Photo: Doug Seymour
June 2025 • Volume 51, Number 9 • www. illinoisentertainer. com
COVER STORY: THE FEELIES
When most rock bands release a new album, it’ s usually the hard-won result of weeks, months, sometimes even years of careful consideration and execution. But New Jersey quintet The Feelies recently stumbled on a new, more reckless method of adding a new volume to its seven-album catalog, simply by not viewing it as a viable new collection of material at all. It sounds slapdash-crazy, he knows, chuckles guitarist / backing vocalist Bill Million, while discussing the New Jersey-bred outfit’ s surprise Rewind effort. But hear him out. As he tells it, this collection of cover songs spanning the band’ s nearly five-decade-long career was never actually intended to be an official release. But the project, as projects often do, took on a life of its own.
“ The genesis of Rewind was just the fact that we had done a cover song( Patti Smith’ s signature‘ Dancing Barefoot’). I thought it would be nice if it was available to the fans of our band on the streaming services, so it was nothing more than that,” explains Million, who, at a business-savvy 71, has kept track of the ever-evolving music industry since issuing the first Feelies CD-and-cassette outing for famed Stiff Records- the edgy, influential Crazy Rhythms – way back in 1980. But that debut happened to feature an early jitter-jangled take on The Beatles’“ Everybody’ s Got Something to Hide( Except Me and My Monkey),” and the deeper he delved into band history, the more forgotten covers he unearthed- enough, eventually, for a full-length album for longtime record label Bar / None. Aversion of Bob Dylan doing Ron Wood’ s“ Seven Days” from 2016. A 1990 run-through of The Rolling Stones’“ Paint It Black,” originally included as a bonus cut for a 1990 Crazy Rhythms reissue, bookended by another number from the same year,“ I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms” by The Modern Lovers. Rewind wound up including a second Beatles homage(“ She Said, She Said,” from 1986), a Doors genuflection(“ Take It As It Comes”), and more.“ So a lot of these songs that are on here were available in other forms,” Million says.“ Popping up in promos, EPs, or Record Store Day exclusives. And it was Bar / None itself, he adds, that suggested the Patti Smith b / w Neil Young Spotify addition, before green-lighting an entire covers package. Tom Lanham and Million discussed the origins of Rewind.
PAGE 20: THE FEELIES
Rock of Pages
The Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville.
Spins
Manic Street Preachers, Harm’ s Way, Two Wolf, Issac Hayes.
CinemaScopes
June film and streams preview.
Media
Legendary radio producer Swany leaves the Mix.
Calendar
1500 shows and 3800 bands, it’ s IE’ s live music calendar.
Classifieds
Music services, musicians and more.
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