CoolMom (I hope) and I will be heading into Hoboken tomorrow night to catch The Feelies' sold out, last-ever scheduled performance at Maxwell's. It should be another emotional evening.
Every time I listen to The Feelies, I remember sitting in my dorm room at NYU, reading the 1991 comparison that Robert Christgau did for The Village Voice between The Feelies and their more successful contemporaries, R.E.M. I did a Google search this afternoon and found it re-printed at Christgau's site.
"The crucial difference, as I complained at the time, was corn quotient--the Feelies disguised the folk-rock romanticism that R.E.M. reveled in. Its textures thick with lyrical underbrush, its vocals soaring past drawl into the sonic haze, R.E.M. was the most luxuriantly Southern of the Athens bands; from their Passaic County fastness, the Feelies imbued nerdy suburban goofiness with spare downtown cool, rocking out all the while. And in 1986 there was no question which aesthetic was more suitable, more satisfying, more powerful. For me, anyway. In 1986. The Feelies'."
That "nerdy suburban goofiness with spare downtown cool" could kind of describe Maxwell's as well.
If you're going to the show, come find me. I'll buy you a beverage and we can drink a toast to the place.
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