The Shangri-Las are GREAT!!!

(not sure what I was on about in some parts)

ps - just read tom's essay on Past, Present & Future. that's wonderful. although Remember (Walking In The Sand) does impact me, oh dear i must love false moves :-(

not sure what you mean, though, about the story not turning out the way you expected. it always seemed kind of straightforward to me.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search=shangri-las&search_type=search_videos&search=Search

I posted this link on the Mary Weiss thread (it's a recent interview with her), but nothing wrong with adding it here, too:
http://www.nortonrecords.com/maryweiss/index.html

"...Hey! ...Hey!"

Listened through my crummy 10-song compilation just now -- and was crying, laughing and conducting orchestra/band simultaneously most of the way. Even listening again, trying to make out HOW that sound was made except for the voices, piano and bass (when that piano wasnt the bass) I'm still at a loss as to the mechanics of this genius. The direction of detail!

Must get Myrmidons. Off to YouTube now.

OK grebt talkybits quotations must also happen:

-- What color are his eyes?
-- I dunno, he's always wearing shades!
-- Is he tall?
-- Well... I gotta look up!
-- Yeeah? Well I hear he's Bad.
-- Mmm. He's good bad, but he's not Evil.

You know it just occured to me for the first time what a great name 'The Shangri- Las' is.....

here's a toast *CLINK* to happiness.

fuck..

"The Leader on The Mac"
Parody Written by:
Agrimorfee
http://www.amiright.com/parody/60s/theshangrilas7.shtml

(spoken:)
Was she really hooking up with him?
There she is, let's query her.
Betty, is that Jimmy's mousepad you're holding?...
Mm-hm...
Gee, it must be fun chatting with him!
Is he meetin you after work today?...
Nuh-uh...
By the way, how'd you meet him?

I met him through his Myspace blog
I PM'd him, he PM'd me
We traded jpegs (Oh, we see!)
The techie I fell for--The Leader on the Mac!
(SFX: bleep boop beep, buzzzzzz!)

Our boss was always putting him down (down! down!)
He said that Steve Jobs was a worthless clown
(He was mean and he teased that Steve Jobs was a worthless clown!)
Jim gave me his nice mouse pad
And I thought he was rad!
Well, I-M-H-O--the Leader on the Mac!
(SFX again)

One day our boss said, "It's time to renew
We're going with PCs for the work that we do"
(The boss, he's so cruel, a reconfig to PCs is what he'll do)
Jim's screwed here, do you know why?
He'll have to recertify!
I'm sorry they canned you--the Leader on the Mac!
(SFX again)

(spoken:)
He cleaned out his desk, and then my C Drive
--He didn't want our love notes to show
As he walked away, blowing a kiss goodbye,
I begged him, "please don't go!"
What was his password? I'll never know
(No no no no no...)
Log Out! Log Out! Log Out! Log Out!
(SFX: The system CRASHES!)

Since he was jobless, what did he do?
He fried the drives in the server room!
The boss was caught unaware
Our data's erased, but I don't care
You really did show them! You Leader on the Mac!
(general computer SFX again)

(ooooh....)
The program's been hacked. Data's gone!
The program's been hacked. Data's gone!
The program's been hacked. Data's gone!

(SFX modems, Microsoft bleeps, bleeps, IE Explorer opening tones, the Intel tones, etc. fadeout....END PROGRAM)

That is the best thing ever.

R.I.P. Shadow Morton

RIP

RIP. "Remember" is like the best song ever written.

I don't think I knew he was still alive. "Train from Kansas City" or "Out in the Street" is my favourite. And the second Dolls album is great in a different way than the first.

Didn't know he was still around either. Didn't know he produced "Society's Child" or a few others. Must have sensed his passing when I chose my new screenname. RIP

yes, they are

separate thread started:

I'll never forget him (the leader of the pack): RIP Shadow Morton

http://nypost.com/2014/05/17/ahead-of-the-pack-how-the-shangri-las-created-punk/

Nice article--good stories re James Brown and stuff. Didn't realize how young they were back then.

Wish I were able to express how great I think the lyrics of "Out in the Streets" are (...to say nothing of the music & vocal performance).

Aside from the line "Streetlights shining above" (which adds a touch of poetry), the vocabulary and grammar are incredibly basic; it's elementary-level English ("bad / sad," etc.). And yet the story is so clear & powerful... the songwriting is kist a masterpiece of precision, with an unmatchable(?) ratio of economy:expression.

Just the volumes contained in this couplet alone (which almost functions as a distillation of the entire song):

They're waiting out there
I know I gotta set him free

Also, I don't know how to transcribe rhyme schemes, but each of the three verses is like this:

------A
------B
------A
--B(-)C
------C
("...His heart is out in the streets")

The song is so simple and yet sophisticated at the same, just a perfect piece of pop artistry, you know what I mean...

(^sorry, don't know what 'kist' means... give him a great big kist)

Has there ever been a band as perfect as the Shangri-Las? I don't think so.
There is never even a hair out of place. The lyrics are overblown yet totally spot on for teen angst and unrequited/requited gone bad love. The delivery is perfect - not even a trace of irony, just pure emotion with gorgeously unnoticable technique. And the arrangements and production... aaaahhh! Motorcycles in the studio, I'd like to see Stock, Aiken and Whateverman do some of that.

― kate, Monday, November 4, 2002 7:59 AM (twenty-one years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Pretty sure this thread was what got me to pull the trigger on picking up (the first version of) Myrmidons of Melodrama in my early ilx days.

Thank You, Thread.

Thank You, Mary.

Oh shit, I hadn’t heard… 😞

RIP legend <3

Favourite, "Out in the Streets"; "Train from Kansas City" after that. This is the compilation I have, which was a cheaper alternative at the time to an original best-of (came out in 1980, part of a series with the Dixie Cups).

https://i.postimg.cc/Y2mS7m60/mary.jpg

(Repeating myself from 11 years ago...)

RIP Mary Weiss

The delivery is perfect - not even a trace of irony

...yet the songs and production are soaked in camp; it was a neat trick. I liked many more of their songs than I expected to when I heard their greatest hits.

(I see the Teen Anguish series dwindled after three volumes, someone should revive it for a Korn compilation.)

When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love, L-U-V!

I was today years old when I learned that line didn't belong to the New York Dolls

RIP

So every time I heard a Shangri-Las song I assumed they were from the early 60s pre-Beatles era. But there was always something I felt really deliberately campy about them, more than just imposing my present day perspective on something that once read as earnest to its audience.
Only just yesterday did it strike me that their hit making years were actually in the mid-60s, overlapping with Dylan and the Beatles, competing with Rubber Soul, Revolver, Like a Rolling Stone on the charts.

I was wondering if the Shanghai-Las read as camp at the time or as an already deliberate anachronism? Like Sha-Na-Na a couple years later?

"once read as earnest to its audience" is i think an extremely perilous thing to project onto our predecessors -- they were just as much in two minds as us abt pop stuff (all kinds of stuff in fact) and naturally processed this via irony, bcz that's what you do

I was barely a kid, so no idea if there was some cognizance of their relationship to developing ideas about camp in 1964/65--their peak coincided with Susan Sontag's essay--but I doubt it; my guess is that they were perceived more or less how the Supremes, Ronettes, and all the other girl-groups were. It's hard for me to think of them as belonging to the same universe as Sha-Na-Na, just in terms of the Shangri-Las being a trillion times better.

oh, fuck.

one of my teachers in high school had played in a band in his youth who opened for the Shangri-La's

re: how they may have been perceived, he claimed he saw Mary Weiss down an entire bottle of whiskey in seconds in the locker room. said he was scared to approach her after that.

(i assume they shared a locker room, don't think he was a creep)

They performed with groups like the Beatles, Stones, Herman’s Hermits, James Brown… Iggy and the Iguanas backed them once… they hung out with the Beach Boys and Zombies… that was their milieu. I wasn’t around, but I don’t see why they would’ve been perceived with any sense of irony or camp.

MW: I was with George at some arena show when he met Phil Spector.

BM: Wow! What was that like?

MW: Oil and water! That's all I can say. I was not happy to be there.

We were so busy. It was very different then. Now these singers say how rough they have it. They don't have a clue. Not a clue. Ride in a bus every night. Sleep every other night. See how that feels. People don't realize how hard it was back then. There were no monitors at the time. Sometimes you were screaming just to hear yourself singing.

Ah, here we go, this is the quote I was talking about earlier:

BM: The last Shangri-Las single Take The Time from 1967 is weird, a pro-Vietnam record.

MW: I never wanted to record that song. I was completely against the Vietnam War and I protested accordingly. Still, the Shangri-Las supported our servicemen and women and I've done many shows for them.

ML: How did Monti Rock end up doing your hair?

MW: He did our hair on that album cover nobody likes on Mercury, where we look Mod. Monti, wherever you are, what were you thinking?

ML: But you look so sultry there, like Veronica Lake.

MW: I look stupid. I didn't like it at all.

https://i.discogs.com/1htZxyz2M7_BGIMm9sgXfgNdcuZIcXGdxI1BYqKDipo/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:564/w:598/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE5NTAw/NjUtMTM4ODIzMjQy/NS0yMjE0LmpwZWc.jpeg

MW: I come from an extremely poor family. The Gansers were relatively poor. Nobody had any money. No money for attorneys. So considering where the four of us came from, with no support, no guidance and nothing behind us, we didn't have proper outfits onstage. I mean nothing. It's a miracle in itself to come from those circumstances and have hit records, so I'm very grateful.

That was a great interview, thanks for sharing it...

I always liked that Golden Hits album cover despite the fact it doesn't capture Mary's moodiness. And Betty's hair was usually darker than that I think? I don't care, I love it, it was the first Shangri-Las album I bought - circa 1991 for $4.95 (price tag is still on it!). Their original 45s went for about $3 each back then and I bought many of them too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUOWKeBIxM

When Mary Weiss died I was shy about relating this anecdote, but I will do so now. When she released her solo album in the oughts I met her on the sidewalk in Brooklyn where she was performing in support of her record. We had this exchange:

Me: I used to play one of your songs with a band

Mary: Which one?

Me: “Sophisticated Boom Boom”

Mary: Ehh, I never really liked that song

lol

ha amazing <3

love! <3

Was that The Cosmopolitans?

No, it was about a decade later than them

Kid Congo's band Knoxville Girls also used to play it, later still