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[Jay Pontrelli <jaypontrelli@yahoo.com>]

Like, Old Stuff?
The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms
by BRIAN SHELLY--Senior Staff Writer 

Buying it, bringing it home. Putting it on -- 12 noon.
Fragments. Thinking, "Ugh -- art rock." Going out,
going to class, going to a meeting. Always moving.
Getting home, getting a hunch. Putting it on -- 12
midnight. Fragments. Picking up rhythms that shouldn't
be. Undistorting. Feeling schizophrenic, wired, and
completely on. Always moving. Getting lost for hours,
thinking "Hoboken did it, Hoboken & the Velvets made
this monster. Hoboken birthed the Feelies and their
Crazy Rhythms, and no band will ever catch up." 

Get the picture? As punk started to branch out in
1980, the Feelies roared out of Hoboken, NJ, with
Crazy Rhythms, an album that made use of space and
texture in a way that none of the punks could have
imagined. Crazy Rhythms replaced England's loud
rebellion with jangly subversion, and American guitar
rock never looked back. Any discussion of American
indie in the '80s has to start with this album. While
scenesters from the time continue to rave about
R.E.M's unparalleled influence, the Feelies were
combining the Velvet Underground and the Beatles a
full two years before Mike Stipe mumbled "Wolves,
Lower." 

Of course, there was a reason why the Feelies never
made an Out Of Time. The best songs on Crazy Rhythms
all clock in at over five minutes, and they tend to
explore many different ideas. Where R.E.M. tries to
fit all its elements into a three minute pop format,
Crazy Rhythms is all about exploring a remarkably
consistent sound. One jangly guitar will strum a
four-chord phrase. The other jangly guitar will play a
simple lead. Bill Million and Glenn Mercer will trade
off Rubber Soul-era vocals. Repeat 10 times, and ship
the album off to Sam Goody. 

So why doesn't it get monotonous? Duh -- it's the
rhythms. On Crazy Rhythms, each of the four band
members is credited with some kind of percussion, and
each member earns the credit. It's not just Anton
Fier's polyrhythmic drumming, which no other pop
drummer has ever matched. The rest of the Feelies seem
always to be trying to complement Fier with delicate,
equally complex bursts of melody. The guitars are
spastic and nervous, like "Heroin" if Lou Reed had
drank coffee instead. The bass is relatively mundane,
but how much do you want? Songs like "The Boy with the
Perpetual Nervousness" and "Crazy" are rock songs that
swing like be-bop, and the epic "Forces at Work" is
simply sublime. 

Like so many great bands, the Feelies came before the
world was ready for them, but unlike the Velvet
Underground and Husker Du, they've never really gotten
their due. Crazy Rhythms created a sound that drove
some of the best American music of the decade. Still
moving. 


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