(1986 Coyote / Twin\Tone Records)

01 The High Road
02 She Said She Said (Beatles)
03 Slipping (Into Something)
04 Sedan Delivery (Neil Young)

n.b. Tracks 01 & 03 are identical to the album versions below.
also, I only have this as mp3 sourced, I've cleaned it up somewhat as it was originally captured from scratchy/noisy vinyl. I hope to find a better version down the road, if I do you'll find it here.


THE GOOD EARTH



(1986 Coyote / Twin\Tone Records)

01 On The Roof
02 The High Road
03 The Last Roundup
04 Slipping (Into Something)
05 When Company Comes
06 Let's Go
07 Two Rooms
08 The Good Earth
09 Tomorrow Today
10 Slow Down

yes, the whole record is a "pick to click"...


ONLY LIFE



(1988 A&M Records)

01 It's Only Life
02 Too Much
03 Deep Fascination
04 Higher Ground
05 The Undertow
06 For Awhile
07 The Final Word
08 Away
09 What Goes On (Lou Reed)


TIME FOR A WITNESS



(1991 A&M Records)

01 Waiting
02 Time For A Witness
03 Sooner Or Later
04 Find A Way
05 Decide
06 Doin' It Again
07 Invitation
08 For Now
09 What She Said
10 Real Cool Time (Iggy/Stooges)


So there we have it. Great, great band, criminally underappreciated today. Spread the word!