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The Rascals

THE RASCALS
 
 
The Rascals  (initially known as The Young Rascals) are an American blue-eyed soul group initially active during the years 1965–72.  Between 1966 and 1968, the New Jersey act reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 with nine singles, including the #1s “Good Lovin’” (1966), “Groovin’” (1967), and “People Got to Be Free” (1968), as well as big radio hits such as the much-covered “How Can I Be Sure?” (#4 1967) and “A Beautiful Morning” (#3 1968), plus another critical favorite “A Girl Like You” (#10 1967).  The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Name shortening has been common among rock bands:  The Young Rascals became the Rascals, the Troglodytes lost a little something in the translation when they changed their name to the Troggs, Small Faces morphed into Faces, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was abbreviated to OMD, and (believe it or not) the 1990’s Irish band the Cranberries started out with the name The Cranberry Saw Us.  Sometimes the official name never changes, but fans and DJ’s naturally begin to shorten the name, so the Rolling Stones are just as often the Stones, the Doobie Brothers are sometimes rendered the Doobies (as on two of their Greatest Hits albums, Best of the Doobies and Best of the Doobies Volume II), and bands like, say, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show are called just Dr. Hook.  Occasionally it can even go the other way:  A DJ on one of our local radio stations where I was growing up in Winston-Salem, Dick Bennick at WTOB-AM Radio was forever calling the Fab Four “the beetley, bootley Beatles”.  
 
(June 2012)
 
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The relocation to Italy completely turned the fortunes of the Primitives around.  Their appearances at the Piper Club turned them into stars, and they had huge record sales with their inventive Italian versions of English-language pop hits.  Their first release in Italy was the major hit “Yeeeeeeh!” b/w “L’Ombra di Nessuno” (“The Shadow of None”), that is, the Rascals’ hit “I Ain’t Gonna Eat out My Heart Anymore” and the Four Tops song “Standing in the Shadow of Love”.  “Yeeeeeeh!” is in the song listing on English Freakbeat, Volume 1 but is not actually on the CD.  

 

(May 2015)