By Jude Unrein ’23

The Roundup

You remove a record from its sleeve and blow off the dust.

You put it on your record player and switch it on. 

The record starts spinning and the needle touches the vinyl.

A folky, surf pop-sounding song starts playing from the speakers; however, the lyrics are heading in another direction.

This is no other than “It’s a Brand New Day,” an album of hymns sung by Brophy Jesuits over 1960s surf pop instrumentals.

Mr. Jared Reasy was able to get his hands on a physical copy of this Brophy relic through Mr. Marco Radolinski.

“One of the priests on the album cover gave Mr. Radolinski a box of them, which he has given some to a couple of teachers,” Mr. Reasy said.

Mr. Reasy mentioned what he thought of the album’s unique sound.

“To me, it sounds like the music is really inspired from the ’60s, but I imagine they would have recorded it in the ’70s, it really sounds like something they shouldn’t have been listening to,” Mr. Reasy said.

On the back of the record sleeve, it says that the album was produced in 1969 by the Brophy Dad’s club.

Mr. Steve Smith ’96 also has a copy of the album, but he obtained his copy in a different way. 

“Growing up Catholic, I just always had it in my record collection, but I didn’t even know what Brophy was. I never played it, but once I eventually became a student at Brophy, I realized I was seeing the Brophy chapel on the album cover,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Smith added that he has no clue how his family got a copy of the album, but he thinks that the album might have been handed out or sold at Sunday masses in Phoenix.

“I kind of feel like they used to sell it after Mass because I’ve talked to other Catholics my age from Phoenix and they had it too without knowing where it came from,” Mr. Smith said.

If you’re a Brophy student who is interested in music, try to find a copy of this and give it a listen. Even if you don’t like it, you now have knowledge of a unique piece of Brophy history.