Consumer Guide Album

The Feelies: Some Kinda Love: Performing the Music of the Velvet Underground [Bar/None, 2023]
In a career that was over in less than four years between 1967 and 1970, the Velvet Underground released four albums containing 37 discrete original songs, 17 of which plus the late-breaking, atypical, always welcome houserocker "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" are revived here on a single CD that lasts some 71 minutes and is also available from the streaming platform of your choice and as a heavy-duty vinyl double-LP that has its sonic attractions. All convene two well-regarded metro-area bands, NYC's Velvets with their legend and NJ's Feelies with their cult, the excuse being a live musical adjunct to a 2018 Manhattan art/memorabilia/gewgaws show devoted to said legend. Initially slotted for the exhibition's cramped performance space, it was relocated to Jersey City's 800-capacity White Eagle Hall, goosing the music decisively. True, Glenn Mercer's accomplished enough vocals serve among other things to remind you what a subtle and idiosyncratic singer Lou Reed became, an evolution that flowered every which way post-Velvets but was there in embryo from the start. But Reed's circa-1970 songbook now has Mercer's mark on it nonetheless. And the guitars--well, they're a big reason you'll want to buy these remakes. Lou Reed having proved a great guitarist, I know it verges on sacrilegious to say so, but comparison with 1969 Velvet Underground Live, the 1969 Quine tapes, and the 1969 Matrix tapes, worthy excavations all, lead me to suspect that the next time I feel like hearing this material I'll be going to my F shelves. A