Plus, French lyrics!

Yes!

Also, I got the remastered versions of all three albums and HOLY CRAP do they sound good. Crisp, clear, and I think on more than one song I can hear Stewart Copeland fiddling with his sticks just before he starts to play.

There's a man I would have liked to see play drums in his younger days -- all frenetic, flailing limbs and syncopated, unexpected beats that just fill me with joy to listen to. Also, Stewart was one of those drummers who hit hard (Hec and I have discussed the joys of amasing, hard-hitting drummers before). Stewart apparently used to have to tape his sticks to his hands to keep them from flying away. And what's really amazing is that you can't always hear the madness right away. Sometimes Stewart is playing a very simple snare part and the mad flailing is on the high hat, where it's harder to notice.

Apparently Stewart was hitting his drums so hard at the reunion gig for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 that he busted his snare head.

The joke with the Feelies was that they had regular jobs and so could only tour on holiday weekends. That eventually changed, but I think I first saw them in the mid-80\'s over a Washington\'s Birthday weekend at a tiny club in Harvard Square called Jonathan Swift\'s.

They were a ferocious live band!

I remember an interview with them in Newsweek from 1988 where they joked that their primary goal as musicians was being able to quit their day jobs for a few months.

Anyway, I have a lot of Feelies music on my computer. Not just the albums, but EPs, b-sides, the Trypes, Yung Wu, and so on. And I could upload some to Buffistarawk2.

Speaking of, Buffistarawk is almost full. Should we delete some early posts or just abandon it and move on?

Something about their sound just never clicked for me.

Fair enough.

Now if you want to talk about a great run, the first four TALKING HEADS records are pretty impressive back to front,

t nodding along with tommyrot

Plus they did one of the greatest concert films of all time.

They used to run Stop Making Sense every now and then at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor (a great marquee theater with a beatiful balcony section). Every time they did, you'd have thought you were at a concert. Everybody would get up and dance in the aisles and shout and generally have a great time.

Glenn Mercer's MySpace page (with sound) says that he has new CD coming out.

They used to run Stop Making Sense every now and then at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor (a great marquee theater with a beatiful balcony section). Every time they did, you'd have thought you were at a concert. Everybody would get up and dance in the aisles and shout and generally have a great time.

That was just out in theaters when I was a freshman at BU, and I think a group of us went to see it three times in one week.

Also, they were my first concert (the same tour as SMS), so I may not be capable of being objective about them.

That said, I've recently listened to several of them (a CD player in the car is SO useful), and I'm astonished how well they still sound amazing and unlike anything else. I was also surprised to find that out of the first four, it was the one that used to be my favorite - FEAR OF MUSIC - that had aged the worst for me. Still an awsome record, but it sounds like it's trying a little too hard to be...something. I'm not so surprised to find that of the last four, it was the most popular one (LITTLE CREATURES) that held the least interest to me now.

Glenn Mercer's MySpace page (with sound) says that he has new CD coming out.

I have a Wake Ooloo album and a bunch of Sunburst demos, all of which are somewhat lacking. Don't get me wrong: there's a few good songs on each, but the overall effect is mostly wet pasta.

Speaking of, Buffistarawk is almost full. Should we delete some early posts or just abandon it and move on?

We've already got BR2. I say we just add BR3.

Getting back to Rip it Up And Start Again it was fascinating reading about the Sheffield music scene in the seventies.

I had forgotten how socialist much of the UK was in the seventies. Sheffield was a huge labour stronghold, and went so far as to have a socialist city council, and it was not uncommon for kids to join the Young Communist League at that time.

Also, apparently, psilocibin mushrooms grew freely in the parks so teens and twenty y.o.s would get stoned for free and live on the dole.

My favorite thing, though was something called Meatwhistle, which was a city funded arts program for kids. (And yes, "meatwhistle" was slang for the male member.) It was so successful it was allowed to take over a huge old Victorian school which had been abandoned. They put on a show every week - theater, performance art, bands. Tons of open rooms for practicing. It was all very glam (super popular in Sheffield) and experimental and all the teen geeks were soldering together their home kit synths and getting stoned on mushrooms. Rock and Roll paradise!

Now if you want to talk about a great run, the first four TALKING HEADS records are pretty impressive back to front, and the last four have a lot of good-to-great songs even if they aren't quite as awe inspiring a LPs. Plus they did one of the greatest concert films of all time.

Also? French lyrics.

Now, if someone could just defend Bondie's first four albums we'd have a trifecta of random Frenchitude.