the making of crazy rhythms by the feelies - featuring glenn mercer and bill million 

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

The Feelies originally formed as The Outkids in Haledon, New Jersey in 1976 by Glenn Mercer, Bill Million, and Dave Weckerman. They changed their name to The Feelies as Keith Clayton and Vinnie DeNunzio joined on bass and drums. After auditioning to play at CBGBs in New York City, they connected with sound engineer Mark Abel who would go on to co-produce their recordings. DeNunzio ended up leaving the band so they put out an ad for a new drummer and Anton Fier responded. Weckerman also left at the time, so they recorded some demos as a four piece and Rough Trade released their first single in 1979. For their debut album, they wanted to find a label that would allow them to produce. After signing with Stiff Records, they began recording at Vanguard Studios with Mark Abel co-producing. Crazy Rhythms was eventually released in 1980. 

In this episode, for the 45th anniversary, Glenn Mercer and Bill Million reflect on how the album came together. This is the making of Crazy Rhythms. 

Bill Million: This is Bill Million, guitar player for The Feelies, and we're talking about Crazy Rhythms. That's who we were, we're relatively introverted people. Even though we were connected with the New York scene, you know, it's not a place where we'd go and hang out. Now, Anton might have, but Glenn and I and Keith certainly didn't. But basically, you know, we're pretty introverted (laughs). Maybe less so today than we were, but back then, we definitely were. And on top of that, I think as musicians, that's probably where we were all at at the time. And it kind of, you know, it did loan itself to the tracks on that album. When we were looking for drummers, I know D. Sharpe who played with the Modern Lovers, he actually made a comment that, you know, “I couldn't play with those guys, their rhythms are just like all over the place.” So, you know, again, it could have been a reflection of where we were at as musicians at the time, but it did, you know, it loaned itself to that album. We’d get into these long 20 minute jams and you know, it was always about the rhythm. And there's a Lou (Reed) quote where he says, “Repetition is fantastic, anti glop.” And that's kind of what we were into, the repetition of rhythm. You almost can kind of fall into this, like trance playing some of this stuff.

Glenn and I, we both lived in the same town, like in Northern New Jersey, North Haledon to be more specific and one day I was walking through a neighborhood and I heard music coming out of a garage, and it was, “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” like a band just playing, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges. And I thought, “Wow, that's, that's kind of interesting,” because I was a Big Stooges fan. I'd go see them wherever they played, like locally, even traveling a distance if I had to. And so big Stooges fan, a big MC5 fan, and when I heard this, I was just kind of surprised in this, you know, suburban New Jersey town to hear that. So I stopped in and introduced myself and one thing led to another, and we've had a friendship ever since.

Glenn Mercer: This is Glenn Mercer of the Feelies. I played bass and Bill was in a band, he also played bass. His band did “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” And we did “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” So I think he wanted to kind of see how we did it and he came to that party and that's when we met. You know, all my friends listened to that stuff and all of Bill's friends listened to that stuff. I guess in retrospect it is pretty unusual, like for two bands in a small town to all be playing Stooges material back then. Dave and I played in a cover band and the bass player of that band left. So I knew Bill, but I hadn't played with him. And we asked him to join that band, and that band kind of soon became playing originals. So they kind of more or less, morphed into The Feelies. 

Bill Million: The makeup of the band and the music we were playing was different. It was more like something like Lenny Kaye put out, like the Nuggets recordings where we were doing that type of music. We had a lead singer, I played bass guitar in the band, Glenn played guitar, Dave played drums, and we had a singer. And so we did a number of shows in that iteration, you know, around New York. And eventually that band broke up in a chaotic manner (laughs). And so, you know, that didn't last all that long and then eventually through kind of a decision to find a singer for the band, I ended up switching to guitar and we started auditioning singers. And we had quite an interesting sort of audition period where, I mean, we had one guy that came down into my basement. He had a shirt on that said Eggy, like E-G-G-Y. And we started like playing some songs and he starts flying around on the basement floor, like, I guess doing like an Iggy imitation. It was pretty funny. So the addition process really ended up going nowhere and the decision at that point was made for Glenn to take over vocals. And so that was kind of the genesis of The Feelies. 

Glenn Mercer: Well, we never talked about it, we never like had a plan of what we wanted to sound like. We referenced a lot of different bands, but I think, you know, that Mo Tucker beat, although she didn't invent it, she certainly put her own spin on it. Just something, I guess it's really how your bio rhythms are arranged. You know, we all have our own rhythms and respond to different things, different rhythms. I was into rock and roll way before I heard the Velvet Underground and even playing in bands before I heard the Velvet Underground. And I always really had some kinda weird connection to 50s music, the early rock and roll. My favorite songs on the early Beatles records were the covers they did of Chuck Berry. And when you think of like Little Richard's rhythm, there's really no, I don't make a distinction between what he was doing on the piano and, you know, “Waiting For the Man” or any of those songs. You know, it's just pounding out eighth notes really, you know, that certain appeal to that relentless and simplicity.

Bill Million: Both Glenn and I at the time played Fender guitars and what we had found was the frequencies did start to clash, particularly with the cymbals. And, you know, after thinking about it for a while, we decided to start changing the cymbal parts, like removing the cymbals, kind of more similar to like a Mo Tucker approach to drumming. And in the place to kind of supplement, you know, the arrangement, we started adding percussion. So that was our first foray into that approach, to like, to arranging. And it really, it kind of grew out of like the cymbals clashing really with the two guitars. With Keith and Vinny, they played in a band called The Commercials, and we did some shows together and we struck up a friendship. And when we were looking for a drummer and we started to form the band, Keith played bass, Vinny played drums and we started out by playing with them. And I think Keith ended up staying on through Crazy Rhythms. Whereas Vinny, I think around that time period, Glenn and I were just developing the arrangements for our music. So every time we'd get together, you know, we'd be changing parts and kind of coaching Vinny on what to play. And I think eventually he got a little bit too frustrated with that approach. He settled into a part and then the next time we got together to play, we would change it. So eventually he just said, “I can't (laughs), I can't keep doing this.” So he ended up leaving the band and that ultimately led to getting Anton Fier in the band.

Glenn Mercer: Well, we had been playing in New Jersey and once we kind of got to play an original, our options in New Jersey seemed to kind of dry up. Mostly cover bands from where our area. So, you know, we were following the scene in New York. It just seemed like just the obvious path for us to play in New York. So we got the audition night, CBGBs, Monday night, I believe it was, and did well. The guy who did the sound, Mark Abel wound up co-producing Crazy Rhythms, he also was the one who introduced us to Terry Ork, and having Terry Ork as a manager really kind of, we were able to get booked quite a bit. And then when other clubs in New York opened up, like Hurrahs and the Mudd Club there, we just wound up playing there as well. It wasn't a big struggle to get gigs. The major struggle was really the record contract that we wanted.

Bill Million: We played a number of clubs in New York, primarily at the time it was CBGBs, Max's Kansas City, so we'd kind of go back and forth between those two venues. Mark was the sound person at CBGBs, so that was our introduction to Mark. And then we struck up an acquaintance with Terry Ork and Mark started doing sound. And Brooke Delarco also was another engineer that did sound for us back then. And when we first started playing, like in New York, I think, with the Village Voice putting us on the cover, the person who wrote that article, John Picarella, he saw the band, you know, it could have been like one o'clock in the morning on a Monday night, you know, at CBGBs with like maybe 12 people in the audience. So the band started getting some notoriety right at the time where we didn't have a drummer. So doing these like photo sessions with just Glenn, Keith and myself, and we started auditioning for drummers. And again, that was, auditioning was quite an experience. We've always been really fortunate that a lot of the people we've played with over a long period of time were really old school friends, neighbors, that we've known for a really long period of time. We did take out an ad for a drummer and, we did audition several, and Anton kind of answered the call. So initially when he called us, he said, “My name is Anton Fier.” We thought like F-E-A-R and we were getting like this, you know, hardcore punk rocker from Cleveland. And “this probably isn't gonna work out.” But it did and yeah, he was very receptive to it. And at that point then we added a percussionist. So he was perfectly fine with that approach. I know he knew the guys in Pere Ubu and other groups from Cleveland, but I think he just probably wanted to change and to kind of explore what opportunities were in New York and, and that scene probably drew him to New York for sure.

Glenn Mercer: We did some recording before Anton joined the band with the original drummer, Vinny DeNunzio, but Anton played on the demo that got us our record deal. We actually spent quite a bit of time, whenever we could, we would afford our sound engineer, Brooke Delarco.  She borrowed a tape deck and also arranged for some studio time and we did some recording for Ork. And then when Anton joined, he was actually the one who hooked us up with Carla Bley, who had a studio in her house, in her basement. So that's where that demo with Anton was done. And that's what ultimately got us a deal with Stiff Records. Well, we would rehearse a lot and our sound changed a lot, especially when we would change drummers. So by the time we recorded the record, we pretty much had everything pretty well down. We probably played at least a year or two with the arrangements, the way they are on the record. 

Bill Million: Kind of think of it in terms of like gradations, where we were still learning our way around a studio, getting comfortable with the arrangements. At the time, they were changing pretty fast. Like I said, that frustration led to Vinny's ultimate departure from the band. So they were changing quite a bit from when the songs were initially put together. So it was more like an opportunity to keep kind of honing in on what we were ultimately looking to get. So it was a real good opportunity. Anton knew. Carla Bley and Mike Mantler and they were like jazz musicians. They had a studio up in Willow, New York called Grog Kill. It's just right in the area of Woodstock. And he arranged for the band to go up there to record some demos. And so we went up and we recorded just like a handful of songs and that's what preceded recording Crazy Rhythms. Now, prior to that, we had gone up to a studio in Connecticut called Trod Nossel. And that was kind of an experience that really left an indelible mark on our opinion about how to approach music. We had recorded some demos of songs that ended up on Crazy Rhythms. One was “Original Love” and we had recorded it and when we were done recording it, getting ready to mix, the engineer at the time, engineer slash producer, or he thought he was the producer just said to Glenn and I like, “Why don't you guys go out, grab a coffee or something to eat and I'll mix this when you get back, it'll be ready.” We came back and we were just like horrified. It was nothing like we wanted the band to sound. And it was from that point forward that we just decided that, if we can't produce our own music, then we'd just as well, like sell shoes in the mall on a Saturday night. 

Glenn Mercer: We knew that we'd probably spend a lot of time in the studio based on our previous recording. Yeah, we just liked to experiment and use the studio almost like a tool as an instrument of its own. So we did those four songs, “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness,” “Fa Cé-La,” “Raised Eyebrows,” and “Moscow Nights.” It was about like one weekend to record and then another weekend where we mixed it. And then, I guess Rough Trade offered to do a single, so we picked two songs, or they picked two. I'm not sure how it was decided, but we did the single with them. And then when we signed with Stiff, we wanted to make sure that they were okay with us having the songs out prior on a independent label as a 45. And they were totally cool with it. 

Bill Million: Geoff Travis was the guy at Rough Trade and he was a fan of the band. He came to New York and saw us and that's all there really was to it. We struck up a pretty good friendship with Geoff and, you know, he allowed us to go in and do these recordings, and that's how it kind of came about. And I guess he had a connection with the people who ran Stiff as well, being too small labels, you know, out of London. So the Stiff contract or connection came about, again, going back to the lesson we learned at Trod Nossal in terms of producing a number of labels, labels that are, you know, bigger than Stiff at the time, major labels had come to see the band and Stiff was the only one that would allow us to produce. That's how we came to that decision to go with Stiff. 

Glenn Mercer: We had other offers prior to that. And the main sticking point was always the budget, recording budget. So Stiff offered us what we would need and we were, I guess, a little reluctant being on a English label or just having that distance. But, you know, they were pretty hands off except they came in really late in the project. We had like a couple days left and through various reasons, we kind of fell behind on our schedule, so they kind of freaked out and they sort of pulled the plug, but we just kept working anyway. Cause we knew that at the end, even if we went over budget, they would just take that out of our advance money. At one point it looked like we were gonna stop (laughs). 

Bill Million: We spent about four weeks recording at Vanguard, which for Stiff is, it's probably unheard of, I guess. They had a completely different approach, they were kind of more hit and run, when it came to making music, you know, you record travel around in a van and sleep in the van and it was all kind of low budget stuff. So it was a surprise, they gave us a fair amount of money to record there. 

Glenn Mercer: Mark Abel, if I remember correctly, was the one that suggested Vanguard. We had our sound person, Brooke Delarco as an engineer, I think she also had some experience there. And I think probably, the hourly rate was probably pretty good. That might've been another factor. 

Bill Million: And we went and checked the studio out, it was right down the street from the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street in New York. And it was this sort of cavernous sort of studio. I mean, it had a lot of incredible opportunities. They had a Neve board, which we fell in love with. But the studio itself had really high ceilings, and I think there were, it was mainly designed to record like orchestras. So we liked what we saw, and that's how we started recording at Vanguard.

“The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness” 

Bill Million: “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness,” you know, starts out very quietly and then, you know, percussion comes in and just only just like slowly builds and the guitar break, you just hear all these different notes like bouncing around, left center right, and back and forth. So that's what we were looking to achieve there with that song and really for the whole entire album. 

Glenn Mercer: I guess it worked as an opener on the album and also was a set opener. One thing we really didn't like a lot of times. Either the club or someone would, an MC or whoever it was would want to introduce the band, “Ladies and gentlemen, here are the Feelies from New Jersey,” or whatever. We just thought it would be like really cool if we started playing and took our time and kind of faded up. It had this great effect, like the people in the front of the crowd nearest the stage would kind of realize what was going on and it would be like a ripple effect. It gradually works its way to the back of the club, so you could see the awareness of the crowd as the song progressed, and that was always a pretty cool element. That's one thing we kind of wanted to do when we put it on the record, 

Bill Million: What we were looking for going in was we did want to create like a lot of movement. Yeah we kind of grew up listening to the Beatles and the Stones and you know, a lot of the separation that, you know, those two groups had in their mixes where you'd hear just like the drums out of the left side of the speaker and maybe a guitar part in the lower right corner of the sound spectrum. And we wanted a lot of movement and so with “The Boy,” we kind of set out to do that. And it's also where we discovered what happens when you go to an extreme with reverb. So on that track there's like sandpaper, I mean typical like kindergarten sort of instrument stuff. But if you turn the reverb up really high, it doesn't sound like sandpaper at all, it sounds like something else. And we made a lot of use of that, and even with like other tracks where we just put it up to such a high extreme that like temple blocks no longer sounded like temple blocks. 

Glenn Mercer: Originally it was one of the jam songs that we had done before we even had the lineup. Originally it was the pre-Feelies band, which was Dave on drums, Bill on bass, I played guitar and we had a singer. So that and “Crazy Rhythms” kind of evolved from jams that we had when we were still at trio, you know. And then over time I think there was a point where we kind of got sick of hearing the high frequencies of the cymbals. And so we suggest to Vinny to leave the cymbals out. And that kind of created a little bit of a space that seemed, that would be filled nicely with percussion parts. So that's kind of how we started doing the percussion. I had been in a band prior to that and we had a big percussion break and that was always a big crowd pleaser. People love percussion. It just adds texture, tone, rhythmic elements. A lot of things you can do with different percussion.

You know, I admit I'm really, I'm kind of a nervous person, so it is a little tongue in cheek. And also if you think of what was going on at the time, the musical landscape, if you will, there was a lot of quirkiness. B-52’s, Talking Heads, Devo, even “Little Johnny Jewel” (by Television) is pretty quirky. So to me it doesn't stand out as being different from the other bands that we admired back then in that sense. It's definitely a song that was influenced by the Modern Lovers for sure. 

Bill Million: Back then, there was a venue in New York called the Mercer Art Center. And you know, the New York Dolls would play their almost like every weekend. I probably saw them no less than like 10 or 12 times. And the Mercer Art Center is kind of a really interesting sort of venue, it had all these different rooms. Teenage Lust would play there. And here was one, I think it was like a New Year's Eve party where the Dolls were playing. And there were a lot of like celebrity people, like Warhol, like Alice Cooper, everywhere you turn there were like well-known faces. And, both Glenn and I were at that event and the Modern Lovers performed. And Jonathan came out and he had like really short hair and like chino pants and a buttoned up shirt and kind of like juxtaposed to, you know, the New York Dolls, where guys were dressing like women with platform shoes on and eye makeup and stuff. You had this other image. That kind of hit us and we thought, “Wow, these guys are just the coolest guys in the room.” And we just, we kind of took it from there. 

Glenn Mercer: It was kind of conscious but not far removed from the way we looked. I think it was important to kind of stand out. It was tough to stand out. There were a lot of bands, so very competitive, anything you could do to kind of get your foot in the door. And also the 50s were coming back pretty big then, American Graffiti or “Happy Days” show, you know. I’ve always been a fan of the 50s. Well, it's interesting because I remember back in the day, somebody commented, “You dress like old men.” Now we play dressed the same and it's like, we are old men (laughs). You know, we don't have to change our, we don't look ridiculous wearing what we wore back then. A lot of what was going on with punk, it seemed like a little bit like it had been done before. So even though we were playing in New York, we had no interest to move there. People would ask after the record came out, we were gonna relocate to New York. We just thought it was crazy. Just, I can't imagine not living in the suburbs. 

Bill Million: It did loan itself to where we were from and our background. And I think, kind of goes part and parcel to our reaction to not only, you know, when you had like groups like the Dead Boys who were playing at CBGBs at the time and they had a certain look and then their look changed, where they got really like very punk rock looking and you know, there was the reaction to that whole look. We were attempting to kind of separate the band from that, but also musically in terms of the sound of the band. At the time there was a, just a really overdriven guitar sound that we reacted to, you know, so there was the look and the sound that we just reacted to and came up with something different.

With “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness,” it was originally called “The Boy Next Door,” so that had a name change. “Fa Cé-La” was just, you know, like a nonsensical sort of title that grew out of the chorus, and that evolved a lot over the years.

“Fa Cé-La”

Glenn Mercer: I think it was kind of inspired by “I Heard Her Call My Name,” kind of got the similar chord progression. So the idea was to have a really kind of crazy atonal noisy guitar lead. But I was playing a solid body Fender Stratocaster at the time, it really wasn't good to get any kind of feedback at all. So I had to take a different approach but still try to capture that kind of chaotic outta control that you would get from feedback, going crazy with feedback. So it's sort of an attempt to, you know, get into that mind frame. 

Bill Million: And I think with “Fa Cé-La,” we kind of thought that like live the acoustic guitar really, you know, loaned itself to sitting against the electric guitar created more distinction between the parts. So kind of like the same sort of philosophy and getting rid of the cymbals to hear more distinction and not obliterate what the guitars were doing, you added like temple blocks or claves, things like that. So it's the same sort of idea behind it, you know, to kind of bring out more, apparently what the individual parts were.

Glenn Mercer: My leads were done with an amp, the rhythm guitars and little picking parts and whatever the little incidental guitar parts, they were done direct because we couldn't get a good sound in the studio. Our co-producer Mark, kept saying, well, the way people make records is they double track everything and fattens it up. We didn't want to do that. We didn't even really want to overdub leads and stuff. There's a particular spot on a Modern Lovers song where you could literally hear 'em like hit the fuzz pedal (laughs). 

Bill Million: One of the things that loaned itself to the unique sound of the album was we had spent a lot of time trying to get the guitar sound and really to no avail. I mean, we weren't happy with it. You know, we were kind of coming at it from, “This is the way the band sounds live, this is what we're used to hearing,” but we couldn't get a really good guitar sound. And I think we spent maybe eight hours working on it to no avail. So that was a lot of money and time wasted, and that's when we came up with the idea of recording the guitars direct with the idea of potentially feeding them back out at a later time, maybe when we were mixing or whatever, back into a studio through an amp, through a speaker, and getting sound that way. Ultimately, we ended up really liking the really clean, direct sound, kinda stood out from particularly what you're hearing back at that time period. A lot of the sounds, especially from the bands coming out of like CBGBs and Max's, this like really heavy overdriven guitar sound. And this was the complete opposite of that.

Glenn Mercer: All creative process is off the top of your head. And it's the most common way to write lyrics is you have a tape of the music, especially if you have a melody in your head and then you just sing whatever pops into your head. Sometimes the phrase will pop out, sometimes it's the word that'll kind of lead you down the path, which is toward a topic. I seldom really have an urge to tackle a topic. Usually what a song is about is revealed to me after the fact. 

Bill Million: Typically, that's how he forms like lyrics. You know, he'll just start almost making non-syllabic sounds together and then one thing leads to another. We've always kind of kept working on our music. I mean, even today, “Fa Cé-La,” in particular, there were some sort of rhythmic issues with the very end of the song, particularly between what Stanley (Demeski) and Dave (Weckerman) and myself were doing. And, you know, we worked on that to improve it and made a slight adjustment. And so it sounds a lot better. So we're always working on the songs. I mean, it's just a constant search to get something right, to strive to get it, you know, exactly where we want it.

“Loveless Love”

Bill Million: At the time that we started working on Crazy Rhythms, we were listening to a lot of Fripp and Eno, a lot of his ambient stuff and Philip Glass like Steve Reich. So I think a lot of what they were doing probably had a big influence on us. So with “Loveless Love,” I mean, that's where that part could have grew out of, like that sort of harmonic part that Fripp plays in “Evening Star.” But with that, again, it was, building the track. When you listen to it, there's a lot of movement right and left, especially between the guitars and it's a very active mix. I mean, you're just kind of going back and forth listening to what everyone in the band is doing.

Glenn Mercer: I guess the basic idea was just to have something that built really from sparse and slow to fast and full. A lot of it has to do with just playing with each other, listening to each other, and, you know, wanting to express the widest dynamic range, not have it be boring. So, you know, you tend to do things to add to the drama, the tension, or, you know, because there are so few core changes, we need to rely on other things like interplay and the percussion and the tempos and, you know, all that other stuff.

Bill Million: The other thing that I think was a consideration was when we sequenced the album, as a point of note, we actually alternated a minor key and major key with each track until it gets to the very end, which even today, we kind of always considered like “Raised Eyebrows” and “Crazy Rhythms.” They always kind of fit together in our minds nicely. So when we play live, we still put those two songs together. So in the sequencing, the first track starts out as a minor key, and then it goes to major, minor, major, minor. Just felt like they loaned itself to one another when you're following a minor key and with something that's major, kind of added, added to everything, complimented the previous track.

Glenn Mercer: Well, a lot of them are minor key really, but it's not like we tally up the songs like, “Oh, we have four majors, we need another minor.” You know, it's just whatever mood you're trying to convey. Sequencing, I don't remember being much of a problem. It just kind of fell into place. It's sort of like once you have the cornerstones, once you know the beginning song or the end song of each side, then it's easy to fill in the other ones. 

Bill Million: I don't remember us making too many changes in the sequencing. Kind of came up with it, listened to it, and stuck with it. But I think we got it right.

When Glenn did the guitar lead, it's the first lead in the song. Before the first starts, we did this one thing where he was playing the lead and I kept moving his pickup toggle switch. So as the lead progresses and gets fuller, and again, it's probably something you'd completely miss in a different environment. You can hear it, kind of hear the guitar lead like cutting in and out on both sides left and right. So what I remember, which was kind of fun, Glenn was able to do it without too much distraction, me messing with his guitar. Which is great. it's a great lead. It really is. 

Glenn Mercer: I wanted a stuttering effect. I wasn't sure how to go about it, but I think I got that from like, “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” At the end, because the feedback that's stuttering, Pete Townsend, so I think the only way to get it was to use Bill's guitar because you kind of need a guitar with a volume for each pickup. You turn one pickup off and then toggle between that and the active pickup. But I couldn't do that obviously while I was playing. So I asked Bill to work the toggle switch. So I'd be playing the guitar and he'd be wiggling the toggle switch. And then it wasn't until later when I read a story about recording of “Peggy Sue,” where Buddy Holly wanted to switch pickups where that rhythm section in the middle where it just strums. But he kept interrupting the strum. So he had, I think it was the other guitar player, Niki (Sullivan) kneel down and like flick the switch right when that came in and then flick it back when it was over. So it kind of reminded me of that.

Bill Million: What is kind of, probably foremost in my memory of recording that album was the amount of fun that we had because we didn't have a lot of experience. So a lot of it was twisting knobs and seeing how it sounded or hearing how it sounded. And, you know, and kind of doing a lot of laughing about what we discovered. Like, “Oh wow, that does that, that's great.” 

Glenn Mercer: I think that fact that we were like kind of young and experimenting with the recording process was really exciting. So the idea of like putting things together, that was cool. You know, it was creative. 

We never really talked much about, to me, that's like not the way you go about playing music. No talk about it, you just play, you know? And if you do wind up talking, it's usually to try to resolve some kind of a issue or a problem. But you don't have an issue or a problem then you really don't spend much time talking.

Bill Million: We're not big talkers when it comes to discussing these things. We just have always had a nice fit together. One complimenting the other. And I think it really, a lot of it just comes down to listening, you know, rhythmic accents here and there and things like that. What sort of frequencies are we playing at, the tones we're getting and there's not a lot of discussion about it. And I think really over time the band as a whole has gotten to be better listeners with each other. So not a lot of discussion when it comes to these parts just playing and listening.

“Forces at Work”

Glenn Mercer: In “Forces at Work,” Bill actually does the whole vocal on one side and he wrote everything that he sings there. I think the idea of that was probably, our take on The Velvet Underground, I forget what song it is where they're both saying different things at the same time (“The Murder Mystery”). 

Bill Million: Again, there was the long sort of intro and you're hearing different things being introduced. I think when it came to the vocals, I think that might have been, at least in my mind, somewhat Velvet-influenced where we had two different vocal lines going at the same time, almost with the intent of kind of canceling each other out. 

Glenn Mercer: I think it was like trying to have it chant like. I don't know why I wanted that effect. But chanting is always good.

Bill Million: And going back to some of what we were listening to at the time, there's sort of this kind of raga riff going on in parts of it. We were big Kraftwerk fans so there seems to be, you know, that as a part of what's going on in the song and there's a drone, you know, there's just like a long droning sort of sound. And that's, so there's a lot of like, when we'd get together and play and jam that it'd be like a droning guitar that would sit underneath, like whatever else was going on. 

Glenn Mercer: The idea of just being on one chord for a long time, it's, you know, could go back to Bo Diddley to find that, or blues stuff. You know, if you got a groove that's really happening, why change the chord and mess with it? Yeah, I might work out a riff or a lead over a chord progression, but most of the time it's probably about 50-50 worked out and improvised, but even worked out starts as improvised.

“Original Love”

Bill Million: So “Original Love” was actually probably one of our oldest songs, if not the oldest. And you'd have to ask Glenn about this, but in the studio, when he did his vocal part, he changed it. The tone of his voice was completely different than what we had been doing when we tried recording demos of it, you know, prior to Crazy Rhythms.

Glenn Mercer: Well, the way I remember it, Bill had the verse and I came up with the chorus, and then we just had a variation of the chords for the bridge part. I think overall, that was one of the songs that probably went through the least amount of metamorphosizing.

What I remember is that it was not an unusual way to write it, but for us it was because we really never did that again. But it was probably the first song that Bill and I wrote together, and it was sort of like, you know, two chairs facing each other. It's like, “Hey, I got this part. How about this part to go with that?” And it really came together pretty fast. 

Bill Million: Initially I was playing electric guitar and I switched to acoustic guitar. There's a break in the middle. Glenn's got like an EBow part, I’ve got an overdriven part. And what I actually liked a lot about the track was the very end fade out with the vocals, just with the reverb and how they kind of overlap and become rhythmically, almost like lacking in distinction. A lot of our approach, even back then, like we played a lot of like root chords, like typically something, you know, like kind of grows out of like folk music where you're getting more ringing and sustained out of the sound. So “Original Love” started out like they're all like root chords in that song. The only two bar chord songs are like “Fa Cé-La,” probably “Raised Eyebrows.” I know Glenn plays some bar chord in, “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness,” but I think, you know, most of it's like root chords and you're just getting this, you know, more sustained, ringing out. And I think that what we had discovered at the time that the harmonics between the two guitars and because of that there was like an interaction where at least to our ears, you are hearing other sounds. There was this, you know, interplay between the two guitars because of the root chords that you might not get otherwise. 

Glenn Mercer: Yeah, also mixing the element of like folk or folk rock. Whe were big fans of the Byrds. They always had a really clean guitar sound. Just kind of pushing the envelope to see what the, what we could do with the guitars. Make it fun.

“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)”

Glenn Mercer: “Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey),” we kind of needed an extra song and that one popped out to me because of the, they have a pipe or an anvil or some kind of metallic sound that they're beating on and it's great percussion effect. We thought, you know, it kind of could work well. So what you hear on the record is us kind of putting it together. We probably rehearsed it a few times, but we had never performed that song before it was recorded, so, you know, it was kind of fresh and kind of knew what it would sound like until it was done.

Bill Million: I think Glenn suggested playing it. I mean, he does the singing, so a lot, he's gotta be comfortable singing a lot of these songs. So I think he brought that one to the band. And we were in our, I mean, big Beatles fans, and it seemed like somewhat, not like a real obvious track. I don't think there's any Beatles song that's really obscure to my knowledge, but that was probably one that wasn't at the top of everybody's list, per se. So we thought it was a good choice. 

Glenn Mercer: Yeah, well I was a big fan of The Beatles, but particularly the White Album. When I was growing up, I didn't really buy records. My two older brothers had huge record collection, so I didn't really need to buy anything. But I remember one Christmas when the record just had just come out, having some Christmas money and I asked my brother if he was gonna buy the new Beatles record and he said, “Eh, it's kind of plain. And the last one wasn't that great,” so he didn't want to buy it. So I thought, “Ah, I love that cover,” but you know, so I bought it and wound up just the fact that it didn't really have a huge record collection made it more important for me at least. So yeah.

Bill Million: I love the Beatles track and I like the part that George (Harrison) played. Certainly it's the lead guitar bending sound that, you know, like that (sings guitar lead) “de ne ne de de de.”  We dropped that (laughs). 

Glenn Mercer: Well, it sounded like if you listen to the Beatles, that it's some kind of a pipe or a bell or something, but just, I can't remember exactly why we started to consider other things for instruments, but that's not really that unusual. I guess we were also big fans of like John Cage and Philip Glass and you know, all kinds of music. So hitting a coat rack certainly didn't seem like anything unusual. Well, it was more from experimenting with different environments within the studio. We utilized hallways quite a bit, so we were in one of the hallways and the rack was just there. We had some sticks. We were gonna play a part, it’s on wheels so might as well wheel it over and try it. 

Bill Million: Glenn did the coat rack, I'm pretty sure. And as I said, we'd find throughout the recording, we ended up using the main studio very little. When we started doing overdubs. They had all these little cubby holes and hallways and that might not have even been part of the studio per se. And we'd go out and find, you know, these really hard surfaces and they had high ceilings, that had like great natural reverb. And we did a lot of the percussion parts in those areas. So I think the coat rack was one of them. We just went out into a hallway and there was a coat rack and said, “Okay, let's use the coat rack.”

When we started recording Crazy Rhythms, Keith and Anton were in the studio for the, you know, first week or so, and then they kind of dropped off. So a lot of the percussion, when we started thinking of parts, we would just go and do, we'd, you know, find a hallway here or there that had great reverb and just go about adding these parts kind of somewhat quickly when they came to mind. And with the pipe that goes throughout the song. It just, it wasn't quite happening and I thought it should, in terms of like the rhythm guitar, I kind of had an idea, a good sense of where the accents were supposed to be. So I ended up playing the pipe on that, which was a lot of fun. And then, so sort of like monkey sounds like in the break, which I think, I was trying to remember. I think we went into their, like, their sound effects library and might've found some monkey sounds that we kind of certainly simulated them, you know, the sound monkeys.

Glenn Mercer: As a matter of fact, we did the vocals in the front hallway and they had a really expensive ribbon mic. And we were, I think might've been doing some percussion there as well. But right in the middle of it, firemen came storming into the building and knocked over the mic,  scattered the percussion all around. I guess there had been a fire at the delicatessen next door and they were trying to get access to the fire through the studio. It was pretty crazy. 

Bill Million: The other thing about “Everybody's Got Something to Hide,” we wanted the end to kind of sound like rhythmically it was completely falling apart and going south. And I think that that was part of the idea behind the arrangement when it got to the end of the track.

“Moscow Nights”

Bill Million: When the record came out, a lot of listeners would comment like, “There's real long periods of silence, like one song would end and you wouldn't hear anything for a long period of time.” That was really never the case. I think, you know, in retrospect it was probably we were a little bit, maybe too subtle for our own good. When you're mixing these things in the studio, we didn't want to be heavy handed with it. So we're in a perfect environment when we're mixing, so we could hear everything, just say, “Yeah, that's a good level, you know, let's go with that.” But I think in the long run for your average listener, it probably didn't translate so well. So, you know, there are tracks like the lead into “Moscow Nights,” we started out, we wanted to get this sort of sort of cold, windy kind of sound and to set up the vibe of the song. And we did that like through just recording different effects, you know, pushing them up and down, like volume, pedals, wah pedals, and other effects just to get this sound like, it sounds like this almost Siberian wind, but it's very quiet in the mix and it's followed by castanets. Which almost sound like, you know, just like a cold skeletal shake. And then this really icy sounding tambourine that has a, that's drenched in reverb. But a lot of that, you know, as it's fading up, you really have to listen for it. And, you know, the one thing that a lot of folks have commented on the album, then, you know, every time you listen to it, they hear something new. Which is good, I mean, it's not hearing everything up front to first go round. But a lot of those fades were, I think, lost to some people.

Glenn Mercer: I do remember that part in the beginning where the guitar goes up and the bass goes down or the other way around. And I was teaching to Keith and he was like, “That'll never work.” Like, “Well just try it.” And he tried it with the guitar and was like, “Wow, that's pretty cool.” 

Bill Million: You know, we spent a lot of time like with the arrangement of the intro part, which we did a, you know, a lot. Most of our songs, we spend a lot of time with the intros and the outros. When we decided to go work on the song before we recorded it, it was down in this park in the middle of the night. Glenn and I went and worked out the guitar parts prior to recording.

Glenn Mercer: Well, certainly at least a grain of personal, yeah, I mean, you know, you draw from what you know. I think it was the title of a book, if I remember. Well, a lot of my songs have elements of alienation. So you're going to think of the extreme sort of example of that. I guess it would be someone that far from home.

“Raised Eyebrows”

Glenn Mercer: “Raised Eyebrows,” we were pretty happy with it when we wrote it. We, I think we kinda looked at it as like a step in a direction we wanted to go and the topic became on the way to a gig, whether we would play it for the encore, save it to the end. Cause we knew it was good. We said, “Yeah, this should really raise some eyebrows.” And then that became the title. But the downside was that we didn't get an encore. So we had the song all worked out, we're really happy and worked out, anxious to play it, and we didn't. And then we didn't have another gig for months.

I think actually it worked out well because by the time we did get around to performing it, we had worked even tighter and had more dynamics. We tried doing it at Vanguard Studio. It would be the album, which just didn't have the same sonic quality that the original had from Carla Bley’s. So we wound up using that.

Bill Million: So with “Raised Eyebrows,” that was the only track that wasn't recorded at Vanguard, that was recorded up at Grog Kill Carla Bley’s studio in New York state. And the reason why was we attempted to record it at Vanguard and we weren't happy with the results. And so we made the decision to use the track from Carla Bley’s studio and just EQ’ed it, so it kind of fit with the sound of the other tracks on Crazy Rhythms.

Glenn Mercer: My memory basically is the conversation with the engineer who suggested we transfer the original. I mean, when he heard, he was like, “Yeah, those drums sound like as big as a house.” And I think I kind of wished we had a tape of the original, the basic track, but we don't. So I really can't compare it. I really don't remember it other than that we weren't that excited about it. 

Bill Million: What I remember of it was, you know, when we recorded it at Grog Kill, Glenn and I kind of coaching Anton about the drum part, we wanted this random sort of drum part with the idea that, you know, drums were kind of lead instrument. And kind of reversing things somewhat in the arrangement where the drums were the lead instrument and the guitar had a different role, but we wanted the drums to almost feel like they were falling apart until the final verse. And again, it goes back to what we were listening to, like someone like Steve Reich. And I remember seeing Steve at the Bottom Line. I mean, he came out, him and his ensemble, all had different claves, different size claves, regular claves, African claves, and they do these things in, you know, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and they build these tracks. It was almost like a class on a slow build of sparseness to where it was really full and really energetic, where they were just going at it near the end. And, you know, maybe hearing something like that could have contributed to those little breaks.

Glenn Mercer: I remember Bill came up with the part he plays, which are the chord sequence, and he suggested, “Well, how about if it, each time it stops, it comes back, it builds a little bit.” So we kind of took that idea and ran with it rather than just, “Well, how, how are we gonna build it?” So it would be like, “Well change the drum pattern.” I change what I play. Each time it's a little bit more. Then by the end, we wanted it to just kind of take off. So all of the drums are kind of leading in that direction. You know, Bill's part is really the only kind of constant and it's sort of things are revolving, evolving around that. 

Bill Million: Glenn had an idea how he thought the drums should sound. I kind of always likened it, you know, to like the 4th of July fireworks grand finale, where, you know, you just hear these sounds like boom, boom, boom, boom. Where they were just very random. And so I kind of conveyed that part to Anton, Glenn coached him as well. The drums were built around that sort of random part with an anchor, like what we kind of referred to as an anchor drum, which was a low floor tom part. And then we added some random higher tom parts that were again, played like randomly and not rhythmically, so to speak. So again, it just kind of added to this feeling where the drums almost sound like parts where you're tripping over one another. And then at the very end, kind of always reminded me of something like that Eno would do, where the rhythm comes together and everything kind of changes and it was like throwaway lyrics.

Glenn Mercer: It seemed like the kind of thing that really didn't need a lot of vocals. So we kind of kept them just to the end, to make the end more of an event, I guess.

“Crazy Rhythms”

Bill Million: So what I recall about “Crazy Rhythms” was, again, this goes back to us being somewhat novices in the studio and we recorded the basic tracks and I think one of us, maybe Anton might have missed the cue. It was never meant to be that long. It's really a short song or that was our intention when we started to record it. And so when it got to that break, everybody just kept playing.

In the chorus, in the song, “Crazy Rhythms,” we're not saying “crazy rhythms, we're saying, “crazy Feelies.” And I think that might've even been the original idea behind the song. In North Jersey, you know, a lot of times we'd spend time in different shops and we'd go to Patterson, which is a city nearby, and has a Salvation Army and old music shops and things like that. And Glenn and I would go. We found sheet music from 1928, I think it was an old like, showtune and it was called “Crazy Rhythm.” So singular and we loved the way the design on the sheet music looked. So we ended up using the font style and we just kinda replicated what an S would look like, you know, to add to it.

Glenn Mercer: I remember being in the booth with a mic and kind of working out that I would count out the measures in the middle break. So what happened was, I guess we started playing too loud and Anton couldn't hear my mic, so we just kept playing it and playing it, playing it. I don't know how we wound up going back into the verse. We all managed to somehow get there. And then we had a track we really liked except it was way too long. So rather than if we had, part of the story is that our engineer, I think he didn't really have much affinity for punk, even rock and roll. I think he might've been more of a jazz kind of a guy. He wasn't really very helpful and that kind of contributed to our falling behind the schedule. But, you know, it's typical you just take a razor blade and you edit some tape, but he didn't offer that and nobody, I don't think suggested that. So it was sort of like, “Well, if we like this take, we're gonna have to fill up that middle section.” So that's when you know, “Well, that'll be cool, get all the percussion and just improvise percussion parts,” where we wrote a bunch of percussion parts for the middle part. 

Bill Million: We liked the way the track came out in terms of performance, I guess it really never occurred to us that, “Oh, why don't we just chop this up and edit it?” We were just thinking more in terms of, “What can we add to it to fill this space?” And that's what we set about doing. We, you know, as I mentioned earlier, like with “Crazy Rhythms,” and the album as a whole, but with the reverb unit that they had there, so there were like temple blocks that don't sound anything like temple blocks. They sound like maybe cars crashing together or screeching toward each other. You know, and Glenn and I just went and found these little spaces in the studio or outside the studio where we record all these different parts and almost like kind of tag team or both of us, we'd be doing it. There's one part where we put these old man shoes on our hands and kind of danced around on the floor of one of the hallways. That's in the break. So there's a lot of things going on in the break that were really, actually never our original intent. But the thought didn't occur to us to just edit the song down, which, you know, in the long run I think it worked out pretty well.

It was really, initially it was a pretty short song. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just only a little bit more than two minutes long initially. And it was only because it didn't occur to us to edit that the song became much longer. And you know, a lot of those parts then were worked out when we were at Vanguard.

Glenn Mercer: I do remember closing the set with it, if I remember right. The only thing that changed is that the space, we might have had one percussion in mind, but we wound up having to add other things. 

Bill Million: And I think even now when we do it live, we even extend it. There's these really kind of twinkling high notes that are, have like a kind of a chorus effect between the two guitars and it's like kind of lasting, you hear, just going on for quite a while. Yeah, I think it worked as a closer for an album, absolutely.

Mark Abel was the co-producer on Crazy Rhythms, and I think he kind of left after a while. You know, we considered like production as almost like a part of the songwriting, so we knew what we wanted and I think it became frustrating for anybody like a, you know, a third person to be part of the production. We're basically just looking for a third set of ears to maybe weigh in and say, “Yeah, that was a good take. Or maybe give that another shot.” In terms of, you know, the arrangements, I mean, we pretty much wanted to be unfettered was how we approached it. So I think Mark, after a certain period of time, kind of bowed out, I think like a lot of our producers (laughs). 

So we had moved to mixing it to another studio that's actually kind of defunct now, called The House of Music in West Orange. And that's where we ended up mixing it. And we remember meeting Tommy James, I guess he would do a lot of his recording in that studio. And I remember him saying, like listening to it and saying, “Yeah, I invented, I was doing this new wave music way earlier than this stuff” (laughs). Which is kind of funny. But yeah, we mixed it. We loved mixing it there and we were pretty happy at the result. 

Glenn Mercer: I remember listening back, they had these speakers, they call them Big Reds.  They were huge. They were actually on some kind of hydraulic mechanisms that they could move within the room, depending on where you wanted to sit and hear. It was like listening to a PA basically. We just sat there and listened to it. Yeah and I remember thinking like, “There was really nothing I would want to change.” And that's kind of what you want to strive for when you start a record. 

Bill Million: I don't really recall once it came out or at least my feelings one way or the other. I mean, we were happy with what we did and we've kind of always had that approach. If we kind of play music for ourselves and create music for ourselves first and foremost, and, you know, if we think it sounds good, then hopefully others will as well. I know it got a pretty good response from people who write about music, but not such a good response from Stiff Records. I don't know if they were ever really, truly happy with it. They had different expectations for the band than what the band had for ourselves. 

Glenn Mercer: Stiff, I think, they were a little disappointed, but I don't know why. They had heard almost half the album on the demo. So they knew the material. They allowed us to produce ourselves, that was sort of the clincher in the deal. It wasn't only the budget. They would let us produce ourselves with a co-producer and I don't know, maybe they were thinking it would be more radio friendly, even though we’re not that kind of band. 

Bill Million: They were hoping, again, to do these tours where you're in the back of a van, driving around the country and we didn't have any interest in doing that. We, even to this day, we still, we play very rarely. You know, it was really only a handful of times a year that we would play. We'd go into New York. We did go on, it wasn't really a cross country to where we ended up in LA and played some shows there, in San Francisco, but it was more like, more like a coastal sort of tour that they put us on, that we were willing to do that. But I think really until R.E.M. came along, R.E.M. really opened up the entire country to a lot of bands. So you can go to places like in the middle of Indiana and, and play and have an audience. But back then it was, you know, Boston, New York, LA, San Francisco, maybe Chicago. It was a different sort of time for music.

Glenn Mercer: Well, back then, you really, it would've been hard to tour. Go to the big cities, but really there's no place in between there to play. We went to the west coast, we did kind of a showcase thing in England. I think Anton just, I think it in particular, drummers feel this way, I know Charlie Watts did. He said the reason he likes going out on tour with the Stones is because it gives him a chance to play. I guess he just doesn't want to play by himself. It's not like picking up a guitar and playing and singing, just playing drums by yourself. I could see it would not be that appealing. So we didn't play enough basically for him. I don't think it really had anything to do with the way the record came out or what he was anticipating. He just wanted to play all the time. 

Bill Million: Anton decided to leave, just referencing what I just said, where the band really didn't perform that much. I think his expectation was different than what Glenn and I had for the band. Which I get, I mean a lot of people joined bands to become rich and famous and play all over the world. That wasn't who we are, and that's not what we were interested in. And I think when it became clear to him that we were still following the same path of playing every now and then, versus going on these lengthy tours, there was like a lot of idle time. We kept busy just doing different types of recording. But Anton wasn't involved and that's, I think there might've been some frustration because of that. And he started pursuing other things and ultimately he left the band.

It really depends what your definition of, like, you know, doing well or what success is, right? I mean, we were real happy with the results. We thought we were very successful in accomplishing what we wanted. Maybe even more than what we had hoped for. So we were real happy with it, but I think it's how you measure success. We didn't, and we don't think in those terms. “It didn't sell well so this is a failure,” that never entered our mind. So we just kind of kept working. I mean, we didn't really, you know, we did some other things at the time. We did the soundtrack for Susan Seidelman's, Smithereens, did a lot of like ambient recording and we started other groups. We had a group called the Willies that we played, where we used like different tape speeds and played along and it was a completely different approach than what the Feelies were doing. Dave had a bunch of music where we had started a group called Yung Wu. So when we'd play, it'd be much easier than having to move equipment if we just alternated roles. So, you know, Dave fronted the band Yung Wu and ultimately we ended up recording an album of his music together. So we kept busy. 

Glenn Mercer: Yeah I'm real grateful that it did what it did and, and had the impact that it did and the fact we were talking about it so many years later, but it was just sort of a moment in time and the band certainly has done a lot since then.

Bill Million: When I talked to Dave the other day, I mean, he kind of pointed out, Dave has always been, kind of the archivist, the diarist of the band. Like he, if any of us ever have questions about certain dates or events that might have happened, like he's always kept a really good diary so he can tell you like, “Yeah on this date we played at Maxwell's and we made  $200” (laughs). You know, that sort of thing. Like, so he knows those things. And he pointed out that I guess come next May, not this May, but next May, the band will have been together 50 years. It's kind of astounding to kind of hear that because that's, you know, more than half of my life away. Cause I never think, I just don't think, along those lines. You take in the moment and you know, kind of be in that moment and then move on to something else.

Glenn Mercer: You know, at the time I loved the way it came out. When I listen back to it now, it doesn't excite me as much as it did then. Like I said, I'm grateful that it did what it did and people really love it. But we've done a lot of other things since then. What I feel is it was very crafted, kind of put together, and to me that's not as appealing as it was back then. But at the end of the day, and especially now after performing and playing for so long, it's really that interaction of people playing and, you know, more of allowing things to happen. Although by happenstance that did occur several times. But, you know, like I said, it’s just a record of its time for its time and existed back then and I’m glad it’s still around.

Bill Million: Well, I mean, Crazy Rhythms, I mean, it doesn't really, other than the first album and you pointed out that it's now 45 years (laughs). It's not something that I listen to. We still perform the songs live, a lot of them, we alternate, you know, when we play like what tracks. Since you had asked for this interview, I do have, you know, I reflected back on really good memories and the fun that we had recording that album. But more than that, I don't really think about it that much, I think about what's kind of up ahead. 

Glenn Mercer: Well, we've been talking about Crazy Rhythms, so I think it was like a moment in time. It just, that time will never occur again. You know, it just, it fit with what was going on, what was coming up. I can't imagine doing a record like that now.

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about The Feelies. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Crazy Rhythms. Instrumental music by The Yellow Dress. Thanks for listening. 

Credits:

"The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness" (Mercer/Million)

"Fa Cé-La" (Mercer/Million)

"Loveless Love" (Mercer/Million)

"Forces at Work” (Mercer/Million)

"Original Love" (Mercer/Million)

"Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)" (Lennon/McCartney)

"Moscow Nights" (Mercer/Million)

"Raised Eyebrows" (Mercer/Million)

"Crazy Rhythms" (Mercer/Million)

Published by Stationary Music (ASCAP) except “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide” published by Northern Songs Ltd.

℗ & © 1980 Stiff Records

“The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness”

Bill - Timbales, sandpaper, claves

Glenn - guitars, vocals, claves

Keith - snare drum

Anton - tom toms

“Fa Cé-La”

Bill - acoustic guitar, vocals, can, treated rhythm guitar

Glenn - electric guitar, vocals, temple block, shaker

Keith - bass guitar

Anton - bass drum, snare drums

“Loveless Love”

Bill - left guitar, tom-tom, background vocals, boxes, exercised and ebowed guitars

Glenn - right guitar, faulty guitar, vocals, castanets

Keith - bass guitar, background vocals

Anton - drums

“Forces At Work”

Bill - left guitar, vocals, snare

Glenn - right guitar, guitar solo, vocals, maracas

Keith - droned bass, bass guitar

Anton - drum kit

“Original Love”

Bill - acoustic guitar, background vocals, bridged guitar

Glenn - electric guitar, vocals, bowed guitar, maracas

Keith - bass guitar, background vocals

Anton - drums

“Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)”

Bill - rhythm guitar, backing vocals, can

Glenn - other guitar, vocals, bells, coat rack

Keith - bass, tom-tom

Anton - drums, pipe, cowbell

“Moscow Nights”

Bill - 6 string, tambourine, background vocals, timbales

Glenn - 12 string, vocals, guitar solo, castanets, sleigh bells

Keith - bass guitar, background vocals, woodblock, pipe

Anton - kit drums

“Raised Eyebrows”

Bill - rhythm guitar, vocals, bells

Glenn - treated guitars, vocals, spasmodic drums

Keith - anchor drum, bass guitar, vocals

Anton - random tom-toms, drum kit

”Crazy Rhythms”

Bill - left guitar, background vocals, shaker, cowbell, shoes, temple blocks

Glenn - right guitar, vocals, galloping guitar, reverbed sticks, shoes

Keith - bass guitar, bells

Anton - drums

Produced by Million and Mercer with Mark Abel for Ball Field Productions. Recorded at Vanguard Studios, New York

Engineered by Tom Lazarus and Brooke Delarco

Mixed at House of Music, New Jersey

Engineered by Jim Bonnefond and assisted by Julian Robertson

Episode Credits: 

Intro/Outro Music:

“A Complete List of Fears Ages 5-28 (aprox)” by The Yellow Dress, from the album, Faint Music // Ordinary Light

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam