home page
|
the
Wake Ooloo home page |
by Eston Martz
December 1996
hy is it that some of the most deserving bands never seem to get that brass ring? Take the Feelies, whose 12-year career produced four excellent albums, a handful of B-sides, notoriously infrequent but allegedly stunning live performances, and earned them a legend among rock cognoscenti that parallels that of the Velvet Underground. As the old saw goes, not that many people bought the records, but those that did were genuinely moved. Their first album, Crazy Rhythms, is a classic document of late-era New York new wave, with outstanding guitar duels by Bill Million and Glenn Mercer. On their later albums, the Feelies perfected a distinctive type of slow burn, as they learned to make their guitars crawl and slide around each other with precise passion--a bit like Television without all the jarring right angles.
When the Feelies split in 1991, Glenn: Mercer knew he wanted to keep playing. He and Feelies percussion guru Dave Weckerman kept jamming at home, and soon began working with other musicians. What eventually emerged was Wake Ooloo, a four-piece that recently released its third album, Stop the Ride, on Chicago's Pravda Records. While Russell Gambino's keyboards and John Dean's rock-solid bass keep Wake Ooloo from sounding exactly like the Feelies, the band's jammy approach and Mercer's sterling guitar work carry on the tradition. Old Feelies fans will feel very comfortable with any of the group's albums, but Stop the Ride is a great place for the uninitiated to start. Mercer and Weckerman recently spoke with Oculus about their group and their music.
Oculus: Is Stop The Ride different from Wake Ooloo's other albums?
Dave: The keyboard is more prominent. It's taken a while for Russ to feel his way around and feel confident enough that the keyboard could take a greater role in the songs. I guess since we were coming out of the Feelies, a two-guitar band without a keyboard, Russ primarily stayed in the background on the earlier records.
Glenn: We record quickly. With the Feelies we had a bit more money and there was time to say, "Oh- I don't know if that guitar is in tune right, let's do it over." You can lose a little of the spontaneity that way. On the last record, we did the basic tracks in one or two takes. We like to keep it all basic----keyboards, drums, guitar, and then do overdubs with whatever time and tracks are left.
Oculus: There's kind of a fatalistic tone to Stop the Ride.
Glenn: You could say that about all three albums though, if you listen to the lyrics. The album title came from the song. I never sit down with an idea, like, "now I'll write about this subject." The music usually comes first, and the music suggests certain words.
Oculus: Do you have a favorite song off the new record?
Dave: "Like Yesterday." It has the closest kind of sound to like the old Feelies, where it gets real intense near the end and builds up to this big cacophony ending.
Oculus: Is there going to be a single?
Glenn: We actually are going to do a video for "Too Many Times." I think if it was just for MTV, we wouldn't bother. Supposedly there are other outlets.
Oculus: How did the band form?
Dave: Our roots are in the psychedelic and garage rock of the 60s. After the Feelies broke up, there was nobody else around. Bill had moved away. Stanley (Demeski, Feelies drummer) had joined Luna. And Brenda (Sauter, Feelies bassist) was playing in a folk-rock band with her husband. So it was me and, and we just jammed on songs that we started out playing, like Who songs, and Hendrix and Cream and stuff like that (laughs). We'd just start a song and play it for 20 minutes and go wild on it.
Glenn: When the Feelies broke up, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I considered joining a band that had other songwriters, to take the pressure off writing. I wasn't sure if I wanted to sing. I'd started as a bass player, so I bought a bass again and did that for a while. A friend of Dave's and mine who was a roadie with the Feelies for a while had been sending me some tapes of his stuff. We would get together to jam on his stuff--I played some bass and helped him work on some demos. While we were doing that, we also were jamming on stuff I was writing. At the same time, Dave and I would get together to do covers maybe once a week, more as a social kind of a thing. So there were two separate things there, and we tried to combine them.
Oculus: Where did you get your name?
Glenn: We had booked the debut performance and we didn't even have a name, and this newspaper ad had to be in by a Friday. We had two lists. One was a list of herbs, one being wake robin. Another list had come from the index of a book that takes place in India. We went through the index and found the word Ooloo. Somebody saw the two from the different lists and said, "Oh, how about this?" It had the least amount of resistance of all the names we were thinking of.
Oculus: Do you still have day jobs?
Dave: Yeah, I do. Even in the Feelies I always had a job, because we didn't play that much. The Feelies probably could have toured 6 months out of the year and we all could have made a fairly decent living at it, but we didn't do that. We maybe went on three little tours a year.
Oculus: The Feelies were legendary for not playing live very often. What about Wake Ooloo?
Dave: We play out. We've done three midwestern tours so far. Pravda's from Chicago, so they get us jobs out that way. The guy who runs Pravda has his own band, the New Duncan Imperials, and we've been booked at the same clubs they play.
Glenn: We did a 10-day midwest tour this summer. It was supposed to coincide with the release of the record, but the record got a little bit delayed so we went out just before its release. I think Stop the Ride came out the last day we were on the road.
Oculus: What are your live shows like?
Glenn: It's looser, more raw. When we first started we just had the one record, so we did more covers and more Feelies and Yung Wu songs. We've started concentrating more on the Wake Ooloo stuff, but people still like to hear Feelies songs and covers, so, we're sure to throw a couple of those into the set. We do "Sooner or Later," "Crazy Rhythms," "Doin' it Again." The Feelies' version of "Paint It, Black." What else..."Higher Ground." We do "She Said She Said," the Beatles' song the Feelies used to do.
Oculus: Any tour plans for the future?
Glenn: Pravda's wanted us to go to Europe for a while. We were supposed to go in January, but we're probably not going to go until like April. It's hard for us to get away for any length of time, and to go to Europe you really have to...just to cover your expenses you have to be gone for two or three weeks, and to make any money you have be gone like a month or six weeks.
Dave: The Feelies were always real big in Holland. I think it was the only country where Crazy Rhythms (the Feelies' 1980 debut) made the charts. Whenever we played in Holland, and usually in Germany, we'd always have a packed house.
Glenn: We went to Amsterdam last November for one show, and we had over 700 paying customers, which is more than we've ever seen here. A club over there was having some grand opening thing. They agreed to fly us out all expenses paid, but it had to be exclusive to that club for that night, so we couldn't really add on to it to make a little tour. So we just went for the one show.
Dave: If every night could be like that in Europe, we could go and...you know...make money.
Oculus: Is there any place in the USA you have a good following?
Dave: Chicago's always been good. We've always had decent crowd there. We've played the Lounge Ax a couple of times, the Empty Bottle. The last time we played Big Kitchen, which is kind of like Chicago's version of Maxwell's in Hoboken--it's got a little restaurant in the front and a bar, and in the back it's got a music room. It's pretty cool.
Oculus: Are there plans for another record?
Glenn: We never really plan. Stop the Ride came about when Pravda urged us to make a record around this time last year. When we get offered the chance to do a record, that's sort of the impetus to start writing.
Oculus: Are you music fans as well as musicians?
Glenn: We're fans, but where do you hear the new stuff? What's being played on the radio isn't really that new or that exciting. I'm sure there is a lot of great exciting stuff, but unless you know where to go to hear it...we're just sort of outside of all that.
Dave: I watch 120 Minutes on MTV, and most of the stuff sucks. It's the stuff they show normally anyway. There's not that much underground about it. Today even the college charts are really no different than the mainstream charts.
Glenn: Yeah, it's not like it was when the Feelies first started.
Oculus: You've been in bands for a long time. Why do you keep going on?
Dave: I think it's fun. I still find it fun to go on these little tours and everything. I mean, you know, it's something different to do. It gets you out of the average daily lifestyle you lead.
Glenn: Plus, sometimes when things are harder, you get more enjoyment out of them. It's like when things are denied you, or not the easiest thing, then it means a little bit more to you when you can do it.
back |