YouTube Rodeo: Half-Way To The Feelies And "Higher Ground"

Could a Feelies reunion be too far off? Really, with all the other big deal indie rock reunions that have transpired, isn't it time that the nerdy gang of guitar slingers with intense coffee nerves reforms? We don't want The New York Dolls, we don't want The Stooges, we want The Feelies. We rhapsodize about this fairly regularly, but time was you could trust your glossy music magazines to make decent recommendations. And so it was that in 1988 or so Spin or some similar outfit gave The Feelies' Only Life a glowing review so we walked across our suburb to the indie store in the basement of a building on the other side of the train tracks and bought it. On cassette, no less. The band broke up three years later after releasing the excellent Time For A Witness. And then we didn't have The Feelies anymore.

But check out the video above, which features one-half of the band's songwriting brain trust Glenn Mercer along with drummer Dave Weckerman. The duo perform "Higher Ground" from Only Life at a private party at a Brooklyn bar last September. It's awesome -- don't let the first :30 or so of dark, unsteady camera work put you off. We didn't hear about the semi-reunion at all, and if it wasn't for some message board chatter about a Feelies song being used in a new Volvo commercial we wouldn't have even thought to go look for Feelies stuff at YouTube for the first time in a year. Granted, Mercer and Weckerman continued to play together in a couple acts after The Feelies' 1991 demise, making this video a little less surprising. But still, that's half the original lineup. If somebody can get Bill Million in the same room with them, that'd be pretty awesome.

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