Just a few hours before the gunman broke out his weapons in Orlando, my husband and I were at a small concert hall in suburban New Jersey, listening to the Feelies perform their fortieth anniversary show. For those of you who don’t know the Feelies, they’re an alternative/punk band, born in a garage in the 1970s, most memorable for their lightning speed and inventive percussion. “‘Our manager used to wonder if we were going to explode onstage,'” Bill Million (one of the bands’ founders) said to the New York Times in 2008.
It’s those “crazy rhythms” that drew my husband to their music. A drummer himself, my husband and his college band, Mogote, could be found most Tuesdays senior year, playing around Boston at dive-bars for a crowd mostly comprised of our friends and a cool professor or two. As a sophomore in 1991, Charles wrote a letter (yes, before email) to Stanley Demeski, the Feelies’ drummer, to ask if Stan ever took on students. Stan was Charles’ drumming hero, for the intricacy and speed with which he could beat the drums, for the unique sounds he could produce with them. Stanley, wrote back, simply, “I’m always happy to give lessons.” Thus began a lifetime friendship, even though Charles never acquired Stan’s speed.
The punk movement, growing out of the Velvet Underground and Stooges, through the Modern Lovers and later epitomized by Television and Wire, grew out of rebellion. It was a hard-edged, anti-establishment rejection of the excesses of the music industry. The Feelies were very much a part of this alternative tradition, sometimes touring with Lou Reed. (Though they are also a lovably nerdy group from the Jersey ‘burbs who still work day jobs and usually wear decidedly uncool baggy, pleated pants to concerts.)
Stan once recalled to Charles that his own musical epiphany was at a Television concert at CGBGs. As a young musician, it showed Stan that there was a path to play music that was “different” from the mainstream, to express oneself without regard to prevailing norms or standards. To be creative.
The band happened to have its fortieth birthday the same week I was lucky enough to see Hamilton the musical. While Hamilton is about the original rebellion, the American Revolution, it is also about a new rebellion. One that strikes out against the white hegemony over the media, the arts, and the telling of history itself. Lin-Manuel Miranda turned the Broadway musical upside down by using rap instead of traditional show tunes, by putting people of color in virtually all the show’s roles, by rejecting the cleaned-up version of Thomas Jefferson that’s in our kids’ history books. The wonderful magic of Hamilton is that our country is embracing this rebellion, indeed reveling in it. Sitting in the show, one cannot help but feel swept up in a new historical moment, a moment of opportunity and change. The kids who started bands in their garages and watched Lou Reed in the 1970s probably felt much the same way. I imagine the gay community is likewise delighting in the new freedoms that are rolling across the country following the 2015 Supreme Court decision requiring recognition of same-sex marriage.
And yet. The same week that Hamilton was set to win eleven Tonys, a man mowed down innocent men and women who were dancing and listening to music at a gay bar. It was a heinous act of violence and hatred against a group that has been mercilessly discriminated against for centuries simply for loving. As I stood among the crush of people at the Feelies concert Saturday night, I checked for the exits. I considered what might happen with so many people packed together if an explosion or a gun were to blow. Because this is what we do now. Gay, straight, black, white, Latino, Asian, Muslim, Jew, abled, disabled. We check the exits. This is our new America, too. One in which we are not safe when we are reveling in our freedom.
With this confluence of ideas swimming in my mind, as the Tonys rolled Sunday night, I shared some things I learned at the Feelies concert over Twitter. Here they are in slightly expanded form:
- The human spirit craves all kinds of music, dance, art, and love. No hater with a gun can kill this abiding truth.
- The Feelies sweat more than the Hamilton cast, but spit less.
- I don’t like when musicians stare right into my eyes from stage. I prefer to enjoy the show anonymously.
- The audience for a punk band from the 70s is 99% white, mostly dudes. The day I saw Hamilton, the audience was also mostly white.
- There’s such a thing as Finger-Ease Guitar String Lubricant. Because sometimes frets need lube too.
- A drum played hard can make it feel like your heart is beating outside you. The same musical effect occurs in Hamilton when Eliza soothes her dying son, shot by a bullet in a duel. All around us, we now hear the silence of the Orlando shooting victims’ hearts.
You can be a woman with gray hair in comfy mules and still be boss at a punk rock concert. (Punk is largely known for its an angry male culture. But I’ve gone along on the Feelies ride for 26 years largely because of their bad-ass female bass player, Brenda Sauter. She is the zen-like center of a group that sometimes feels like it’s a spinning top.)
- It might seem like the floor beneath you will give out with so many people dancing and jumping on it. But it won’t. The floor will hold.
- People think it is perfectly okay to organize photos on their iPhones in the second row of a rock concert, under the gaze of the guitarists. Perhaps this is why Lin-Manuel Miranda saw fit to tweet the day that I saw his show: “Today marks the first time we had an audience member with a service dog in the front row. They were both wonderful. Dog didn’t text once.”
- There’s a percussionist in our world who feels the tambourine (and maracas and cowbell and old cans) more deeply than any of us will ever feel anything. Jim Test of the Jersey Journal explains that Dave Weckerman “may not stand in the spotlight, yet critics and fans agree that his contributions as percussionist have long defined the Feelies sound, which uniquely blends the super-agitated and the pastoral.” To see him in action, check out Brian Collins’ video bootleg from the concert.
- The Feelies know how to dial the Stones’ “Paint It Black” up to super human speed. It’s the perfect song to listen to on a day of darkness.
- Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, who accompanied the Feelies at the concert, is so into the music that it seems like he’s making love with his
guitar. - Ditto with the microphone.
- The cast of Hamilton and the Feelies both wear wardrobes from another period. (I kid because I love.)
- The Feelies are playing a free concert at Central Park SummerStage on Monday, July 18.
- “Crazy Rhythms” remains one of the best songs ever made and if you don’t know it: Listen.
- There are plenty of exits at The Woodland in Maplewood NJ, lining either side of the concert hall. A gunman would be hard-pressed to contain all that love inside.
- The only thing more exquisite than a father teaching his kids about freedom by helping them memorize Hamilton lyrics is to stand beside your love, blissing out to the music you have loved together for over 25 years. Happy Father’s Day, Charles.
- You might feel like your 20-year-old self hard-rocking on a Saturday night, but you’ll still be watching Strawberry Shortcake with your 5 year-old come morning.
- The next morning will also mean ringing ears, full-throttle headache, pain in your bad knees. But you will be alive. “Look around, look around, at how lucky we are…”
