Unearthed: Dr. Feelgood - Stupidity
By Brighid Mooney

Released: 1976

1. Talking About You
2. 20 Yards Behind
3. Stupidity
4. All Through the City
5. I'm a Man
6. Walking the Dog
7. She Does It Right
8. Going Back Home
9. I Don't Mind
10. Back In the Night
11. I'm a Hog For You Baby
12. Checking Up On My Baby
13. Roxette
14. Riot In Cell Block #9
15. Johnny B. Goode

In 1975, amidst the pub rock revolution going on in the UK, Dr. Feelgood released two studio albums, Down In the Jetty and their magnum opus, Malpractice. While both were well-received, neither managed to capture the raw and explosive sound that Dr. Feelgood was best known and loved for. Already massively popular on the pub rock circuit, the 1976 release of their first live album, Stupidity, catapulted Dr. Feelgood to astronomical levels, hitting #1 on the UK album charts within just two weeks. After the release of their first two albums, the record company was looking for the Feelgood album, although a live record was not exactly what they had in mind. Unfortunately for them, Dr. Feelgood's main songwriter, guitarist Wilko Johnson, didn't have much new material up his sleeve and so the band went with their gut instinct and decided to release the definitive live album of their career instead. This proved to be the best move, as Stupidity was able to show the aggressive and animalistic band at their best and in their natural environment.

"Stupidity records our rise to fame from the pubs to the concert halls and I suppose the reason why it was a successful album was because people used to say that the Feelgoods were a great live band but there may have been something lacking on their records," frontman Lee Brilleaux said of the album. Dr. Feelgood was part of the back to basics pub rock movement that would come to spawn the likes of punk bands such as the Clash and the Sex Pistols, but the Feelgoods themselves were known for their original style of nitty gritty, down and dirty R&B, unambiguous beat music that was somewhat foreign to the rest of the bands on the pub rock circuit, who played in a wide variety of styles. Dr. Feelgood never compromised their sound, always playing straight rhythm and blues with a manic edge and an exciting tension that rose from the inherent antagonism between Brilleaux and Johnson. "Sometimes there could be a heavy atmosphere before the gig," Johnson admitted, "but when we walked on stage, a different feeling took over. Lee was so great to work with, all that anger." It was that tension that regularly propelled their live shows and which is captured on Stupidity with such dexterity. Along with Brilleaux's trademark Cockney growl and Johnson's percussive style of guitar playing, an unusually thundering drum sound laid down by the Big Figure gives the whole album a strong backbeat with energy that sounds as though it's about to burst through your speakers.

Covers like Chuck Berry's "Talking About You" and Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" are right at home among Wilko Johnson originals like the classic "She Does It Right" and "All Through the City." "This was the culmination of the revolution against the stack-heel and platform-shoe brigade and everything that went with that," Brilleaux said. And although the band was all but left behind with the insurgence of punk rock, they managed to fair better than many of their pub rock brethren, though they never released another album with the same kind of relentless energy and explosive live sound as Stupidity. The 1976 live album remains a testament to the vigor and verve of their stage show and why, for a few years, Dr. Feelgood was the hardest working and most successful group of R&B revivalists working the pub rock circuit. "Our energy was our legacy to the punks," says Johnson. "It was the violence of our act and the mean look that got to them." It is that violence and legacy immortalized on the album that makes Stupidity such a rollicking, rocking good time that can still make you want to get up and dance almost thirty years later.