The Feelies - "It's Only Life"


From Time Magazine, 1988:

"Good idea for a movie. And a great title: Night of the Living Feelies. Here's this really bewitching post-new wave band, living and working out of Haledon, N.J. (pop. 6,888). The notion is that, in the movie, all the residents of a small town not unlike Haledon are red-eyed, ash-faced zombies who lumber into a Feelies concert looking for a midnight snack. The undead are, of course, finally rejuvenated, but not by their customary infusions. The raucous restorative powers of the Feelies is what brings them back to life.

Such a flick, says Feelies Co-Founder Glenn Mercer, 33, would be a combination of The Last Waltz and Night of the Living Dead. But if it must remain fantasy for a while longer, its premise serves as an excellent introduction to the kind of sweet electroshock the band can provide. Director Jonathan Demme concocted the Living Feelies idea when he first saw the band in 1980, and he subsequently cast the Feelies in Something Wild in 1986 and put | their tune Too Far Gone on the sound track of his current Married to the Mob. Demme says flat out the Feelies are the "premier live-rock band in America." They are in no danger of becoming the Demme house band, however. Their new Coyote/A&M album, Only Life, is just their second major-label release, but it ought to be a commercial bust-through.

Feelies Co-Founder Bill Million, 35, may have got the group's name "subliminally" from a long-ago child's game: put your hands inside a covered box and guess what's inside. If their music were a guessing game, you could, inside the Feelies, grab on to the vintage strains of the mesmeric Velvet Underground and strong traces of up-to-the-minute bands like R.E.M. What is fresh about the Feelies is the kind of sardonic innocence they bring to tunes like What Goes On and Undertow. Anyone who hears this new album will feel good first but think about it later."




The Feelies play "Deep Fascination"

Netflix it: I Vitelloni (1953)

From Tom Piazza's essay for Criterion:

"In the long dream of image and spectacle that was Federico Fellini’s career, I Vitelloni occupies a nodal point. Filmed in 1953, between the brilliant but somewhat superficial The White Sheik (1952) and his first fully characteristic work, La Strada (1954), I Vitelloni marks a big step forward in Fellini’s ability to get deep into his characters’ psychology; it points ahead both to the bitter social satire of La Dolce Vita (1960) and to the great canvases of nostalgia and the artist’s nature, 8 1/2 (1963), Amarcord—and the neglected late masterpiece Intervista (1987).

In terms of technique, I Vitelloni may be the least “Felliniesque” of the director’s major films. It makes far less use of the odd foreshortenings, the unexpected close-ups, the expert manipulation of relations between foreground and background that formed so much of Fellini’s expressive vocabulary, and there are fewer of the gargoyles and dreamlike surreal characters that populate his most recognizable work. In places the camera work is uncharacteristically static, as in the early scenes in which Fausto prepares to leave his father’s house after learning that Sandra is pregnant.

Yet despite its relatively conventional technique, I Vitelloni takes the first definitive plunge into many of Fellini’s dominant thematic and imagistic preoccupations: arrested development in men, marriage and infidelity, the life of provincial towns versus the city, the melancholy and mystery of deserted nighttime streets, the seashore, the movies themselves. Many of these themes and major images can be found in somewhat germinal form in The White Sheik, and even to some degree in Variety Lights. But in I Vitelloni they move from being accessories to the action to being the heart of the matter.

I Vitelloni hangs us on the horns of an insoluble dilemma that lives at the center of Fellini’s work. That dilemma takes subtly shifting forms but ultimately seems to stem from the tension between childhood’s sense of wonder and possibility, with its undertow of infantile dependency and decay if the individual can’t grow up, and, on the other hand, the practical and realistic understanding of life’s responsibilities and costs, which carries its own undertow of possible stultification, cynicism and corruption. This tension finds its most pointed expression in the repeated images, throughout Fellini’s films, of the exploitation of the mysterious, beautiful or sacred by those whose ego or lust for power has blinded them to what is most precious. I Vitelloni brings this imagery into the center of the picture for the first time."






As well as I Vitelloni portrays the consequences of inaction or captures the melancholic mood of the last summer party ending in a rainstorm, perhaps the greatest cinematic value of the film is the importance it places in the psychological and emotional implications of facial hair placement in a young man's life.

The Gun Club - "Texas Serenade"


Read all about The Gun Club here.

The Creation - "Through My Eyes"

Gal Costa - "Baby"

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds play "Sad Waters" in London in 2003.

Mick Ronson - "Growing Up and I'm Fine"


From the July 1974 issue of Crawdaddy, courtesy of MickRonson.com:

When Bowie announced his retirement from the stage, it seemed for one dismal moment that those wonderful Spiders from Mars would be out pounding the pavement. Then the word leaked that Ron-o was hard at work on a solo lp. The first question anyone had was answered when it was discovered that, though David had written some songs for his axe-man, he was staying away from the studios. One could guess that the song-writing would be good. One could guess that with Ronson behind the dials, the production would be good. But no one could guess that Ron-o could sing almost as well as his ex-boss.

'Love Me Tender,' the opening cut and single on Slaughter, is an abortion that proves one thing: Ronson can sing, sounding at times like an androgynized Tony Bennett and at times like a macho version of La Bowie. That, it seems, is the image he's trying to present. The Elvis cover shouldn't be taken too serioiusly. No 45 choice has ever been well made within the confines of Mainman, so why should anyone expect this one to be better?

'Growing Up and I'm Fine' and 'Only After Dark' are among the finest cuts to ever emerge from the Bowie unit. Mick is his own man, but he's learned well. He's taken some of Bowie's vocal nuances and uses them to the best effect, giving a Bowie song the type of reading that Bowie couldn't.

In fact, the only thing that's wrong with this album is that Ronson is not rocking out. When one thinks back on his amazing work on cuts like 'Moonage Daydream,' it seems strange not to hear any fast work here. He gets funky on the 'Slaughter On Tenth Avenue' instrumental that closes the album, but nowhere does he churn faster than warp two. It's a pit, 'cause he's done it before.


Yes, but what is Slaughter on 10th Avenue really? Why, it's a love story for everybody to listen to.

My Morning Jacket plays "The Way That He Sings" at Austin City Limits.


and the best late night tv performance I've ever seen:

My Morning Jacket plays "One Big Holiday" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 9/18/03.

Pavement plays "Secret Knowledge of Backroads" in Belgium in 1992.

T. Rex - "Light of Love"

T. Rex - "Till Dawn"

T. Rex - "I Really Love You Babe"

T. Rex - "Golden Belt"

Mogwai plays "New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 1" at Fuji Rock Festival in 2006.

Sebadoh's video for "Rebound."

The Fall - "Fortress/Deer Park"

PiL plays "Poptones" on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

T. Rex - "Jupiter Liar"

T. Rex - "Chrome Sitar"

XTC - "Another Satellite"

The Specials - "Do Nothing"

Gang of Four play "Damaged Goods" in 1979.

Scott Walker - "The Lady Came from Baltimore"

The Rolling Stones - "Carol"

Hum on 120 Minutes.

"Stars"



"I'd Like Your Hair Long"