Same 30 years after the original quartet comprising Dr
Feelgood (Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John B Sparks and The Big Figure) made
their mark in die pubs of London, helping to kickstart the pub rock movement and laying groundwork for the punk revolution
of the late Seventies, this version of Dr Feelgood, featuring none of the
founding members, nor even John Mayo who replaced Wilko Johnson, released this
live album from a gig (or gigs) seemingly recorded somewhere in Germany.
At this point Dr Feelgood is just a brand, owned by
the manager of the band, carrying on as commercial prospect with whoever the manager
chooses to appoint to the job, although some members have been long tome
members anyway.
This means, insofar as the band performs songs
associated with the glory years of the band, i.e. the Johnson / Mayo years, and
does them quite well, the impression one gets is that one is listening to a Dr
Feelgood tribute band. The defining characteristics of the original band were
Wilko’s highly individual, chopping guitar sound and Brilleaux’s gruff growl and
if the current guitarist plays in a tough, bright, metallic style, he doesn’t have
the unique sound of Wilko and the vocalist, though energetic and capable, not sounds
completely different to Brilleaux but also doesn’t possess the sly, knowing
intonation of the latter.
By this time, I suppose Dr Feelgood can only release
live albums because no-one in the band can write songs anywhere near as good as
those of Wilko Johnson or even the tunes wrote by, and with, John Mayo. Also,
the audiences at Dr Feelgood gigs probably only want to hear those classics of
yore and aren’t interested in anything new the band might have to offer.
Four of the tracks are written by Johnson (but the
band does a “Down by the Jetty Blues” that may be okay as a blues but is a
terrible reworking of the original version of the song), one hit (“Down at the
Doctor’s”) from the second album with John
Mayo and some other tunes that may be from later line ups of the band or could
just be cover versions for all I know, as I stopped following the band after A
Case of the Shakes in the early Eighties. It’s a strange mix and, even if the album is
just longer than 60 minutes, it’s probably not intended to be representative of
an actual concert but rather a selection of tracks thought to be of interest to
Feelgoods fans, if there are still any who’d be willing to buy the albums.
Alongside Cream, Dr Feelgood was one of two bands I discovered
in the late Seventies and whose records I played to death at the time. Fortunately,
forgetting about the recordings of the Royal Albert Hall shows of 2005 where Eric
Clapton no longer sounded like the young, fiery Clapton of the Cream albums from
the Sixties, Cream didn’t go through multiple personnel changes and the canon
consists of only a few albums. For me, as I’ve mentioned, Dr Feelgood wasn’t worth
following after the release of A Case of the Shakes, but the real gold
lies in the albums recorded with Wilko Johnson, on which Dr Feelgood’s
reputation rests and which have carried it to this day.
Nowadays, Dr Feelgood is ironically no more than a pub
rock band with a long history. Wilko Johnson’s songs, and Lee Brilleaux’s stage
persons, elevated the band beyond the pub rock circuit. The current line up are
competent, without much flair and rely
on the band’s past to keep them going in the future with whatever limited and diminishing
returns they can achieve.
There are several live Feelgoods albums and Stupidity
(with Wilko), the first one, is probably still the best and only must have for
the Feelgoods fan. Speeding Thru Europe is perhaps the album you buy if
you attended the gig but it’s far from being a must have. If you have no
history with Dr Feelgood, it’s not a bad
record. If you are a fan, it\s disposable. One listen and you need never hear it
again. Therefore, why spend money on it?
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