Surreal Soundscapes: Thinking Fellers Union Local 282’s “STRANGERS FROM THE UNIVERSE”

TITLESurreal Soundscapes: Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 and Their Unique Musical World

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 is an experimental indie rock band known for blending surrealism, improvisation, and eclectic instrumentation into unpredictable, collage-like soundscapes. Their music, including albums like Strangers From the Universe, combines guitars, banjos, mandolins, drums, and keyboards with five vocalists, creating tracks that are at once chaotic, beautiful, humorous, and haunting—like the soundtrack to a dream that never fully makes sense.(Experimental / Rock)

Eickelberg was thinking about versions of the initials for her own band name Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. This name was really long and hard to remember. It was the kind of name that sounded cool at first. Then it became a problem. Seven months earlier they had put out an album called Strangers From the Universe. This album starts with a song about a tortoise and ends with a slow song about the end of the world. The band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 was trying to be creative, with their music. The music in between is really something that can be described as a bunch of pieces. This is the style that the band itself often uses. It is really great but also really annoying at the same time. The band often does this it is what the band does with the music, between.

Surrealism is a part of the music. They like to play pranks and make a lot of noise. The musicians do improvisation, which means they just play whatever they feel like. You might think it is all crazy and messy at first because the music jumps around from one scene to the next really fast.. If you listen closer you will hear that they actually care about making the music sound good and sweet. It is like the soundtrack to a movie that does not exist or a weird religious ceremony. There are five singers and a lot of instruments like guitars, bass, drums, banjo, mandolin and Optigan. Sometimes they take turns playing. Sometimes they all play at the same time. The music can be really beautiful and sad. It can be like something a kid would like. It can also be pretty weird and gross which is what they are going for with the Surrealism thing. Surrealism is what makes the music so interesting because it is, about exploring strange and new ideas. This music is, like a song that helps you fall asleep but it takes you to a bad dream. When you wake up you are laughing. This is what the band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 thought a commercial record should sound like. They wanted Thinking Fellers Union 282 music to be a little strange.

The last name that Eickelberg suggested for the band was related to what was happening with the band in April 1995. The band was getting ready to go on tour and open for the band Live. The band Live was a group of four musicians who were very popular at that time. They were having a hit with their song "Lightning Crashes" which was rising to the top of the Billboard rock charts. The band Live was very serious and successful. They were the opposite of Thinking Fellers in ways. The band Live had a different image and style. They were humorless. Seemed to think they were very important. The musicians in the band Live were also bald which made them look more serious. Thinking Fellers were not, like this all. The Fellers had some bad shows at the arena. It was like something from Heironymous Bosch. People in the audience were throwing basketballs. They were flying right past The Fellers heads. There was this one fan, in the front row who was giving The Fellers the finger hard that he almost broke his own finger. The Fellers heard the word hatred a lot. For Eickelberg this was a learning experience. The Fellers went through a time and Eickelberg learned something from it. She said this in an interview with Perfect Sound Forever. It really helped us understand some things. The thing is it made one thing very clear to us. There was no way that our band was going to get bigger than it already was. Our music was not going to get more popular than it was at that time. We were not going to get a lot of fans. That is what we learned from this experience. We were happy, with what we had. That was it. The band was what it was. It was not going to change.

The band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 had an amazing sound during this time in their career even if they did not sell a lot of records. The people in the band were Eickelberg on bass, Mark Davies, Brian Hageman and Hugh Swarts on guitars and Jay Paget on drums. Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 was special because every single person in the band sang, helped write songs and played instruments besides the one they normally played. For example the notes, on one of their albums just said that all five members of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 played instruments. The four Fellers who played string instruments grew up in Iowa. Then moved to the Bay Area in the mid 80s. They met the drummer Paul Bergmann and started doing what they loved. The Fellers and Paul Bergmann all lived together in the house in Oakland. They practiced music in this house. Were living the life of a band. The Fellers were really, into this bohemian band life. The band has a timeline on their website that shows what they were doing around that time. They were doing things like drinking wine listening to music, on the radio and writing songs for the band. The band would listen to two radio stations at the same time and the band would drink generic burgundy wine. The band was also writing songs for the band during this time.

The rent was really cheap. At that time the music industry was really into "alternative rock". This made the band think that they could actually make a career out of their music. They were a strange band but they were doing okay. They even got to open for Nirvana one time. This was a month after Nirvana released their album Nevermind.

It is hard to imagine the band developing their style without living together and sharing ideas. They liked to improvise and make up jokes that only they understood. The band members worked together closely that it was hard to tell who came up with what. The fact that the rent was cheap and they could live together really helped them to make music, like this. The music of the rock band was shaped by this time when they lived together and could focus on their music. These people must have spent a lot of time practicing they were bouncing ideas off each other messing around and just hanging out with each other. They really spent much time hanging out and practicing together.

When Strangers From the Universe came out this band had already made four albums and three EPs. They were thinking about quitting music because things were not going well. The band had released their two full albums with Matador, which is a great record label. Matador is good at finding music and getting it to a lot of people but being on this label did not help the band sell a lot of records or get big crowds at their shows. The band members, Eickelberg and Hageman wrote about their experiences, on tour. Posted them on the bands website. These stories are funny and honest. They talk about the good and bad things that happen when you are traveling and playing music all the time. The fear that we will not get what we were promised is a concern for us. We worry that we will be stuck in a situation or told to leave. I remember one show in Buffalo that was really sad and empty. The musician Eickelberg wrote about it. He said it is terrible to think about playing music for a time like 45 minutes and the only person listening is the bartender. This makes us angry because we feel like we are paying much money for a long time it seems like forever. The fear of playing music and not getting anything in return is a problem, for us, the musicians. We have to pay to play music. It feels like it will never end.

After touring for a long time the band took a break for a year in 1993. The band members had stopped living and they moved into a new practice space in San Francisco. This new place was full of people who were struggling with addiction and people who did not have homes. The situation was very bad. The band found something, about it that made them want to keep trying. The band wanted to try hard and see if they could make a good living by playing music. Davies said that they did a lot of things during that time but they were really trying to take a break, from each other when they were working on Strangers From the Universe.. Then at the end of that time they basically said, "Let us try to push it more instead of giving up on Strangers From the Universe." When you listen to Strangers From the Universe for the time you might think: What were they thinking with Strangers From the Universe? Was Strangers From the Universe really going to be their break? It is true that The Thinking Fellers have songs than noise experiments, on this album but the Thinking Fellers songs themselves are really different. The Thinking Fellers are taking the ideas of post-punk and no wave. Making them even more unusual. This is creating a kind of dream world where the Thinking Fellers can try anything. The sound of the album is also very clear which makes the weirdness of the Thinking Fellers sound more interesting and detailed.

These musicians sometimes sound like they think they have to come up with a new way of playing together for every song they write. This is the kind of simple and innocent thinking that you might find in Zen Buddhism or when you are coming down from a very strong psychedelic trip. The Bluegrass band says a mandolin is not a stringed instrument it can also be a percussion instrument. A few short bursts of guitar noise can be the main part of a song that people remember. The musicians ask each other can we both play the bass guitar on this song? February is a cool song with a lot of weird and wonderful sounds from the banjo and electric guitar. It is so unique that it could start a new type of music if other people were inspired to try it. This music is like a mix of punk and folk it is perfect for a party. The thing that makes it special is not the unusual instruments it is the way they all sound together. Sometimes the banjo and guitar sound like they are fighting each other. Sometimes they sound like they are working together which is really interesting. February is an example of this kind of music which could be called progressive punk, for people who like to have a crazy time. Paget plays the drums in an energetic way like a hyper kid. He is a lot like Jaki Liebezeit from the band Can. Paget is great at finding the beat in music that might sound messy, to people.

Eickelbergs bass playing is fun to listen to. He plays notes that go back and forth with the music and he really emphasizes certain parts. The song has a part where they shout "Everything's the same it's more of the same." This is talking about feeling depressed. It could also be saying that some other bands are not trying hard and just doing the same old thing. Paget and Eickelberg and the rest of the band are doing something with their music like the drums and the bass.

The song "Guillotine" has a lot of sounding strings and a group of people singing together. It is like they are trying to make music like Animal Collective, a band that really likes Feller. The people who like Feller are into them that they got Feller to play music together again for a few shows. The music in "Guillotine" starts out nice and calm. Then it gets a little scary and weird. There are no drums, in this song. This song feels like it is going to float at any moment but then this really catchy riff comes along and brings it back down to earth. It does this every now and then which is good because otherwise the song might just disappear. At some point and it happens slowly that you do not even realize it the weird sounds take over the music. The catchy riff is not enough to hold it and these voices that sound like kids start talking crazy in the background. The song still has a feel to it but it also gets really scary like when something fun turns out to be really bad. The music is still of hazy but it is frightening at the same time, like a good time that has gone terribly wrong.

The song "Guillotine" was first heard in a version without words under the name "Firing Squad" on The Funeral Pudding. This was an EP that came out in 1994 before the album Strangers From the Universe. "Guillotine" is one of those weird instrumental parts that you can find on every Thinking Fellers album. These parts are like a stream of thoughts that are not really connected. They show up between the more complete songs. The people who like Thinking Fellers have a name for these parts they call them "Feller filler". The Thinking Fellers have a lot of these "Feller filler" pieces on their albums and fans, like them. The song "Bomber Pilot WWII”, on the album Strangers is an example of this. It starts with a sounding guitar and some deep noises that you are not really sure where they come from. These sounds just keep going for a minute without really going anywhere and then they just stop. The song "Bomber Pilot WWII" has a simple idea but it is still interesting to listen to.

The band Thinking Fellers has a lot of music and Feller filler is a part of it. You can easily skip it. Still understand what the band is about.. The thing is, Feller filler is in a lot of their songs, even the ones that are supposed to be easy to listen to, like this album. This makes me think that Feller filler was really important, to The Thinking Fellers and they did not want to change it. The Thinking Fellers wanted to keep Feller filler in their music no matter what. The band wrote a lot of their songs by playing together and seeing what happened. They would often play around onstage. Feller filler shows us how they really made their music and it is also a test for people who want to be their fans. The band was, like asking the crowd at Live to throw basketballs at them.

The Thinking Fellers have a weird sense of humor and they like to make fun of their own big plans. This can make it hard to see that The Thinking Fellers were actually good musicians. They would put a lot of effort into things that might seem silly like playing a version of the theme song from an old 1950s TV show with three guitars, just like an orchestra. They even did this live on their Strangers From the Universe tour. The Thinking Fellers were really good, at music even if they did like to joke around a lot. The people in the band did not have a lot of training on their instruments. It seems like they learned to play by playing. They got better at playing as a group over time. They must have practiced for a long time. The band members are similar to the Grateful Dead from San Francisco. The Grateful Dead lived together. Played music all the time. This is how they found the sound for their band. The people in the band found their special way of playing instruments that worked well for this particular band. The Grateful Dead and this band did not have to be super good at instruments to sound great together. They just had to be good, for their band. Rarely is anyone playing lead in a traditional sense—there’s simply too much going on—but if you focus on any particular instrumental part, you’ll often find a marvel of intricacy. Their songwriting is less a matter of chords and a melody than the architectural arrangement of these gleaming and misshapen riffs, laid at seemingly impossible angles of mutual support, like pillars in an Escher drawing.

Mason Morgan