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Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

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Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Billboard #1 album
September 28 – October 4, 1968

Time Peace Rascals Greatest HitsWhat is your favorite Rascals song? Do you still call them the Young Rascals? Do you think of someplace in particular when you hear some of their songs?

Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits
I Ain’t Gonna Eat My Heart Out Anymore

I don’t think I knew that the Rascals were a Jersey band, but I heard about that along the way. I didn’t know what blue-eyed soul meant. I do know I immediately liked their music. Rock and Roll.

The Rascals were: Felix Cavaliere (vocals, Hammond B3/keyboards), Eddie Brigati (vocals and percussion), Gene Cornish (guitar and vocals), and  Dino Danelli (drummer).

Eddie’s brother David Brigati was an original member of Joey Dee & The Starliters. The Starliters were another Jersey band (out of Lodi, NJ) who are most famous for their hit “Peppermint Twist.”

The Young Rascals began in Brigati and Danelli’s hometown of Garfield, NJ.

I knew neither the Starlighter nor Garfield connections. I did know I loved “I Ain’t Gonna Eat My Heart Out Anymore.”

Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Hit single after hit single

I also knew that I loved each single that followed. These were compact hits. All under 3 minutes as were the typical timings then , but like all great pop hits, they packed it all in.

Good Lovin’ February 1966
You Better Run May 1966
Come On Up September 1966
I’ve Been Lonely Too Long January 1967
A Girl Like You July 1967
How Can I Be Sure August 1967
It’s Wonderful November 1967
A Beautiful Morning April 1968
Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Especially, A Beautiful Morning

I had fallen in love again in 1966 and this time it lasted. It became a life-long romance that is still strong. Of course we went to our Senior Prom in 1968 and stayed up all night. We had a very early eyes-drooping breakfast at a classmate’s house.

The sun rose. I drove my love to her house.

I started my sister’s VW bug to finally head home after reluctantly ending our longest date ever. Of course I turned on the radio–AM only. And as I passed Cliffside Park High School and turned the corner off of Riverview Avenue onto Palisade Avenue what song came on?  A Beautiful Morning of course.

Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Time Peace

Although I’d been purchasing albums for a few years already, I still counted my newspaper route’s pennies before I invested in another record whether it was a single or an album.

When I saw the Rascals had released a greatest hits album, it went on the list and after collecting the week’s payment from my route’s customers, I headed to the record section of my town’s Woolworth Store and purchased it.

It was a beautiful evening and the album still holds up well today.

Here is a video of the band. I was very impressed with Dino Danelli drumstick twirling and thought their clothes were pretty cool. I wonder what they thought. I wonder what their agent was thinking?

Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Side One

  1. “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” (Pam Sawyer, Laurie Burton) – The Rascals’ first single (1965); also included on the 1966 album The Young Rascals
  2. “Good Lovin'” (Rudy Clark, Arthur Resnick)
    • The Rascals’ second single (1966), and first #1 hit; also included on The Young Rascals
  3. “You Better Run” (Felix Cavaliere, Eddie Brigati)
    • The A-side of the Rascals’ third single (1966); later included on the 1967 album Groovin’
  4. “Come On Up” (Cavaliere)
    • The Rascals’ fourth single (1966), also included on the 1967 album Collections
  5. “Mustang Sally” (Bonny Rice) Uncut version from The Young Rascals
  6. “Love is a Beautiful Thing” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • Originally released as the B-side of “You Better Run”; later included on Collections
  7. “In the Midnight Hour” (Wilson Pickett, Steve Cropper)
    • From The Young Rascals
Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Side Two

  1. “(I’ve Been) Lonely Too Long” (Cavaliere)
    • Uncut version from Collections
  2. “Groovin'” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • The Rascals’ second #1 single (1967); also included on Groovin’
  3. “A Girl Like You” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • The follow-up Top 10 single to “Groovin'” (1967); also included on Groovin’
  4. “How Can I Be Sure” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • The Rascals’ third Top 10 single of 1967; also included on Groovin’
  5. “It’s Wonderful” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • LP version (without the “Mardi Gras” special effects coda) from the 1968 album Once Upon a Dream
  6. “Easy Rollin'” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • From Once Upon a Dream
  7. “A Beautiful Morning” (Cavaliere, Brigati)
    • Non-LP single from 1968
Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits

Hall of Fame

The (Young) Rascals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Time Peace Rascals Greatest Hits
Environmental Issues, Today in history

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

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Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Published September 27, 1962

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Love of Nature

Rachel Carson grew up in rural Springdale, Pennsylvania.  She graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

During the Depression, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries hired her to write radio scripts. In 1936 she began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor. She eventually became the Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Writer

Carson also wrote articles for outside publication: “Undersea” (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), Under the Sea Wind (1941). In 1952 she published a prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us and in 1955 The Edge of the Sea.

After leaving government service, she wrote articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including “Help Your Child to Wonder,” (1956) and “Our Ever-Changing Shore” (1957). The theme that ran through her writings was that humans are a part of not apart from Nature.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Post WW  II

After World War II, the use of chemicals to solve problems became increasingly commonplace. The pharmaceutical sector of the economy grew as well as other chemical-related industries.

Because the immediate benefits of such widespread chemical use were so obviously beneficial, society and science ignored or at least did not consider its long-term impact.

On September 27, 1962 Houghton Mifflin published Silent Spring. In it Carson argued that the long-term impact of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was disastrous to the environment, particularly the egg production of birds in the wild.

Luckily for Carson, the bald eagle is the national bird of the United States and America’s sense of patriotism outweighed even the chemical industries outcries.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Gradual ban

In 1967 Environmental Defense Fund [EDF] formed from a grass roots effort to ban DDT from Suffolk County, NY. The organization brought lawsuits against the government to “establish a citizen’s right to a clean environment.” By 1972, the EDF and other activist groups succeeded in securing a phase-out of DDT use in the United States.

Carson died on April 14, 1964 before she saw the initial successes of her environmental urgings. (NYT obit)

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962
Today in history

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

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Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Magdalene Asylums

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

September 26, 1996

The last Magdalene asylum, in Waterford, Ireland, closed

From the documentary: Sex In A Cold Climate The Magdalene Asylums
Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Double standards

Societies have double standards. One of the most prominent, yet most denied is the relationship between males and females. The French have their expression vive la différence regarding that relationship. Biologists have studied the quantitative chemical differences between the sexes, but those differences are not qualitative. There are no “female traits that are completely female nor “male” traits completely male.

We are all both to varying degrees.

As rationally as some can approach the reality, most humans continue to treat human males and human females as if they were different species and allow males to dominate females. Such a difference is particularly true with regard to sexual behavior. The sale and purchase of sex is illegal nearly everywhere, but societies typically punish the male buyer far less seriously and far less often than the female seller.

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Magdalene Asylums

The Magdalene Asylums existed in the United Kingdom as a means to “rescue” prostitutes. No analogous institution existed to rescue males who regularly frequented prostitutes. The first “Magdalene Home” was established in England in 1758; Ireland followed in 1765. Both the Anglican and Presbyterian churches ran these so-called asylums, but the Catholic Church in Ireland is the most associated (keep in mind that at the time of their creation, Ireland was part of the UK). There were also Magdalene asylums in Canada and Australia.

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Magdalene Laundries

With he Biblical maxim that “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece” in mind, the mostly young women sent to these asylums found a day filled with work. If pregnant, the asylum forced the mother to give up the child, but young women were in the asylum often simply because her family or her parish priest thought the woman might attract male attentiveness or was flirtatious. Or perhaps the parish priest was guilty of that attentiveness and he removed his “near occasion of sin” by sending away the young woman.

Though called an asylum, in actuality the institution was a jail. Inmates had no choice to their being there and once there might be there for life. There had been no trial or due process. There were no visits from the outside world.

Their work was to do laundry (from the outside world) to earn money for the jail.  Asylums may have signed contracts guaranteeing a minimum wage, but the institutions ignored that agreement. The women scrubbed the prison, cooked for the nuns who oversaw the prison, or took care of aging inmates.

During their existence research estimates that 30,000 women were in these institutions. In the theocratic Ireland, both the State and Church conspired to keep jail stories away from the public eye. The inmates’ stories seldom escaped because the inmates rarely left. The Sisters in charge warned those who did leave never to speak of their incarceration.

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Abuse revealed

In Dublin in 1993 developers accidentally discovered 133 corpses in an unmarked grave site that had belonged to the Catholic Sisters of Charity. The Sister had sold the property that had once been part of a Magdalene laundry site. Slowly former inmates began to tell the story they’d held in for years or even decades.

In 2001, the Irish Government admitted that the Magdalene Laundries had been places of abuse and 2011 the United Nations Committee Against Torture urged Ireland to investigate the facts and truth of the government involvement.

A 2013, the Irish panel found evidence of verbal abuse, and Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny issued a full state apology to the victims, calling them the “nation’s shame”. He said, in part, “on behalf of the State, the government and our citizens [I] deeply regret and apologise unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them, and for any stigma they suffered, as a result of the time they spent in a Magdalene Laundry,”

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Joni Mitchell

In 1994 Joni Mitchell released one of the most powerful songs she ever wrote and likely the most powerful song ever written about the Magdalene abuses.

I was an unmarried girl
I’d just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a Jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I’d be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries *

Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly
By her parish priest
We’re trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the steaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries

Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me
Fallen women
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they’d know and they’d drop the stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They’d like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries

Peg O’Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you’d think at least some bells should ring!
One day I’m going to die here too
And they’ll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring
No, not any spring
Not any spring

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Sinéad O’Connor

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

On October 3, 1992 Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor used her Saturday Night Live appearance to make a statement about the Catholic Church’s conspiracy to cover up its history of child and sexual abuse by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II after her performance of Bob Marley’s “War.” She stated simply, “Fight the real enemy.”

The incident, not surprisingly, brought down upon her a mountain of indignation. In retrospect, her statement was a completely valid one. [a reader adds that O’Connor herself was incarcerated in one of the laundries. See comments]

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries

Catholic League responds

In 2013, Bill Donohue published an article in the Catholic League entitled “The Myths of the Magdalene Laundries.”

Early in the long piece, Donohue states, “The popular perception of the laundries is entirely negative, owing in large part to fictionalized portrayals in the movies. The conventional wisdom has also been shaped by writers who have come to believe the worst about the Catholic Church, and by activists who have their own agenda. So strong is the prejudice that even when evidence to the contrary is presented, the bias continues.”

A blind apology in my eyes.

Joni Mitchell Magdalene Laundries