I remember hearing "What Goes On" from The Feelies "Only Life" LP and thinking it was a near perfect cover of a perfect song. Well, now we get 18 live reminders of how much The Feelies (New Jersey) love The Velvet Underground.
This is a double LP release of a live show in October 2018. Glenn Mercer, Bill Million, Brenda Sauter and the Demeski/Weckerman duo have given us an amazing gift. The only thing better than this live album would be to have seen it in person. One can only imagine.
Give ‘em credit; in 1986 the Feelies were a band with a very firm grasp of their own merits. There was not a guitar band in the land that could match the coiled tension and ecstatic release of their concerts. And while they weren’t exactly rich, not only were other people starting to score with a sound founded upon theirs, but one in particular — R.E.M.’s Pete Buck — was already eager to give back by co-producing their flawless second album, The Good Earth. Not for nothing had they put a picture on its cover of the band out standing in a field, har har.
But perfection isn’t everything, and right after making a record that clinched their mastery, they made another that expressed the concept of wabi-sabi. Who knows if they consciously embraced the beauty of imperfection, since they were a bunch of Jersey misfits, not Zen masters, but they sure found it when they made Shore Leave.
Yung Wu was the Feelies in all but name. The combo came into being at the tail end of rehearsals by the Trypes, a group from Haledon New Jersey that over time included more and more members of the Feelies. After playing their own songs, percussionist Dave Weckerman would pick up a guitar and lead them through a few classic rock covers. First they adopted a name that came from someone’s mispronunciation of a Chinese take-out dish. Then they started playing opening slots at Maxwell’s, the Hoboken joint that became home base for the Feelies, the dBs, and Yo La Tengo, who put a Yung Wu song on their first album. In 1987, a version of Yung Wu that was essentially the Feelies + Trypes/Speed The Plough keyboardist John Baumgartner recorded Shore Leave and Coyote Records pressed it up.
Weckerman’s wobbly warble is the crux of Yung Wu’s charm. While the Feelies’ lead singer, Glenn Mercer, has probably never sung a line that he wasn’t sure he could render in time and in tune, Weckerman fearlessly chases melodies into places his voice has never gone and probably never will. On “Spinning,” for example, he hits the ceiling of his upper register and breaks, and breaks again, and then tries to go even higher in the chorus. And on “Big Day,” a song by Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera, you can hear him shred his throat just a little bit every time he sings the words “crummy cosmetics.” But every time he gives it a go, you’re with him, hoping he’ll hit it even though you know he won’t. And this is no mere shamble-fest. Dave may be struggling, but the rest of the band is nailing it behind him as nervously and precisely as only the Feelies could, give him the just the heave-ho he needs to get the songs across.
The covers aren’t the only songs that merit such treatment. Instead of Mercer’s telegraphic outsider observations, Weckerman waxes loquacious and abstract. “The Empty Pool” seems to shift action from regular folks hanging out in a diner to a search over the open sea; “Aspiration” captures a moment of epiphany blotting out work-a-day tedium. Weckerman’s willingness to wind around the point rather than get to it spikes the songs with a mystery that’s given them legs sturdy enough to still be standing thirty years on. That’s how long it’s taken for this record to get turned into a CD (don’t worry, there’s an LP edition, too). And if the way-tardy embrace of a fading format isn’t enough wabi-sabi for one reissue, one has to ask why they didn’t give the bonus tracks (the two songs from Weckerman’s pre-Yung Wu solo single) a physical manifestation. C’mon, man, five more minutes? You’ve got the room. But what do you want, perfection?
Yung Wu - Maxwell’s, Hoboken, New Jersey, August 9, 1989
Heyo, there’s a long-overdue reissue of Yung Wu’s classic Shore Leave coming your way soon. Good news for everyone! The LP is a necessary addition to your Feelies collection (as the pic above suggests, the band is The Good Earth-era lineup with Dave Weckerman up front, plus Speed the Plough’s John Baumgartner). There aren’t a whole lot of Yung Wu live tapes out there — the band hasn’t really played that many shows over the years. But you wouldn’t really know it from this very tight Maxwell’s gig from the summer of ‘89, which features Shore Leave in its entirety, plus a few tasty extras, including an excellent rendition of Tom Verlaine’s “Kingdom Come.” Better than Bowie! Oh and hey -- I just saw that the McKenzie Tapes site has a Yung Wu show from 1987 up now. Wu-hoo!
I remember buying Yung Wu's "Shore Leave" years ago. And I mean years ago. It was before I knew who The Feelies were, and "Shore Leave" was a $1 record. I knew of Yo La Tengo and Coyote Records, and bought it on that association (plus, it was only a dollar).
To say I ran that LP into the ground would be an understatement. Every once in a while I'll pull out my original LP (I've since bought backups) to bask in how Yung Wu sounded when I first heard them.
Essentially, Yung Wu is The Feelies with Dave Weckerman as the front man. Everything else is the same. Bar/None reissued this in 2018 (with a 2-song Weckerman flexi-disc). Now it's here on Bandcamp.
This album contains some great covers - Neil Young, Phil Manzanera and The Rolling Stones.
One More Chance to Catch the Feelies at Rough Trade NYC This Weekend
The Feelies rose up out of North Jersey in the mid-’70s making jangly, droning avant-garde post-punk music that wasn’t exactly a commercial success at the time, but it did make them highly influential with other bands in the burgeoning indie-rock scene. They put out four highly acclaimed albums between 1980 and ’91 before calling it quits. But then the band got back together, quite literally—with Glenn Mercer (vocals and guitar), Bill Million (vocals and guitar), Brenda Sauter (bass and vocals), Dave Weckerman (percussion) and Stan Demeski (drums) reuniting in 2008 to play a pair of shows at Maxwell’s, the site of what had been their final show, 17 years earlier, and another opening for Sonic Youth. They continued to make appearances over the next few years and then put out their fifth long-player, Here Before (stream it here), in 2011. “One play confirms Here Before is excellent, an album that finds the band seemingly picking up where it left off and sounding as committed and invigorating as ever, reveling in the beauty and power of rhythm guitars and cracking percussion,” raved AllMusic. “Now as before, there are few groups in rock and roll that perform as brilliantly and purposefully as an ensemble as the Feelies, and on Here Before their trademark sound remains a thing of wonder that hasn't been dimmed a bit by the passage of time.” A sixth studio album, In Between (stream it here), arrived in 2017. “The new Feelies album is both mellow and intense in ways only the New Jersey band can pull off,” gushed Pitchfork. The Feelies play three local shows this weekend, and while Friday and Saturday are already sold out, there are still some tickets left to see these underground legends live and in person on Sunday night at Rough Trade NYC.
“...the real big deal is Weckerman...whether he’s drunk, spaced out or just totally nervous doesn’t even matter; he’s up there totally naked, singing as ‘tho there’s some kind of wire holding him up and a magnet at the back of the room sucking the words out of his throat...I’m not really overstating this....see Yung Wu at least once before one of us dies.”
Conflict #47 Feb.-March 1988 (page Weckerman)
YUNG WU review by GERARD COSLOY, Editor
From NJ.com’s Jim Testa on 6/15/12: “Such self-effacing modesty has long been part of Dave Weckerman’s appeal. He’s the quiet Feelie, the one who sits in the back and indefatigably drives those crazy rhythms with wood blocks and cowbell and tambourine. He may not stand in the spotlight, yet critics and fans agree that his contributions as percussionist have long defined the Feelies sound, which uniquely blends the super-agitated and the pastoral.”
YUNG WU’s Shore Leave has never received a properly luscious reissue treatment. However, according to our old friends at Twin Tone/Coyote Records: “Released for Coyote Records by Twin/Tone Records October 8, 1987. In the first five years of release it sold 4,040 vinyl copies and 824 Cassettes. It is now ‘out of print’. The original 30 IPS Masters were transferred to digital in March of 2003 using state of the art converters. You can purchase a copy of this transfer burned to a custom CD for $15.00 from Twin/Tone Digital.”
Gerard Cosloy currently operates 12XU Records, which has just issued an excellent record by EMPTY MARKETS.
