Lost music was harder to come by when I was in college than it is now. There was no eBay, no Hype Machine, no Amazon (well, there was an Amazon). There weren’t even great used record shops in the humble city where I went to school. So there were a few holy grails of college rock, widely revered albums that had slipped out of print and probably illicitly slipped out the door of the radio station library shortly thereafter. We could read about these records, but couldn’t play them, and often couldn’t even hear a bit of them. The album I remember most clearly having that status was Crazy Rhythms by The Feelies.

We were otherwise fairly well-stocked at the radio station in the music of one of New Jersey’s finest exports. We had well-loved but flawless copies of The Good Earth and Only Life and even a couple spare singles and EPs. That spooky blue cover, though, was nowhere to be seen. The fruitless pining didn’t last all that long. Within a couple of years of my arrival at the station, Crazy Rhythms got its reissue. It got plenty of airplay, but, perhaps inevitably, not as much as the records most of had connected with when they were brand new, including the album that would prove to be their last, 1991’s Time for a Witness. It is actually that album that is about to become the new Great Unavailable Feelies Record^TM.

The Feelies may be one of the best bands that just can’t seem to keep their albums in print. Even when they staged a relatively high-profile reunion last summer, most of their music was unavailable to anyone who might want to head to their friendly neighborhood record store to purchase a recording. Now comes word that there are new reissues on the way. That will make every Feelies album readily available, except for the exceptional Time for a Witness.

For me, the problem with this omission is simple: I’ve somehow lost my CD copy of Time for a Witness. I still have the case, and it looks very nice on the shelf, but the silver circle that holds all the songs is mysteriously absent. I have the music in my iTunes (thanks to the long-distance assistance of a good friend rather than my own foresight) so I still get to listen to it, even if every time a track shuffles up it is a little bit of a jangly taunt, a tuneful reminder of a household error. Not that I would ever have cause to complain when a Feelies song comes on.

The lead single off the new holy grail of Feelies records is below.

The Feelies, “Sooner or Later”

(Disclaimer: Since this whole post is basically about Time For A Witness‘s out-of-print status, it should go without typing that I’m including the downloadable song because I believe it to unattainable be a means that will provide money to any of the members of The Feelies. If someone with due authority to do so asks me to remove the song, I surely will.)