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From The Desk Of The Feelies: Roxy Music’s “Street Life” 45

“Stay the course. Keep on trying.” So sings Glenn Mercer on the Feelies’ In Between, their sixth album and second since rebooting in 2008. Last year, the Haledon, N.J., band founded by guitarists Mercer and Bill Million celebrated its 40th anniversary. Crazy Rhythms, their frenetic, classic debut, arrived in 1980, but they waited six years for their second, the comparatively sedate The Good Earth. That was the first Feelies album with the band’s current lineup of Mercer, Million, bassist Brenda Sauter, drummer Stan Demeski and percussionist Dave Weckerman. After the (relatively) quick run of three albums between 1986 and 1991, the band retired until Sonic Youth coaxed a reunion in 2008 that led to sporadic touring and to 2011’s Here Before. The Feelies will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on them.

Demeski: I have a German copy of this song with a pretty wacky picture sleeve that seemed pretty typical of German picture sleeves of that period. This was the first Roxy Music I heard, initially as the music in a commercial for Stranded that ran once or twice during the airing of ABC’s In Concert show on Friday nights during the ’70s. It was pretty shocking, like nothing I had heard before. Not long afterward, I picked the LP up as an import. I got the 45 about six years later and I tend to play it during the summer since that’s when I initially heard it.