Is there a better record than “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore”?

All anybody remembers about the Young Rascals’ debut is “Good Lovin’,” but that was an afterthought in my book, a trifle compared to “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore.”

YeeaAAAHHHH!

The track started out quiet and then EXPLODED out of the speakers, whether it be the one in your dashboard or the two of your newly-purchased stereo, a compact that fit together in one big box.

I admit you got the biggest brown eyes
And you know how to part your lips to tantalize…

Kissing, right?

That’s not what they told me at summer camp. When this record came out oral sex was anathema in my book, how disgusting. Ah, but with maturity comes insight that evaded you before puberty raised its beautiful head. Ha!

And what makes “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” so great is not only that exploding intro and Eddie Brigati vocal, but the anthemic chorus and the sweet bridge….

I love you, I love you, I do girl
But you ain’t gonna cheat on me
I need you, I need you, I do girl
Choose, is it him or me

“Is it him or ME?!!” That’s what the assembled multitude sang in the background. I mean come on, choose, I’m a rock star, singing my heart out, am I really gonna be denied?

You wonder why we picked up guitars? We wanted that power! When no one had that capacity or dominance, not athletes, bankers or politicians… Musicians were at the tippity-top of the food chain.

But the Rascals, then “Young,” did not write “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,” hell, the only original on the debut was “Do You Feel It,” written by Felix Cavaliere and Gene Cornish, not that anybody knew unless they read the credits, since the band made all the songs their own.

Then came the follow-up, “Collections,” which was a completely different story. It was laden with originals. All good, but none as fantastic as “Lonely Too Long.”

Oh, the opener, “What Is The Reason,” is a killer. Not to mention “Love Is A Beautiful Thing,” and the band’s cover of “Too Many Fish In The Sea.” But the killer, the one that stands out today, is “Lonely Too Long,” it’s the one I sing to myself, even more than “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out Anymore,” hell, I woke up with it in my head today.

Wanna know what makes the track? THE ORGAN SOLO!

A few notes are banged out on the piano, and then entering from a back door, oozing out onto the dance floor, is this soulful sound that gets your juices flowing, makes your hormones rage. Let’s take nothing away from Booker T., but Felix Cavaliere belongs in the keyboard pantheon too!

Hell, prior to “Collections” we thought Eddie was the leader of the band, that everybody else supported him. But beginning with “Collections,” Felix moved front and center too, it wasn’t long before we realized he was a GENIUS!

I’ve been lonely too long
I’ve been lonely too long

What did I know about loneliness? Heartache? The need for the human touch?

It’s not like I was not infected by “Lonely Too Long” from the beginning, but like a fine wine, I only realized its greatness after it breathed and I aged. Wow, the passion, the frustration, the hope, the desire…it’s all embodied in this less than three minute track. Back then bands didn’t need to go on endlessly, they didn’t need seventy minutes to tell their story on a CD, in just a handful of minutes they could express it all!

And let’s not forget the horn part. Kinda like the harp in the Beach Boys’ “Catch A Wave,” musicians back then did not see a need to reject their elders, they embraced their education, they used all the tools at their disposal to titillate, romance and indoctrinate the listeners, their fans.

And that’s what I was, a fan.

The Young Rascals have been written out of rock and roll history. Billy Joel is the big act from Long Island. But the Rascals had one of those storied runs that was so bright, however brief, that it cannot be denied. They had hit after hit. And they could play them. I know, because I went to the show. That’s what all those nights at the bar will teach you.

And right now Little Steven, curator of everything that once was, is raising money on Kickstarter for production of a Rascals show in Port Chester in December. He’s only asking for a hundred grand, but he’s still tens of thousands short. Because oldsters are clueless, barely computer-literate, never mind knowledgeable about Kickstarter, and the young ‘uns wearing their pants around their asses have never heard this music, which is truly about soul.

So I’m helping to get the message out, because it’s my duty to keep this music alive. Which was not solely of a time or place, but is truly forever…if you hear it!

If you never have, click to experience the magic.

If you’ve forgotten, let me bring you back.

If you never forgot, can I get a HELL YEAH?!!

Spotify playlist

The Rascals “Once Upon A Dream” Reunion Shows

I didn’t learn much in college.

But I learned a whole hell of a lot in high school, it made me who I am.

Now let me clarify that a bit. I did learn a lot in college. Just very little in class. Taught by professors who’d rather be somewhere else, pursuing glory in the world of their peers instead of slumming with the lowly students. It was almost all lectures all the time, and to say it was boring would be an understatement. But high school, those teachers were good!

Well, some of them. Very few of them. But they made up for all the losers.

Let’s go back to my freshman year. I’m blocking the name of my Algebra teacher. He was a nice enough guy, he went to Middlebury himself, but the class was so dry that I sat in the back of the room cracking jokes with my friend Russell from the projects, and completely missed the essence of the subject. Yup, I was doing Algebra by trial and error. X + 3 = 5? I got it, it’s 2! But when the numbers turned into fractions I could no longer come up with the answers, this teacher sent home a progress report that I was near failing and my parents flipped out. That’s how it was in the sixties, if your kid screwed up it was not the administration’s fault, but your progeny’s. Hell, I’d rather face the principal any day of the week as opposed to my parents.

They made me sit in the front row. I had to go for after class help. I barely squeezed by.

But the following year, for Geometry, I had Mrs. Spitalny. Who let us shoot water pistols in class, who let us throw snowballs, and I got an A+. I kid you not. No one could believe it, my old buddies taking the subject with my old teacher figured I was cheating, or grading was on a severe curve. But the following year, I had Mrs. Spitalny again, for Algebra II, and not only did I get an A+, I was one of only two students (both taught by Mrs. Spitalny) who got all forty questions right on the standardized test at the end of the year, the one all the students in my school took.

Then I had a different math teacher in my senior year and barely eked out a B.

Teachers count.

And I can count, because I had Mrs. Spitalny.

But the teacher I want to talk about here is Pamela Hurley. Mrs. Hurley. She was married to this hunk who showed up at school every once in a while. He accompanied us on field trips. She was twenty six, she had us reading Ferlinghetti.

Do they even teach Ferlinghetti anymore? Probably not in Texas. There’s no test on Ferlinghetti, there’s no race to the top. His poetry is about stimulating your brain as opposed to getting you ahead on the test.

And I remember Mrs. Hurley had the “Time” article about “Alice’s Restaurant” pinned to her bulletin board. And we went to New York to see “MacBird” and to see Janis Ian on Friday night, at what was then called Philharmonic Hall, now known as Avery Fisher Hall, in Lincoln Center.

And she drove a limo. A fifteen year old faded black Cadillac. She gave me a ride home one day, even though it was against the rules.

And if it sounds like I was the teacher’s pet and had a crush on Mrs. Hurley, you’ve got it wrong. Judd was the pet. And Mrs. Hurley had her unlovable side. When she would suddenly get strict. But I remember telling her that spring that her class was getting boring, it wasn’t as cool as it used to be. In today’s militaristic educational system, you can’t talk back, not with substance. There’s no heart, no soul.

But Mrs. Hurley was not the one who taught me to write. Oh, I remember performing in her classroom, reading Edgar Allan Poe by candlelight, but the teacher who taught me how to write was Mr. Harrity, in AP English, senior year. He’d just come back from sabbatical, he’d learned this new writing technique. Every day, for the first five minutes of class, we had to write, and if we ran out of things to say, we had to repeat the previous three words ad infinitum. That’s how I can type so fast, spit it out so quickly. You have to become one with the words, you have to let it flow. Once you self-edit, you lose it. As for all those people saying writing is rewriting…I feel sorry for them. Rewriting is so painful. And oftentimes, the more you change, the more you lose the essence. It’s about getting it right the first time. When you’re truly inspired. Capturing lightning in a bottle.

Not that Mr. Harrity taught me how to type. That was an elective I took. Thank god, especially in this computer era.

And Mr. Harrity truly didn’t teach me how to write. I believe that’s innate. You can go to the Iowa workshop, you can go to Breadloaf, but either you’re a writer or you’re not. Mr. Harrity just gave me a technique. He opened a door I could go through to find who I truly was.

Which flipped the people at Middlebury out. My creative writing teacher was agape. The prep schoolers in my seminar treated me like a pariah. No one had read Tom Wolfe, the New Journalism was already over, but at Middlebury it never happened. Hell, I’m more successful than John Clagett, who wrote bad sea stories no one read, ever was. That was my teacher.

Like I said. I learned almost nothing in college. You want to ignore most of your teachers. They want to eradicate your essence, not liberate it. If you’re learning the rules, you’re screwed, success in the arts is about questioning authority, doing it your way!

And Andrew Warde was just a public high school in Fairfield, Connecticut. Back when there was still enough money to pay for mimeo. Mmm, remember smelling that? Rich people drove Cadillacs. There was no such thing as NetJet. We were all in it together. You could create your own destiny.

But those days are through.

Hell, income inequality sucks. Broken homes affect kids emotionally. I remember Blaine, at Middlebury, his parents broke up first semester and Blaine promptly flunked out. The administration felt sorry for him, let him back the second semester, despite his not having finished the work of the first, but it didn’t matter, he never appeared on campus again after that spring. Oh, one time he came sliding through, years later, with all that extra weight he’d gained freshman year still intact.

We’ve got so many problems.

But first and foremost we need to tackle education. We need more money for schools. For not only teachers, but instruments. For music, for everything that’s not on the standardized test.

And the reason I’m writing all this is because of an e-mail I received today. Regarding Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I’ll print it below. It brought me back to Mrs. Hurley’s class.

At least I’ve got that memory.

Most people don’t.

From: Brad Parker
Re: Turn The Page

When I finished my album, “Days Of Poetry.” I was in the Bay Area and went to City Lights. I was with my wife and daughter and told them I was going to leave a copy for Lawrence Ferlinghetti. They just shook their heads and laughed. The guy behind the counter looked at me incredulously and said everyone wants to do that. Then I told him a story about how I met Ferlinghetti in LA at a reading he gave at LACMA.

It was about 12 years ago and I took my wife and 2 daughters even though we did not have tickets. I met the woman in charge who was busy rebuffing the crowd demanding to be let in. I told her I knew how she felt since I had worked for Bill Graham for years in the Bay Area. She liked the girls and let us in at the very end. We got in the elevator and in came Lawrence and his entourage. I told him my first book of poetry was “A Coney Island Of The Mind.” and that the girls first book of poetry was the same one. He grinned and said hello and asked them about that. Saida said it was her birthday and this was the best gift. He had a bouquet of flowers given to him by the museum and he gave it to her. He then took us to sit on the front row. It was wonderful. So, after I told the counter guy my story he said, well that’s different, told me to write it on a paper book bag and put the CD in and he would see what he could do but no promises.

When I got home to LA, Lawrence had written me an email. He thanked me for putting poetry to music and creating songs, the highest form of poetry. I wrote to him to say that now I had completed the circle of inspiration and joined the ranks of the Radical Poets.

You keep the spirit alive Bob that we all rode on for so many years and still can if we are awake, vigilant and guided by our true voice in music above all else and for all others.

Keep up the good words my friend.

further.

Brad

p.s. I love that Seger song…

P.S. I’ve found my summer camp girlfriends, so many of the people I grew up with, online. But I’ve yet to find Pamela Hurley. I think she’s a teacher in Davie, Florida. But that might not be her. Googling is difficult with such a common Irish name.

P.P.S. Seeing the front cover of “A Coney Island Of The Mind” on the Wikipedia page brings me right back to 1967

A Coney Island Of The Mind

P.P.P.S. Do you know the last seven seconds of “Society’s Child”? The keyboard explosion? It’s an encapsulation of the sixties, frenzied, untamable, without limits. The decade was about taking chances, expanding your mind. There’s nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, it’s the bedrock of life. Once upon a time there was an era when money was not king, when becoming a fully-realized person was the goal in life. Not a single person I went to college with had a meeting with a corporate recruiter. We wanted to graduate and experience life, not containment.

“Society’s Child”: Spotify

“Society’s Child”: YouTube

I saw David Guetta standing on a street corner in Ibiza ignored by the teeming masses streaming right by him to enter Pacha, where long after midnight he’d “spin records” and have the assembled multitude dancing with their arms in the air, thrilled just to be alive.

I was in Colorado. I didn’t plan not to write. But decompressing is so tough that once you do it you don’t want to get back on the train, your insides protest, you want to live a life of relaxation, outside the maelstrom. My greatest thrill was reading a book, “In The Garden Of Beasts“, by Erik Larson, who wrote “The Devil In The White City.” It was about Nazi Germany. It took me outside my life, of this world where we’re bombarded with incoming to the point where we lose our reference points, our focus, what’s important. Do we have to read our entire Twitter feed? If we don’t keep up, will we fall hopelessly behind, out of touch, never to recover?

I don’t know.

We live in an information society. And you can’t play if you know nothing. That’s what’s interesting about the disinformation campaign they call the election. It assumes people are ignorant, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Assuming they’re paying attention to begin with.

And I’m not playing in the Top Forty world. I know the names, but I don’t tune in the stations. I don’t want to waste that much time with bad music. There’s only twenty four hours in a day. Do I really want to be able to debate the (de)merits of these nitwits? Do you really feel better when you find out I’m clueless? Do you feel superior when you read “People,’ “InTouch,” and “Us” and know who these people are?

That game is done. We no longer live in one big cohesive society. And if feeling good about yourself is based on being able to look down your nose at those uninformed about your tiny little niche, I feel sorry for you. Trade in those black jeans and enter the twenty first century, where we’re all on an endless search for fulfillment and are glad to find stimulation wherever we find it, like in a YouTube video.

Yes, that’s where I heard “When Love Takes Over.”

I can’t even remember the clip, it had nothing to do with music, just some random citizen lifting a copyrighted track to enhance her little video production. Make no mistake, the key to the future is liberation, anybody trying to hold the populace back is making a mistake. Let the gays get married, let those women get abortions, join the parade, engage in the giant smorgasbord known as life. Don’t judge, just experience. The greatest thing that can happen to a creator is having his work get remixed, go viral, and the copyright police have been putting up futile roadblocks against this for over a decade now. To what effect? Recorded music sales keep dropping and revenues keep going down, this is a recipe for success? Liberate the music! The creators and the licensors must get down in the pit with the listeners, they must join together in harmony, hell, isn’t that what music provides?

The story is this is a three year old track. I’m going to be inundated with a tsunami of shit, all the hipsters wondering where I’ve been. I could fight back, citing the lack of Top Forty success, but that’s not the point, “When Love Takes Over” is a phenomenal track!

Remember Kraftwerk? Purveyors of a novelty cut who were discarded and then picked back up as trailblazing paragons? Hell, they wrote an album “Computer World” more than a decade before the average person could tell you the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Remember disco? That pulsing sound that encroached upon corporate rock that had to be killed by mullet-wearing, self-satisfied white boys? Well, Kraftwerk and disco mashed up has resulted in a sound that is now triumphing throughout the world, the music corporately-labeled EDM.

Yes, electronic dance music has been around for decades. But only when the edifice known as the corporate music industrial complex started to crumble could it emerge triumphant. The kids are rejecting the pabulum. The major label dash for cash left them out. And with the means of exhibition and distribution in their hands, they’ve latched on to a sound that is an aural drug that infects your body without injection, that has you jumping up and down in sheer joy.

In other words, if you can’t hear “When Love Takes Over,” you’re DEAD!

Guetta’s been doing it for decades. He didn’t get in the press and bitch he wasn’t rich enough, he didn’t give up and go to graduate school, go to work for Lazard Freres. He hung in until his time arrived.

And as his star ascended, not only fans flocked to him, but artists too. Kelly Rowland asked if she could write lyrics to his track, and the result is “When Love Takes Over.”

I don’t know about you, but I got no satisfaction from watching last night’s debate. Because it wasn’t. Just a bunch of talking points batted back and forth.

And I’m sick of reading about the wealthy. As if you’re worthless if you don’t drive a Benz, if you can’t overbid for an apartment in Manhattan.

Once upon a time, all we cared about was music. Because it was the only honest art form, the only place we could go for refuge, that was sans the b.s. But now most mainstream music has gone the way of the rest of the country, an endless struggle to get ahead, push the rest of us down and leave us behind. Whereas, music, when done right, brings us all TOGETHER!

It’s complicated, it always is
That’s just the way it goes
Feels like I’ve waited so long for this
I wonder if it shows

I gave up caring for music. I’d rather watch HBO than hear Grizzly Bear bitch they’re not on the radio. Huh? It’s because you don’t play music most people want to hear! I won’t judge it, but just because a magazine writes about it, that does not mean it’s mainstream. Then I hear a cut like “When Love Takes Over” and I’m a teenager once again, all I want to do is listen to it, over and over again, for hours straight, I can’t wait to wake up and play it again!

Head underwater, now I can’t breathe
It never felt so good
‘Cause I can feel it coming over me
I wouldn’t stop it if I could

Feeling good. Do you feel good when you’re run off the road by a person texting while driving an Escalade that would kill you if it hit you? In a world where the entitled parade their superiority, bitch that they fought for their riches and deserve them? No, you feel good when a serum enters your body and squeezes all the b.s. out, like “When Love Takes Over.”

When love takes over, yeah
You know you can’t deny
When love takes over, yeah
‘Cause something’s here tonight

You’ve got two choices. You can leave the club, saying this is not music, or join in, jump on the dance floor and let go! All the great things in life come when you let go. Isn’t that the essence of sex?

Give me a reason, I gotta know
Do you feel it too
Can’t you see me here on overload

I feel like a Mexican jumping bean. Or Peter Wolf in that video. I’m bouncing around the house, like a cartoon. That’s the power of music.

These deejays are antiheroes. It’s not about them, but their work. Doesn’t matter what they wear, just whether they can get you to move, to feel the joy.

If you can’t feel the joy in “When Love Takes Over,” I feel sorry for you.

Throw away your preconceptions. Stop worrying about people watching, being judged. Put on this music and throw off your inhibitions.

It’ll do you good.

P.S. Wanna be like me? Then pull up this Spotify playlist and go on a 54 minute journey, hearing the same cut, in slightly different versions, revel in the sound. That’s remix culture. Taking what’s there and stretching it, expanding it, turning it into something different. Yes, this is me. I can listen to the same cut for hours straight!

When Love Takes Over – Spotify

P.P.S. “A rant about Grizzly Bear and writing with an audience in mind”

It’s hard to believe Bob Seger used to be one of the biggest stars in America. He’s faded into obscurity, because his manager believes the past is better than the future, you can’t download almost any of his material legally online, some albums have never come out on CD, it’s like they’re standing on ceremony, waiting for the past to return when nothing of the sort is ever going to happen. It’s like camping outside your old high school, expecting your crush to emerge from the front door into your arms, looking exactly like they did decades before. If you can’t put one foot in front of another, at one point you’re going to be left behind. Like Bob Seger.

And the problem with Seger is that at first he was too hard-edged for the chicks and then he totally catered to them. At the tail end of his run it was all ballads all the time, whereas he began as a rocker. With some local success, but known only to fans. Hell, I didn’t even hear “Get Out Of Denver” until he finally broke through, with his double album, “Live Bullet.”

Now at this point I wasn’t a total newbie. I was enamored of the title track from the “Beautiful Loser” LP. Do you know that one? It got a bit of airplay. The live take is a bit better. But the original, sans audience participation, has got this hermetically sealed quality that is so enamoring…it’s like it’s not for everybody, just you.

Like the original studio version of “Turn The Page.”

Now that one, almost no one’s heard.

But I heard it when it was released. Well, shortly thereafter, when I plucked “Back In ’72” from the cutout bin at Sam Goody in Westport, Connecticut. Isn’t it funny that we can remember not only the vinyl albums we own, and I’ve still got mine, I never cashed them in during the CD craze, but where we bought them! And I’ve written about Seger’s cover of “The Stealer” on that album, hell, I even did a whole podcast on that record, which was originally released by Warner Brothers, on its Reprise subsidiary, but still, most people have never heard the original “Turn The Page.”

I’m gonna rectify that right now.

Through the magic of YouTube, which has become our national radio service, whilst the labels were whac-a-moling everybody trying to get up and running legally, the Google service slipped through the back door, you can hear the original “Turn The Page,” and you should.

Turn The Page

It’s not the Metallica take. It’s not the legendary live take. It’s just a rendition by a guy barely known outside Detroit telling the story of being an itinerant musician. As if everybody who picked up an axe was bound to become instantly wealthy, or wash out just as fast. The truth is you start off excited, you keep doing it, and you’re not sure where you’re headed, you’re just on the endless road.

That’s what “Turn The Page” is all about. And the original studio version is even more haunting than the later heavily played live take.

It’s almost creepy. With no success on the horizon, with only his wits to keep him warm at night, Bob’s telling his tale. They say to write what you know, that’s what Bob has done here. Listen to the studio version of “Turn The Page” and you’ll no longer want to be a rock star. Because really, it’s pretty boring. Despite all the tabloid hoopla, it’s endless travel with little sleep with the same band of brothers you love and hate just like the ones you’re related to by blood.

Most people are not cut out for this. The hatred, the abuse, the zombie-like feeling as you go through the motions even though you’ve lost sight of the destination. That’s how you know you’re a lifer, when you’ve given up hope, when you realize you’re just a journeyman, that you’re lucky people are paying to see you, even if after trying to close them each and every night you don’t always succeed.

The studio take is like a phone call from your old buddy from college, the one who dropped out. Filling you in, not bragging, because there’s nothing to brag about.

Everybody wants to be somebody else. They think if they were just beautiful, thin or rich everything would work. But all these attributes come with a price. Beautiful will get you in the door, but it does not ensure you’ll be taken seriously. Money’s good too, but it won’t keep you warm at night. No, the goal of this life is to become who you truly are. An original. Whether it be a teacher, plumber or rock star. You can’t be everything, nor would you want to be. Not everybody’s cut out to be a rock star. Hell, not everybody’s cut out to be a musician. But if you’ve got no choice, you soldier on. Ripped off, dependent upon managers and agents you’re not even sure are on your side. Forward. Further.

It’s all embodied in this one damn song.