Deep Fascination

'Twas a long, strange week that started rather terribly with all the rain and flooding and cleanup and ended in the glorious exhaustion that followed last night's Feelies show. Thankfully, our basement is finally somewhat dry, thanks to hours and hours of work by Deb, her mom and me, pumping water out and removing ruined old boxes of stuff. We've all been sore and tired from the extra hours spent down in that dank, musty unfinished space.

Wednesday night, I was saddened to hear of the death of the great Alex Chilton, who scored a #1 hit ("The Letter") with the Box Tops the week I was born in 1967. He went on to form the legendary Big Star, a band that made three amazing power pop albums in the early '70s but never got their due; they influenced countless other bands including REM, the Replacements and Wilco. Chilton's post-Big Star output was erratic, but the band was beloved and was supposed to play a show at South by Southwest tonight. It will be a tribute show, instead. I've been listening to Big Star a lot the last few days.

Last night, I headed into Cambridge, where I got together with OJ to do some podcast recording. We had a live studio audience, with Doobs and Karen hanging out; we were all going to the Feelies show at the Middle East later. We talked about our top picks for songs as torture devices and our rock roots. It was good stuff, with Doobs chiming in on occasion.

We made it to the club at 10, just in time for the Feelies to hit the stage for the first of their two sets. The Feelies are another underappreciated yet extremely influential post-punk band, with four albums spanning from 1980 to 1991 before they broke up. They reunited in 2008 and have played occasional reunion gigs over the 18 months or so, but there's no talk of a new album.

Last night, there was no opening act. I figured they'd play two 45-minute sets and sure enough, the first set ended right at 10:45. We were in the back of the mostly full club and could only barely see the heads of frontman Glenn Mercer, guitarist Bill Million and bassist Brenda Sauter. There was a lot of gray hair in the joint (including mine), even more than the first reunion gig at the Roxy back in October '08. The set started off rather sedately and Mercer was pretty stationary for the most part, unlike the last two times I saw the band. Still, the band picked up momentum as the set went along and Mercer ripped off some impressive guitar solos. There was a 45-minute break, which seemed excessive; I figured they could have just played another half hour and been done with it.

We moved up closer to the stage for the second set, and it was a good decision. Mercer came out and seemed fired up, jumping around with reckless abandon on the tiny stage and wringing the notes out of his guitar like he was pissed off at it. He doesn't say much of anything on stage when he's not singing and he never takes off his shades, but you could tell he was throwing himself into the performance more. As the night wore on, I fully expected the band to wrap things up at 12:15, but they just kept going. In addition to the band's classics like "Fa-Ci-La," "Deep Fascination" and "The High Road", they played covers of the Beatles' "She Said, She Said," REM"s "Carnival of Sorts" and the Stones' "Paint It Black."Soon they went off the stage but came back for an encore. And another. And another. After the fifth, it was about 12:50 and the club actually turned on music, which is the usual sign for folks to start leaving. We had almost made it to the stairs when the Feelies came back out and played two more songs. In all, they played SIX ENCORES and 135 minutes of rock. It was an exhausting and transcendent experience.