Feelies mania! Reunion mini-tour, Crazy Rhythms & The Good Earth Reissued

Hey MOGgers, long time no see. I've been keeping my head down ripping my entire collection to flac and struggling with my Qnap NAS and Squeezebox setup. Relistening to much of my collection I've got plenty of things percolatin' in my head I ought to get down.

Rumors have been circulating for several years about The Feelies' classic Crazy Rhythms from 1980 and The Good Earth (1986) being reissued. They rank #16 and #319 in my alltime best albums list (links to reviews below). Water was all set to do it in 2007, but could not get approval from the band. In summer 2008 The Feelies suprised us by reuniting to play a handful of shows for the first time in over 17 years, and it was rumored that Bar/None was working on the reissues. Now it's official, they'll be out in September, an event more exciting for some than the Beatles reissues. And they're finally playing in Chicago! It's all coming to together according to plan, mwa ha ha. Now if only Jonathan Demme would finally get around to following through on his original idea for a Feelies zombie movie!

Bar/None to Reissue the Feelies' First Two LPs
Their debut release Crazy Rhythms is a masterwork of perfectly honed minimalist rock that leaps and darts into the corners of the listener's consciousness, a true sonic tour de force that Rolling Stone deemed one of the "100 Best Albums of the 1980s." Fans of the Velvet Underground, Wire and Brian Eno's early solo work will surely appreciate the "forces at work" (to quote a song title!) on this masterpiece.

Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth will be released to coincide with the Feelies' September performance at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival where they will perform the classic Crazy Rhythms in its entirety.

6/26 New York City, NY - Whitney Museum
6/29 Chicago, IL - Millennium Park
7/2 Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell's
7/3 Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell's
7/4 Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell's
9/11 Monticello, NY - All Tomorrow's Parties Festival (Crazy Rhythms)

The Feelies and Icy Demons
Downtown Sound: New Music Mondays, Millennium Park, June 29, 7:30-9:30

The Feelies come back to Chicago on Monday
Jim DeRogatis interviews them.

The New York Canon: Pop Music
They were killer nerds, equal parts passive (buried, Velvets-y vocals) and aggressive (manic guitars), an approach that sonically and conceptually laid the groundwork for the white-boy college-rock revolution that followed them.

Sasha Frere-Jones on Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna) book
Wareham also calls the Feelies' first album, "Crazy Rhythms," a "perfect record." We agree; "Crazy Rhythms" had a huge impact on me when I started playing music. It is an extremely uptight record, rivaled only by certain Devo records and music involving automation. For all the album's repetition and precision, though, it moves like the wind and has no wasted moments. The Feelies' cover of "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)" has always felt slightly more right than the Beatles' original. Ringo is not as brutal a drummer as Anton Fier, who played on "Crazy Rhythms" but on none of the subsequent Feelies albums. The drummer on those records was Stanley Demeski, a musician who eventually ended up in Luna with Wareham. The circle of life!

Glenn Mercer on Jonathan Demme's original Feelies zombie-concert movie concept
"He had called us in the early '80s and proposed a concept of a concert film that would take place in our home town. He described it as cross between The Last Waltz and The Night of the Living Dead. He had this vision. He's obsessed with small town life and suburbia. His idea was to have everybody in the town be like zombies, shuffling towards something. It turns out they're going to a Feelies concert. The zombies go inside and then by the end of the show, they're all rejuvenated and come to life. Interesting concept but he couldn't sell the idea to anyone. But we kept in touch."

1980 The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms.zip (76MB)
This download is good for just 7 days. It is not the new remastered version. If this moves you, I highly encourage you to buy a copy of this or The Good Earth in September. They should move up the release date, as that's when the entire remastered Beatles catalog comes out.

The Feelies And Lou Reed Make History At The Orpheum (April 1989)
Here's something I wrote as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 19 year-old!

The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms (Stiff/A&M) 10
The Feelies, The Good Earth (Coyote/Twin/Tone) 10-
My reviews.