At Maxwell's

Saturday even­ing my wife Claire and I took the ferry over to Hoboken to see The Feelies play its final sets at Maxwell’s, the indie rock ven­ue of myth and legend that will cease to be such at the end of the month. It was a sold-out show and The Feelies played beau­ti­fully, as they do. These days the band does­n’t have an open­er, rather they play two sets of gen­er­ous length with a break between them. During the break, Claire and I joined the scrum at the foot of the stair­well that leads down to the base­ment, which is both stor­e­room for vari­ous res­taur­ant sup­plies and a make­shift dressing/rest area for the bands. I said hello to vari­ous band members—I’ve been both a fan of and friendly with The Feelies since my col­lege friend  Bob Nickas intro­duced me to their music around 1977—and caught up a bit with Barre Duryea, anoth­er old friend who worked as a road­ie and gui­tar tech for The Feelies for about a dec­ade, then with Patti Smith for anoth­er dec­ade, and now runs the music stage for Conan O’Brien’s show. 

Dave Weckerman, the band’s per­cus­sion­ist, spot­ted us chat­ting and came over. “I opened one of my old journ­als the oth­er day,” he began imme­di­ately, “and right there on the page I opened to was an entry for April 13, 1980, a Sunday night. It said ‘The Feelies played tonight for the first time at Maxwell’s, a small rock club in Hoboken, New Jersey.’ I also noted the band’s tally, which was six hun­dred and fifty dol­lars.” Dave paused. “A princely sum at the time.” 

Dave also came upon a clip­ping of one of the nar­row ver­tic­al column  ads the club would run in papers such as The Village Voice advert­ising a gig he was involved in. “Mr. Baxter was open­ing for the Violent Femmes. I think it was the Violent Femmes first New York area show, or some­thing like it. It was a Thursday night. And that week…well, the ad ran like this. Tuesday night, The Replacements. Wednesday night, ‘From England,’ The Fall. Thursday night, The Violent Femmes and Mr. Baxter. Friday night, The Fleshtones. Saturday night, R.E.M. And The Fall had the black ‘Sold Out’ bar over their name. And R.E.M. didn’t.”

“I remem­ber that Violent Femmes show,” I told Dave.  “And I could nev­er remem­ber why I went, because I was­n’t so inter­ested in them that I was going to check them out on a Thursday night, even if John Zorn HAD pro­duced their first album. If Mr. Baxter was open­ing, that makes sense.” Mr. Baxter was a twis­ted rocka­billy duo/occasional trio fron­ted by Larry Henchey, a very tal­en­ted singer/guitarist, with Dave on drums. They did a cov­er of “Dr. Robert” that was very Gang of Four by way of The Cramps, and oth­er good things besides. My band’s key­board play­er pro­duced an EP by them that nev­er saw offi­cial release but which I was one of two rock crit­ics to vote for it in that form­at’s “Best” cat­egory in some Pazz and Jop Poll or other. 

“Do you know that Peter Hook book, not the one about Joy Division, but about The Hacienda?” Dave went on. “There’s this part where he’s talk­ing about New Order’s first American tour, and he says they first came to a club in the town of Maxwell, New Jersey!”

“That was when they were just a trio,” Barre recalled.

“And I could­n’t go, and I was fas­cin­ated,” Dave said. “I was talk­ing to someone who went, and I asked, ‘Well who SINGS?’ and he’s like, ‘The gui­tar play­er, Barney…’ and ‘What did they play?’ because they did­n’t have any New Order songs yet. I have a pic­ture of Frank at that show”—Dave indic­ated a friend stand­ing nearby—“and he’s over by their equip­ment cases that still have ‘Joy Division’ stenciled on them.”

“Their equip­ment got stolen at that gig.” 

“Maybe Frank did it.”

A little later in the break we hung out­side with Steve Fallon, who got the whole thing star­ted. Reminiscing, Steve men­tioned Pat Clark, who roomed with him for a while back in the day; I remembered Pat fondly, not only because he was a sweet guy but because  he had bestowed a pretty cherry gig on my band at his short-lived joint, the Silver Dollar, in Elizabeth or some place like that. He deemed us “dark psy­che­delia” on the fly­er, which we liked. Opening for us was a duo called Drunk Driving: Peter Missing on gui­tar and vocals and Bob Bert on drums. Bob’s wife, Linda, who like Pat is no longer with us, was the most enthu­si­ast­ic boost­er of all the boost­ers in the audi­ence, dan­cing around and throw­ing con­fetti dur­ing both sets. Anyway, Steve was remem­ber­ing how Pat would bring home bur­gers from the loc­al White Castle and reheat them in the oven with them still in their card­board con­tain­ers, which Steve found problematic. 

Most of the oth­er remin­is­cences are not, as they say, for pub­lic­a­tion. The second set was also inspired, with a par­tic­u­larly impas­sioned cov­er of Patti’s “Dancing Barefoot” one of the high­lights. (In the first set they covered “Who Loves The Sun” and “Ticket to Ride,” warm­ing vari­ous par­tic­u­lar cockles of hearts.) We actu­ally decided not to stay for the entirety of the show; for some reas­on, we thought it apt to head back to Brooklyn while the music was still playing.