DR FEELGOOD - Down By The Jetty

Today’s musical offering was inspired after watching an episode of Channel 4 TV’s This Is England 86, the sequel to Shane Meadows film This Is England. During one of the scenes Dr Feelgoods All Through The City was used as the incidental music. What a tune! Quite what the relevance to 1986 was I’m not sure, cos it’s a track off their debut album Down By The Jetty, which was release in 1975. Down By The jetty was a hugh influence on the evolving ‘Punk Scene’ in both London and New York. Punk wasn’t born in a vacuum. In London bands like the Feelgoods and Eddie and The Hot Rods were already reacting to the pomp and prog of the stadiums by stripping it down and taking it to the pubs, where the future Punk musicians were absorbing this sound alongside their love of The New York Dolls, Iggy and MC5. Over in New York, the reverse was taking place bands where bands like Television, The Heartbreakers had been introduced to Dr Feelgood through imports of Down By The Jetty. So there you have it….Punk wasn’t invented by the Brits or The Yanks, it just happened to happen. The time was right, and it had to happen, so it did. I must get round to watching the Feelgoods film Oil City Confidential, it was on way too late for me when it was on BBC’s Channel 3 a few weeks ago, only amphetemine sulphate would have kept me awake at that time of night, and those days, and nights are over for me. Anyway if you wanna take a trip Down By The Jetty, you know what to do.

I’d like to point out that I wasn’t able to rip my old tape of the album, it had gone all wobbly wobbly, so I used a copy I acquired off the net, from the rather fine and nifty Skamanchakett blogspot to be exact, well worth a visit if you wanna get hold of the rest of Dr Feelgoods albums, which are posted there along with a ton of other good shit!