The Feelies - The West End, Chicago, Illinois, September 26, 1986
The return of Sunday re-up!
We’ll cap off our New Jersey Trilogy with a set by the band that should be officially named the Garden State’s greatest group. No, not Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band; I’m referring to The Feelies. Even with their recent reunion, I’ve still never had the chance to see them live, so I’ve lived vicariously through amazing live recordings like the one linked below. I was having difficulty deciding on what to post — an early Crazy Rhythms-era show, a later Time For A Witness gig? Every period is wonderful. I settled on this 1986 performance in Chicago, during the Feelies’ tour in support of The Good Earth, an album I prefer slighty to the more feted debut. There’s something incredible about the Feelies live, a sort of single-minded propulsiveness that’s both wildly abandoned and mind-meltingly precise all at once. There are guitar solos, lead vocals, etc., but it all comes across as one solitary slab of awesomeness. This show also is jampacked with plenty of the band’s legendarily asskicking covers, including tunes by The Beatles, The Velvets and Neil Young. Bow down, ye mortals, before the mighty Feelies!
