FELT (Go Kart Mozart, Denim)... Lawrence is amazing!

i go back and forth w/felt. like sometimes i'm like eh, insufferably pretentious and possibly twee in all the wrong ways

but then i listen to riding on the equator or stained-glass windows with fresh ears and meditate on the bubblegum perfume artwork and i'm like "fuggetaboutit,,,these guys..."

or like "dark red birds". it's just some guy muttering over organ stabs and someone playing the most boring ersztz nick drake guitar parts ever. and somehow it adds up to the greatest sunday morning or friday night song ever. all-purpose conciliatory vibes and more

@ brownie, if you own Absolute Classic Masterpieces, there is a Maurice Deebank solo track on there ("Dance Of Deliverance"). It sounds like Pink Floyd.

no i don't have it, but will look for it

i like pink floyd well enough

xpost So in love with Elektra they did this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1F6Dj_jCLs

You know on that Big Star box, where all the reviewers commented on how no one at the show on the live disc appeared to be listening to the band. I see your Big Star and raise you Felt in 1987 in Greenock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q66mrCKV6k

i don't understand why of all the beach boys to cover he did 'be still' but hey it works

so lawrence to do that

his cover bests the original imo

Do many of y'all have "Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. 2"? I believe it was a Japan-only release but it's 2 discs of the Duffy era that's so well chosen it stands helps build the case vis-a-vis the Deebank era.

I've got ACMv2, would have to dig in the cd boxes but I'm pretty sure it's a Creation issue, sleeve design to match vol 1 but in white rather than grey. I'd have a hard time choosing between the two eras, tbh; the Deebank stuff (esp. The Splendour of Fear) has moments of utterly transporting magnificence ("The Stagnant Pool" in particular), but I do really love the poppier Hammond ie. Duffy driven sound. I always loved the way they'd intersperse the albums with brilliantly odd EPs as well, I think right until the end Lawrence just did whatever he wanted and as del points out upthread it's taken a couple of decades for people to catch up with him. Best band of the 80s for me, no question.

yeh, i like the creation stuff better, not b/c i think its inherently "better", but more that i think around that time he took cues from classic canonical singer-songwriters and heartily embraced that role, as opposed to merely enterprising to be a quirky-ish indie band. "she lives by the castle", sheesh, it could have been written by willie nelson or somebody. so impressive

Most of the back catalogue showed up on Spotify fairly recently so I've been rediscovering loads of Felt in the office and kitchen at home (where I do majority of Spotify listening). Can state categorically that no type of work or cooking related activity is not improved by blasting "I Will Die With My Head In Flames" and "Ballad of the Band" on repeat play.

Totally love Poem too though, dig Lawrence's insistence on Television style crediting of the guitar solos on a track-by-track basis. Think my fave bit is the soloing on "Riding on the Equator", could listen to that all day.

yes!

Had an extremely pleasurable morning of compiling and ripping all Felt single and EP tracks into a single playlist.

Three of my favourite Deebank-era songs were non-album singles ("Something Sends Me To Sleep", "My Face Is On Fire", and "Penelope Tree", which is probably my favourite Felt song).

The Duffy-era singles are mostly very dark and sinister, fantastic. "The Final Resting of the Ark" 12" and "Space Blues" 12" are just great. Terrific songs cut with Sakamoto-esque CP-70 instrumentals from Martin Duffy.

I hope he did something nice: Bob, Pete and Sarah popped round with a bottle of Malibu and some antiseptic wipes or something ...

My only complaint with "Absolute Classic Masterpieces Vol. 2" is they left off "September Lady", "All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead" and "I Can't Make Love To You Anymore". Granted, they weren't singles, but still. I added them to my digital version. ;-)

If I have Abso Classic Master 2 do I need Bubblegum Perfume?

I hope he did something nice: Bob, Pete and Sarah popped round with a bottle of Malibu and some antiseptic wipes or something ...

lol

they gave him a vacuum cleaner with ape hangers

If I have Abso Classic Master 2 do I need Bubblegum Perfume

I don't think so, the two ACM comps cover everything every other Felt comp has.

bubblegum perfume is a weird compilation. it hits all the b-sides to 12" material, which, granted is great! but it misses many of the "hits" from their albums, like september lady or castle or whatever

This is a really hard band to compile.

true

The original version of Bubblegum version contains the same non-album tracks as ACM2. However, the recently reissued version of BP replaces three of the album tracks with single tracks that haven't been on cd before.

xxp I think BP was intended as a "pop" album which is why there's no long tracks.

I'd suggest tracking down the following non-LP tracks, most of which are on the comps (some are not, i.e. "My Face Is On Fire", "Sunlight Strings")

"Ballad Of The Band"
"I Didn't Mean To Hurt You"
"Ferdinand Magellan"
"The Final Resting Of The Ark"
"There's No Such Thing As Victory"
"My Face Is On Fire"
"Penelope Tree"
"Something Sends Me To Sleep"
"Space Blues"
"Sunlight Strings"

And the LPs.

Essential:

"The Strange Idols Patter and other Short Stories"
"The Splendour Of Fear"
"Forever Breathes The Lonely Word"
"Poem Of The River"

Underrated:

"The Pictorial Jackson Review"

Good:

"Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty"
"Ignite The Seven Cannons"

A few good tracks:

"Me and a Monkey on the Moon"

Non-essential organ-led instrumental albums:

"Let the Snakes Crinkle their Heads to Death"
"Train Above the City"

Felt - Pick Only 27

lol

i love pictorial to death. so perfect

he's alternately lou reed and dylan like coney island baby / just like tom's thumb's blues vibe. to me, anyway

@ scott "No (single)? Madness!" vs. "No (instrumental)? Madness!"

Pictorial Jackson is the worst for me ... the instrumentals are great but some of the the songs seem half-done. Production is dull too.

yeah, it may as well be a recording of demos or whatever, but i love it. the first few seconds of ivory past alone, wow

i love the way the lyrics are so defeatist and contrarian and bitter but then every fourth line or so a glimmer of genuine wisdom puts in an appearance even through the resignation and life-sickness

i mean in the album as a whole

i own 20+ felt releases on vinyl and i still feel like i won't be able to die happy until i own all the japanese pressings of the albums. cuz i'm sick like that.

i just thought of that looking at that page of releases.

plus the japanese releases have inserts that didn't come with u.k. pressings.

I posted this a month ago on another thread:

I remember walking down Parkway in Camden. I was walking on the street and he pulled me onto the curb and actually shouted at me. "A rock star can not be killed by a black cab or a mini cab." I was just drunk, but it stuck with me. Being killed by a cab would just not be good enough for me or for Lawrence… in his eyes of course.

i don't really care what that guys thinks about felt, but i read that anyway. when it was posted before.

the moptop guy. the oasis guy or whatever.

wow, what a great interview, thanks. agree with him that martin duffy is a genius.

also, lol at that quote. so fitting i guess

is weird and saddening that he wrote a song chastising a junkie and then became one. oh well. life

'New Day Dawning' could be their soul/Stax masterpiece, and 'Free' is pure gospel Aretha.

listening to live shows, there truly were a lot of moments where they sounded like booker t and the mg's!!

man i love forever breathes, the heavily reverbed guitars and the organ-driven renderings of his songs, but the background vox never worked for me.

i love the backing vocals on forever breathes the lonely word, and in fact pretty much all felt, esp. the re-recording of fortune on gold mine trash, lawrence can always use a vocal foil. fbtlw is flawless , it's so fussy though! i was listening to the andy kershaw radio session the other day, and it is to be honest a bit of a shocker, rain of crystal spires in particular is all over the shop, rhythm section way up the mix, guitar bits tripping over each other, vocals off key, it exudes a strong we're playing this for the first time vibe, but it all sound so effortless on the lp! that session has the only studio version of when the dawn comes creeping in too which you get the impression could have wound up pretty great had it been done justice.

Does anyone know the original proposed running order of the original poem of the river? thats always intrigued me, i know i can't make love to you any more was supposed to be on it, but the recording didn't work out, but i seem to recall some others were scrapped too, and silver plane was cooked up in a hurry to fill the gap.

poem of the river is the last perfect album for me, i get almost as annoyed by the underproduction of pictorial jackson review as the overproduction of ignite the seven canons these days. While the former is a great record, it's galling that mcgee wouldn't shell out for a proper production, i assumed that it was lawrence's decision to bash out something rough and ready, but it somehow makes all the difference that he though they were demos. it's kindof fun to hear felt being scrappy, but you get the feeling with a bit of gloss and depth it could have equalled forever breathes lonely word.

for all the oddity in his catalogue, the real anomaly for me is me and a monkey on the moon. it's like he's saying this is the band we could have been all along if we'd played it straight. it has grown on me in recent years, partly as he's great at writing really straight lyrics, as evidenced by denim, but some of those guitar solos do bother me....

hmm yeah

me and a monkey has never taken root with me as much as it could in theory

can't believe silver plane was a rushed-off filler track! so wonderful and dylanesque

not sure what the original running order was, just know that when the dawn... was supposed to appear on it

yeah, for being such fundamentally well-crafted songs, it is a little frustrating that the production on pictorial jackson review is not there...but i still love it to death. it's that and "poem" for me.

yeah silver plane is great. it makes sense that it came quickly though, it just glides along.

the monkeying about with bubblegum perfume bothers me a bit too, mostly because female star is manifestly not a great felt song and this is probably my single favourite felt artefact. i have three copies. maybe i need to make that four now. the sleeve proofs (very heavily) annotated by lawrence that were reprinted in the foxtrot fanzine are priceless though, yeah lawrence's design eye is dead on. mercilessly so.

It's funny how the instrumental records are generally dismissed as inessential, crinkle in particular is an amazing record. people seem more inclined to approve of these kind of ventures when they're interspersed with pop songs or on b sides. i suppose thats understandable.

yeah i've spent a lot of time with crinkle and train...

shit i need to check out that foxtrot thing.

even if one hates felt's actual music, can't imagine dismissing the artwork out of hand. i mean...

naw, it's lawrence's critique of the rework in progress of the bubblegum sleeve for the reissue, it's classic passive aggressive art direction, i mean it's great, everything he says is absolutely spot on. and theres some additional comments written on homeless shelter headed stationery.

that fanzine is worth checking out, the best bit is an previously unpublished interview from 1986, but there is a wealth of good stuff in there.

ha, oh loz...

I've a vague idea that I picked up a free Felt flexi in Our Price, Watford - I think around Me and a Monkey ...

yeah, get out of the mirror so i can see, i think that was their farewell gift to an indifferent world

this is a bit adrift, but i picked up heidi berry's firefly a little while ago, martin duffy is all over it, i think it's from '87 and it is pretty great, very reminiscent of poem of the river in a weird lady singer songwritery way.

What are the three unique-to-CD tracks on Bubblegum Perfume? Bcuz eMusic has it, so I can just cherry pick those tracks.