Blind Flashback is a new feature. It might go in depth, it very well might not. It may cease to exist in a heartbeat. But for the time being, it’s here and we should enjoy it.
😉
This is where I take a classic album that I SHOULD have heard, that I SHOULD know about, but, completely missed my attention.
Thanks to Spotify, I’ve been able to rectify that.
The Feelies – Crazy Rhythms 1980
The title actually says it all. This is all herky jerky rhythms and jangle. The roots for everything R.E.M., Aztec Camera and a host of 80s bands can be found, sort of, in here. This is also ground zero for alternative music.
At once impenetrable and accessible, the first thing I noticed was how difficult it was for me to give over to the album. It took time for me to realize that these are as much mood pieces as they are post-punk songs. Is it Penguin Cafe Orchestra? Or is it Talking Heads?
Is it Jangle Pop? or is it No-Wave?
Yes.
The album cover screams “NEW WAVE” but the music is something entirely different. Something that I’ve never heard before and never since. And yet, it’s all familiar.
The percussion is as important to the music in a way that percussion almost wasn’t to many New Wave bands. And yet, it was VITAL to Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow. But, in that case, it was a fad, aping African beats. Anton Fier IS tribal beats. And…crazy rhythms.
If Kraftwerk was a guitar band, they might have made an album like this. But they weren’t. And they weren’t from Suburban New Jersey.
if Jonathan Richman had a full band to play off of HE might have come up with this. But he didn’t.
I could go on and on. I had an album called “Red Snerts”, which you can search the web for if you’re interested in more about it. It was cheap at some record store in NY when I was 15. It featured New Wave bands of Indianapolis. Many of them sounded like they wanted to be The Feelies. But none of them got it quite right because The Feelies were also, weirdly, a party band. If your party was filled with pogo-ing nerds.
This is a spectacular piece but also one of those records I’m sort of glad I didn’t hear in 1980. Because I wouldn’t be able to discover it now.
Grade: A+
