The Feeling Redux
It’s about passion. It’s about belief. It’s about getting INFECTED!
I’m afraid too many of you out there abandoned my previous post on this act when I introduced it with a long diatribe about loneliness. So now I want to be more direct, I want you to go IMMEDIATELY to the above page, and LISTEN!
1. "Never Be Lonely"
Don’t you just COME ALIVE when you hear that intro? Isn’t it akin to a beautiful woman walking through the door, your honey smiling at you, making a turn on a pristine slope on a bluebird day? Music is supposed to be a release, a diversion from the bullshit of everyday life, it’s supposed to set your mind FREE!
If you’re invested in being depressed, you’d better hit the stop button right now. Because "Never Be Lonely" is a veritable AMUSEMENT PARK of a track. It twists and turns like a roller coaster, and elates you like a spin on the tilt-a-whirl. It’s like eating cotton candy and elbowing your loved one in their ribs.
I wrote about the lyrics previously
but I just want to say the contrast between the warm sound and the down lyrics represents the kind of pure pop that we used to believe in and is now illegal.
If "Never Be Lonely" doesn’t put a smile on your face, doesn’t make you feel like it’s fucking great to be alive, you’re DEAD!
2. "Sewn"
Majesty. It went out with the bombastic ramblings of the trying now to come back Meatloaf.
But Meatloaf was never subtle.
Think about "Stairway To Heaven". That’s what makes it so great, its REGAL SOUND!
There are two versions of this song. Try to find the long one (5:45), you’ll get the kind of guitar extravaganza you haven’t heard in a non-metal song in EONS! The type that makes you ache as you nod your head and smile.
Drop the needle, um, move your mouse to about 3:20. There begins the interlude. Not excised for Top Forty radio, just there for you to exalt in. And just after 4:20, the guitar starts to wail. As you’ve got the "ahhs" in the background and the lead singer exclaiming alongside. If you don’t want to IMMEDIATELY replay this track then you’ve got no soul.
3. "Kettle’s On"
Widely available P2P, but not on the MySpace site, nor the blogs or YouTube.
Remember album tracks? Songs that didn’t SOUND LIKE SINGLES??
Those were always our favorites. They were OUR cuts. Held back from the teeming masses being sold the confections. We DISCOVERED them, when we played records over and over and over again.
And that’s what I’ve done with the Feeling’s debut, "Twelve Stops And Home". I’d like to tell you it’s a classic. But really, it’s a handful of winners and a slough of better than average. It’s not a classic like 10cc’s debut, a winner from start to finish. Hell, they don’t make albums like that anymore. God, when records were under forty minutes, the wheat was separated from the chaff. You could only INCLUDE the good stuff.
"Twelve Stops And Home" is only fifty minutes. No, the real issue is this is a DEBUT! We didn’t used to need debuts to be fully-realized. Hell, who could expect "Get Your Wings" after Aerosmith’s debut? Never mind "Toys In The Attic" and "Rocks". No, a band works in a vacuum. And when they’re warmly embraced, get traction, emboldened they go back into the studio and follow their muse. It’s all fucked up today. Execs who can’t play an instrument bring in song doctors, trying to perfect the first album, really just a few singles, and then slog it hopefully in excess of a year, single by single, in all media, the act executing the same overplayed songs all over the world again and again. Whereas there used to be a one year cycle. You made a record, toured and then repeated. Sure, it might have burned the acts out, but it caught them in their glory, before they could spend all their earnings, when they still had their passion. Hell, you’ve got to be LUBRICATED to get to the good stuff. Work live too long, take too much time off and it takes too long to get back in the groove.
I turn on the tap and run some water
Flick a little switch on the wall
I’m hoping you remember what I taught ya
Hoping you remember me at all
Who hasn’t thought they enlightened their ex? That without them they’ll be unable to function, that they’ll be at a great loss?
Yet, undercutting this is a great fear that the old flame will move on, and FORGET YOU!
I’m strong but I feel like a mouse when you’re gone
And I’m weak but I’ll take on the world when you’re here
With me, with me
If you’re not more productive with him or her than without them, BREAK UP IMMEDIATELY! Relationships are not supposed to be restraining, but LIBERATING! You should be absent the angst, you should feel SET FREE TO BE THE BEST ME!
Can’t you see you’re in the wrong place
Will you please face it and come home
When I think about your sweet face
I can’t wait for you to come home
I can see you got a real taste but that champagne but its all gone
Come home, the kettle’s on
Oh, you left me for what you THOUGHT was better. You’ve realized you were deluded now, right? You’ve burned that new relationship out, right? He doesn’t understand you, get you like I do. Won’t you PLEASE come home and relieve me of this unending pain, of the loneliness.
I’ve got a little something on my mind
To keep it to myself isn’t really very kind
Pouring out my heart isn’t usually my style
But you gave me an inch so I’m gonna take a mile
Oh, you can’t believe the phone hasn’t rung, that they haven’t reached out, that they haven’t CONNECTED! You check to see that your phone isn’t off the hook, that your voice mail/answering machine is still working. Eventually you test THEIR line. Calling their home when they’re at work, calling their cell and hanging up. You’re checking the connection, which seems to be broken. So you try to reestablish it. After staying up all night, contemplating your action, you dial, and get through. They’re not who you want them to be. They’re disappointed to hear your voice. Or flat in affect. They’re quiet. But they’re gonna listen, to what you have to say.
So, given your chance, you speak from your heart, feeling this honesty will be enough, to make them see the light, to COME BACK!
But this never works. You just end up getting maudlin. And then mad that you’re having no effect.
I got all this from a RECORD! You can’t get a FRACTION of this from "SexyBack". Which is why radio is in decline and Tower Records went out of business. The religion is gone. The belief. We’ve gone elsewhere. Where the filters don’t exclude all that is meaningful, all that touches our hearts.
Used to be major labels signed what touched them and THEN figured out how to sell it. Now the sell comes first. How can we concoct something that will fit the avenues of exposure? The process ALONE kills the soul.
We used to have a PLETHORA of acts purveying material just this good, just this addictive. People say we’re old farts, that we don’t get it. But we DO, when we hear something as good as the Feeling.
Listening to these songs on my iPod I realized I HAD to see the band this week at the Key Club. I was even willing to PAY! But what if I showed up and it was SOLD OUT, what if I couldn’t GET IN!
I haven’t had this passion in so long. I haven’t changed, the music has.
