The Rascals - Time Peace The Rascals Greatest Hits

Time Peace The Rascals Greatest Hits was an album I found in a dollar bin and for my buck I wanted to get "Good Lovin'" and ended up getting more for my buck than I expected. The record jacket still had the original shrink wrap on it, and I couldn't bring myself to peel it off, so I didn't. The album itself was in better shape than I expected considering the liner was long gone. Very few pops and clicks. Yeah, I got my dollar's worth. Apparently there was a gatefold version as well ... that would have been nice.

The cover I assumed was a nod to Roy Lichtenstein mixed with Andy Warhol. Or not, who knows. I'm just trying to put that one semester of art history to use.

The album crams fourteen songs onto two sides, and while there are a few covers they appear on the first side. From what I can tell the songs are presented in chronological order and in the early days outside writers helped flesh out their repertoire and songs like "Good Lovin'", "Mustang Sally" and "In the Midnight Hour" were among the band's early singles. I could take or leave their version of "Mustang Sally" but they did a decent job with "In the Midnight Hour" and their version of "Good Lovin'" is definitive. The best of the original tracks on side one was "You Better Run" which got a second life when Pat Benatar covered it in 1980 on her Crimes of Passion album.

The second side featured songs written by the band's vocalists Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati, with Felix handing most of the lead vocals. The songs are all pleasant and I guess fall into what became known as "Blue Eyed" soul. The song "Groovin'" was really good, and a song I recognized. Score one for classic radio.

It's too bad the recordings sound so anemic. There are some really good songs here that you can tell would be absolutely awesome if they only sounded better. I don't think you can lay this at the feet of the band. Sure they produced their own albums, but that was engineers are for. Frankly it is what it is, and it's not like The Rascals are alone in having great songs that don't sound great.

While this isn't representative of my favourite style of music from the late '60s there's a reason some of the songs by these guys are classics.

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