When Company Comes

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Plein soleil   AKA: Purple Noon  (Rene Clement, 1960), a French film based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley

Forty years ago, some young men from Haledon New Jersey started a rock band named after an Aldous Huxley reference. The Feelies shared influences (the Stooges, the Modern Lovers, the Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones) and ultimately stages with the punk bands that played at CBGBs and other clubs across the river in New York, but never a sound. Their white-knuckled guitar rave-ups propelled terse tales of suburban anxiety and musical transcendence stood out from the rest of the Stiff Records line-up at least as much as the fact that they were American and the rest of the line-up wasn’t. After their first LP Crazy Rhythms the rhythm section quit and guitarists Glenn Mercer and Bill Millions recruited drummer Stanley Demeski, percussionist Dave Weckerman, and bassist Brenda Sauter, who have been with the Feelies ever since. Since Feelies time encompasses long dormant phases, Demeski, who provides our Listed today, has also had time for stints in Luna, Speed The Plough, Winter Hours, and East Of Venus. The Feelies just released In Between, their first album in six years; Bill Meyer’s review of it for Dusted notes, “The Feelies may tell small tales and play like they’re living in them, but it all rings true.”

Demeski had this to say about his list: I’ve done these before, mostly on stupid Facebook, so I’ll use the “10 LP’s that influenced my playing and general taste in music” theme for this one. I’m going to try to go in chronological order.

German poster for PATERSON (Jim Jarmusch, USA, 2016)

Designer: TBD