The other day I noticed a sticker on my copy of In Between (Bar-None), the recent sixth album by the Feelies, noting the New Jersey band’s 40th anniversary. At most installments of the Pitchfork Music Festival, that would make them unchallenged as the oldest performers, even though the combo took a 17-year hiatus that ended in 2008—but this year their set was momentarily delayed by an encore from an even older artist, George Clinton, whose raggedly celebratory set preceded theirs. Clinton’s circus of a show displayed his characteristic deployment of a much younger crew of singers and dancers to connect with the hip-hop generation, but the Feelies, formed by guitarists Glenn Mercer and Bill Million in 1976, carried on as ever—with the stage presence of five science teachers who’ve been conducting the same experiment over and over for decades.
