Archive for March 2009
“A Bunch of Small Sparks”: The Feelies Reunite — An Interview with Glenn Mercer
- filed under Music
I had no good excuse for discovering the Feelies too late, but by the time I fell in love with their albums (The Good Earth and Only Life, in particular) they had already broken up. As the years went by I assumed they would always remain atop my personal list of bands that I hoped would reunite, even as others, like the Pixies and the Police, got back together.
And then last year the group reformed, playing several shows in the New York area last Summer. I saw them on night two at their old stomping grounds at Maxwells in Hoboken, where they looked and sounded like they hadn’t lost a step.
As always, John Pareles describes them best: “they pushed the rock ’n’ roll basics — two or three chords, an unswerving beat — toward the ecstatic. They defined those few chords with intricately interlocking parts, bearing down on them to turn repetition into a frenetic rave-up.”
This weekend the group will be playing in Philly and DC and are a must see. I recently spent a bit of time with guitarist and vocalist Glenn Mercer and asked him about the band’s reunion and their plans for the future.
Howard: What sparked the reunion that you guys had last summer and that is now continuing into the year 2009?
Glenn: Basically a small bunch of small sparks really. It wasn’t one particular incident that brought it about. I guess the first thing was making contact with Bill again. I was talking with him after quite a long time just kind of dealing with some business stuff and the topic of playing came up — that was probably around 2001 maybe or 2002. And I guess we would get offers here and there a couple of times a year and I would always present them to Bill and he seemed interested but he had a lot of things that kind of prevented him from doing it — personal. And we really didn’t want to do it unless we could do it with 100% focus and he didn’t feel he could do that at the time. Finally things worked out where he could do it so we had the offer from Sonic Youth to do the summer stage in New York last summer and just everybody was available and it sounded like a lot of fun so we rehearsed for that, did that show, a couple of warm-up shows and it all went well so we just kind of continued from there.
Howard: And what has it been like playing together last year and then since then? Is it like riding a bike you just get back on or is it different?
Glenn: Well I have always been playing. And I have been playing with most of the people [in the Feelies] on and off over the years, Bill being the exception. It felt comfortable. It’s pretty easy to get back in to the groove. It wasn’t a big stretch for any of us I don’t think.
Howard: And now you have an upcoming show in Philly and an upcoming show in Washington. Any other plans to tour more widely?
Glenn: Probably not a tour. We get a lot of offers so we just kind of take it a little bit at a time. Each time we play we do a little bit more. We traveled up to Boston and did a couple of shows up there. It is kind of like I said just taking it a couple of steps at a time really.
I can’t foresee us getting back to where we were where it was a full time career. We’re just basically really doing it for fun and for being able to hang out with each other and stuff.
Howard: And are you guys recording at all?
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Time is Right (new song)
Glenn: I did demos of some new songs. I have kind of been recording all along. I did a solo record, had everybody from the Feelies except Bill play on it. We are kind of looking toward that as a goal. But not knocking ourselves out with it either. We never were really that prolific anyway so…I can’t foresee us having albums with this stuff any time soon but we are working towards that.
Howard: And you guys have re-issues coming out this year?
Glenn: Yes, The first 2 albums Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth. On Bar None.
Howard: Are those the two that you own the rights to or the first of two that you expect? How is that going to work?
Glenn: They are the two that we have the rights to. Apparently some company put out Only Life fairly recently without our involvement through some arrangement with A&M or through Universal.
Howard: That must be sort of a strange thing to find somebody putting your album out without your input?
Glenn: Well it happens. I mean there are two ways to look at it. It is not what you want but it is getting the music out so…
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Let’s Go (Original on the Good Earth)
Howard: Did you all re-master the songs for the reissues in Bar None? And are there going to be any extras besides or cuts or anything?
Glenn: Yes, they have been re-mastered. We didn’t have a lot of bonus stuff though. We might put a couple things out as downloads, as an incentive for someone to buy the whole album to get a couple of extra songs that way but not on the actual hard copy CD. They are just going to be as they were when they originally appeared with extended liner notes, booklet kind of thing.
Howard: When are they coming out?
Glenn: Well we are still working on it now. Pretty far along with it so we are kind of hoping by the summer I think.
Howard: Any plans to release any of the shows now as sort of a live disc or anything or DVD or anything like that?
Glenn: We don’t have any plans to. We have been recording a lot of stuff and filming some stuff but really not the definitive plan for doing anything with it besides just for our own archives for now.
Howard: Do you hear much of a difference between your sound playing live now and 20 years ago or 30 years ago?
Glenn: No not really.
Howard: So, for the uninitiated what is the difference between the Feelies, the Trypes, and Yung Wu and the Willies?
Glenn: Well let me take them one at a time. The Trypes was pretty much basically the Feelies with some other local friends of ours that was the material of the key board player John Baumgartner primarily, and the Willies was sort of an instrumental version of the Feeliess. Yung Wu was basically the Feeliess with some local friends again; most of the people that were in the Tripes as well — that was Dave Weckermans’ material. So basically it was the same core group of people with a handful of extra friends doing either Johns or Dave’s songs. And the Willies had sort of an instrumental kind of ambient, open ended sound. Each time we played it would be a little different.
Howard: And of the 4 Feelies albums and other albums you have made since then do you have a favorite? Is there one that sort of stands out for you? Anything that works better now live? Are you playing more stuff from any one of the albums or is it sort of equally distributed?
Glenn: I like each of them for different reasons. When we play live we do at least a couple from each record and some of the covers that we used to do. So it is pretty fairly balanced I think between the whole tenure of the band.
Howard: You did the soundtrack to the movie Smithereens. Any thought of having that come out on its own?
Glenn: I don’t think so. We are not in contact with the company that put the movie out so…And it wasn’t the sort of the material that you would listen to without the film. It wouldn’t work without the film. It was just short little pieces.
Howard: Biggest change that you see now in the New York area music scene and sort of music business in general between now and when you started?
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Away (original on Only Life)
Glenn: That is a tough one. There are a lot of things different. A lot of things are the same. You definitely see a lot of people holding up their cell phones and stuff now.
Howard: Are you finding that your fans are your contemporaries — people who were following you when you were active 20 years ago or is it a new generation of fans who are discovering you now?
Glenn: It is a pretty good mix between the two. A lot of old fans but definitely some younger people that didn’t get to see us the first time.
Howard: Thanks so much for your time – I look forward to seeing you in DC
Glenn: Take care then. Goodbye.
“Britney Into My Heart”
- filed under Music
In 2008 Brooklyn singer songwriter Alina Simone released a passionate and compelling album of modern Russian folk covers that was one of the year’s best. Now she has turned her attention a little closer to home and is completing a new album of her own material in English (which is previewed below) — but not before she dabbles a bit by playing a Britney Spears cover or two. I asked her about all this and found the line from Yanka Dyagileva to Britney is shorter than you might think.
Howard: Okay, so, you have gone from Russian Folk Music to Britney Spears.
Alina: Well let’s not get carried away. I was kind of joking with that. Like I’ve done a little, a few Britney Spears covers but, the new album isn’t Britney Spears covers or anything –
Howard: I bet all the Britney Spears fans will be very disappointed to hear that.
Alina: Probably, but you know I just have to follow my own path (laughing). The new album is more Sinead O’Connor than Britney Spears I have to admit. But I am trying to bring a little Britney into my heart and not be so sad and dark all the time. I think that would be a good step for me.
Howard: But you have played some of her stuff live, right?
Alina: Yeah, yeah. Oops I Did it Again has been a favorite; and I’m working on a mandolin version of Toxic, and I’ve had one rehearsal of the Britney Spears cover band that I’m putting together here in Brooklyn, which is a lot of fun.
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Alina Simone covering Oops I Did It Again
Howard: And what is it about Ms. Spear’s music that attracts your interest?
Alina: You know, now let’s not overstate this, let’s not get carried away here. I was in Russia, and the song Toxic was completely inescapable, and I hated it, and I was so annoyed, I was like, Fuck there’s that song again! But then when I got back, whenever I heard it I found it strangely comforting. It was like that experience of being in junior high and having all of those eighties hits just drilled into you until you know every word and it’s all vaguely comforting, and you just want to be surrounded by this cloud of mainstream pop all the time. That’s how it started.
Howard: I’m having this experience myself because as a parent you listen to a lot of that kind of music and my daughter is becoming obsessed with Hanna Montana slash Miley Cyrus and when we are in the car she insists on listening to her songs over and over and over again. And so over time I’ve actually come to like some of it.
Alina: Yeah and I actually think that in terms of having kids. I definitely want to be the kind of parent that can listen to what their kid is listening to with an open mind without a knee jerk reaction against it. I want to be able to evaluate it on its own terms. Like, the Britney Spears songs I like the most are the ones that Britney Spears had very little to do with, they were written by other people, and those people really know what they’re doing. They’re incredible craftsmen.
Howard: Have you heard the Ryan Adams cover I Want it That Way? It’s awesome.
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Ryan Adams covering I Want it That Way
Alina: Well actually it’s funny because I did a reading from a chapter of my book, and my publisher asked me to do Britney Spears covers after reading. At the Russian Samovar in Midtown and so I sang Oops I Did it Again.
Howard: Awesome.
Alina: It’s making the rounds.
Howard: Alright, so let’s talk about the book. What’s it about?
Alina: There’s a lot of stuff about my family, my Russian family, my family in the Ukraine, my family here. There’s a chapter about religion, about sort of choosing between being Russian Orthodox and being Jewish, because my family’s kind of half and half. There’s a lot of stuff about trials and tribulations on the lowest rung of the Indie Rock Circuit here in the States.
Sinead O’Connor comes up because that’s who I wanted to be. I wanted to be the one pop star who I loved who was really rebellious and didn’t care about being pretty, even though she was really beautiful and who really sang with passion, and emotion. And you know she just didn’t sound horribly over produced like everyone else.
I grew up in a family with pretty, you know pretty conservative values in terms of what their child was supposed to do when she grew up. Like with a lot of recent immigrants. I was actually born in the Ukraine and my parents struggled a lot in order to give me all the opportunities of being, middle class American kid growing up here. So, I always wanted to sing but I was really scared of disappointing them, and so I actually didn’t play my first show until I was twenty six years old. So, you know, slowly just because I was just so terrified and I just thought that I would fail and my parents would be really disappointed in me, everyone else would be disappointed in me, I wouldn’t be good at it. And so I was really full of a lot of anxieties and insecurities and depression and so the book is kind of about, like overcoming that to be honest — how I just kind of forced myself to do it. I’m still doing that.
Howard: So, you were born in Ukraine, you came here, and then you went back as an adult after college, right? Is that when you decided to record the last album?
Alina: No — I’ve been listening to Yanka Dyagileva’s music before I ever went back to Russia. I was listening to it when I first moved to New York, like in my mid twenties, and someone in Brighton Beach who I met on the street, a performer on the street, gave me a cassette tape, just like her music was circulated when she was alive. I just fell in love with it and I played it endlessly on tour. It never left my car — I was totally obsessed and people would make fun of me. And I would tell people I really want to cover this woman’s music, but I thought it was the kind of thing I could only do if I became, you know, super successful and self indulgent because that’s just the kind of thing you do after you’ve peaked and say, ‘Well now I’m on the downswing and so I can do that self indulgent project and not do a very good job of it.’ And so I was waiting for that moment, but then a friend of mind convinced me to apply for this little emerging artists grant in the meantime, and I just a wrote one page thing about wanting to make this record, and I ended up getting it. And it came with a deadline of nine months. All of a sudden I really had to do it. To get the record in the hands of these people within nine months. So I –
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Half My Kingdom — Alina Simone
Howard: And you did it and it was fabulous. And now that artistic moment has passed and you are back singing in English?
Alina: Yeah, much to your dismay. I am singing in English.
Howard: Not just to my dismay. You have a huge fan base out there who was expecting the follow up in Russian and now they’re going to have to adjust to an English language CD from you.
Alina: Believe me there are just as many people who are going to be relieved that I’m not singing in Russian any more. A lot of them are Russian.
Howard: And what is the direction of the new album? It’s not in Russian, but is it political in the way that your last album was?
Alina: It’s about Obama. No, just kidding. It’s, it’s like, I wish that I had this awesome story for it because I feel like that’s what really sold the Yanka album, having this amazing story, but I feel like it’s just twelve good songs. It has nothing to do with one another. Some that are literally like dance fever type jams, some I play auto harp as the lead instrument, some are slow, and some are like very heavy and just abrasive rock. So I don’t know, I mean I haven’t sequenced it yet, and it’s really, we’re literally mixing the last song tonight. And I think the hardest thing will be to sequence it – I did a concept album – the Yanka album was a concept album, it was all of a piece, and this one isn’t.
Howard: And when will it be out?
Alina: Oh Howard, I don’t know. I don’t know who’s going to put it out and the world is so weird right now.
Howard: Presumably the economy is not making it easy for people who are looking for music labels to put their music on.
Alina: Yeah I mean it’s like I’ve never made any money, ever, so — for me it’s not really about the money. But I also just would want it to be done well, you know, if it’s put out. For it not to be botched basically. I may end up just doing it myself. I’m not ruling that out. So I don’t know. I guess I have to talk to my people, which will take about eight minutes, and then make a decision.
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Beautiful Machine — From Alina Simone’s Forthcoming Album
The other thing is that it’s been two years since I started writing these songs, and I’ve lost all ability to judge how good they are or how good the album is because I’ve heard them all so so many times. So I think at this point I really need to get it out to some people who haven’t heard any of my new stuff at all, and get some feedback about what they think and what the possibilities are for it, because I know that I’m weird, and I’m under no delusions that I’m a good judge.
Howard: I don’t know, I think your last album was probably the best selling album of that genre last year, wouldn’t’ you think?
Alina: Yes, the huge niche I occupied in Soviet cover music, only released in the U.S
Howard: If Tower Records still existed you would have your own little section all to yourself. Russian folk music covers.
Alina: Right, yeah, maybe I should just keep building on that.
Howard: No, no, no, I’m sure it will be great. Well, thanks for doing this.
Alina: Thank you.
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