“Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?” enquired the Assistant Predestinator. “I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There’s a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it’s marvelous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects…”
In Huxley’s Brave New World THE FEELIES are entertainment devices,
in the reality are an American “alternative rock band”,
but today this term means nothing, even it would be startling.
They had one of the biggest influences on R.E.M., but I dislike them,
but I’m sure also on the Parquet Courts.
It was said they were the best underground band in New York,
and are among the nation’s most beloved alternative rock bands,
but their first records were released in the UK by Stiff and Rough Trade Records in 1979/80.
“The sound we were after was a reaction against the punk scene (…) we felt it had all been done before. We wanted the guitars to be cleaner, and we started experimenting with a lot of percussion.” But punk is just an attitude.
After their first album CRAZY RHYTHMS there were five years hiatus, because two members left the band. One of them, the drummer, Anton Fier went to The Lounge Lizard, worked with Pere Ubu (the 1978 Pere Ubu EP Datapanik in the Year Zero was dedicated to him), was in the Voidoids and founded The Golden Palominos.
After four albums The Feelies disbanded in 1992, reunited in 2008 by request of Thurston Moore, new record in 2011, brand new one in 2017 on BAR/NONE RECORDS (US)
Anyway they are like The Velvet Underground without heroin. And otherwise the Assistant Predestinator is an Alpha male that is employed at the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. His job is to make all the decisions on the new humans being created. Predestinators decide whether that individual will become an Alpha, a Beta, a Delta, a Gamma or an Epsilons. Each caste level is raised with different hynopaedia lessons and has different roles in the World State.
Huxley set the story in London in 2540. There the non-conformity is a crime, so the punks are dead. Or in jail or metnal hospital. But nevermind, here are the AI and the Smart People Party! Get the app!
BAEDEKER TO THE BRAVE NEW WORLD
