The Shangri-Las are GREAT!!!

(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.

What did Roxon say about them in the Rock Encyclopedia (if anything)? I remember her entry on the Ronettes commenting on the OTT-ness of their image, saying their records made boys feel like men and the visual appeal was akin to 'girly mags come to life.'

^^XP to Clem

Big no to the camp thing.

_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

And now I am hearing in my mind’s ear the Johnny Thunders cover of the original song on So Alone.

“Hey Johnny, what color are her eyes?”

Roxon does have a short entry on them. I can quote it, but it's probably a little dated.

Here's Dee Snider (apologies, it's an NY Post link, but a good article):

“Talking about someone dying, that’s metal. The bad guys in leather jackets, that’s metal. The bad kids, that’s metal (...). And that driving chord structure — there was such a heaviness to that song. It’s a metal song. (...)

Mary, with the long blond hair, was very striking. They were wearing leather jackets, and they looked tough, too. They didn’t look like good girls,” says Snider. “They looked like the girls all the bad guys wanted.”

("that song" = "Leader of the Pack," btw)

Good article, thanks!

Also didn't realize how young they were at their peak.

The song that was so metal it derailed Twisted Sister's career!

Did it really?

"Leader of the Pack"'s great, and ingenious, but it lost something for me after hearing the excerpted chorus a few hundred times on radio and TV commercials for early-'70s golden-age compilations. (Ditto with "Chantilly Lace," but there it was the intro.)

Following the massive success of 1984's Stay Hungry which established Twisted Sister as one of the world's top recording acts, the band was faced with the question of whether they should continue in the same MTV and radio-friendly direction that brought them so much success, or return to their heavy metal roots. Come Out and Play saw them attempt to do both, but the approach ultimately proved devastatingly unsuccessful and the album marked the beginning of the band's commercial decline. The band's decision to record a cover of the 1964 Shangri-Las' hit "Leader of the Pack" and release it as the album's first single proved very unpopular with the band's fanbase.

xp Yeah - not to be all "true fan sniffing at the popular favorites," but "Leader" isn't necessarily one of my favorite Shangri-Las songs... it's one step away from a novelty song really (not that that is a bad thing)

A very worthy cover, I think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFVbO_OqDXE

I like the Neko Case version

Superchunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3iaRPIa3M8

Audacious or poor taste: Mad Men ended the Richard Speck episode--one of the best ever, I'd say--with "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)." (Also, appropriately enough, the episode where Joan tells her creep of a husband Greg to leave.)

That's the Crystals

My favorite Shangri-Las jams:

Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)
Great Big Kiss
Out in the Streets
Heaven Only Knows
Never Again
Paradise
I Can Never Go Home Anymore (esp. the version with "Listen, I'm not finished...")
Dressed in Black (Betty sings lead on this one)
Past, Present & Future
I'll Never Learn
Footsteps on the Roof

I also have a soft spot for their early singles ("Simon Says," "Wishing Well," "Hate to Say I Told You So" – all sung by Betty)

(xpost) Of course! Proceed a pace.

morrisp's list has got it, I would only add "Right Now and Not Later" and "Train from Kansas City"

Yeah and if you’re making a true playlist, obviously Include “Leader of the Pack” as well

The Pussycats' contemporaneous version of "Dressed in Black" is so good too, glad I don't have to pick a favorite

^^One of the interesting revelations of the Rhino Girl Group box were those 'dress rehearsal ' versions of that and "Sophisticated Boom-Boom" by other acts produced by Shadow Morton (which he apparently preferred to the Shangs?!).

Yeah the blurb claims Morton had the hots for the lead singer of the other group (“The Goodies”*), and wanted to give them “Leader of the Pack,” but Leiber & Stoller (Red Bird) said no…

*not to be confused with The Goodees, from Memphis, who are totally awesome

Thinking about my mistake above, doesn't it feel like "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss" ought to have been the Shangri-Las?

Their version would be like "He Hit Me (And Then He Died in a Car Crash)"

xp No(?)

The Crystals of "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me" are ultra romantic, fairy tale-level almost (cf. Goodfellas); I can much more imagine the Shangri-Las involved in that kind of awful relationship. (He's good-bad, and he's evil.)

I'm treating the Shangri-Las and the Crystals like they're a person...you know what I mean.

Supposedly it was Little Eva's abusive boyfriend who inspired "He Hit Me..."

Alison Anders spun that story from abuse to teen pregnancy for the 'banned song' plotline in Grace of My Heart.

That song would sully any group's discography – but beyond that, if the "bad boy" of Shangri-Las songs were actually bad (and not just misunderstood), it would ruin the whole point.

Anyway, it was released before the group formed; they never sang a Goffin-King song; and (thank god) never worked with Spector.

Yeah the blurb claims Morton had the hots for the lead singer of the other group (“The Goodies”*), and wanted to give them “Leader of the Pack,” but Leiber & Stoller (Red Bird) said no…

*not to be confused with The Goodees, from Memphis, who are totally awesome

Oh no...RIP Mary. I love this performance (not lip-synched)...all the little gestures and facial expressions (the scrunching during "dirty fingernails", etc.) are too adorable. And the "MWAH!" makes me laugh uncontrollably every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0O6tabbjjk

^^ yes that is the best

Ed Wynn hosted Shindig!? That's surreal.

TIL that (not-great) album track “You Cheated, You Lied” was written by Levon Helm.