An interesting and curious addition to the 33 1/3 series. The Shangri-Las are an important group in the history of music and it is admirably to cover them. Because of the nature of their releases, it makes sense that a greatest hits album is chosen but it still sometimes leads to tenuous conclusions. The author frequently argues for the importance of the girls as contributors to the music instead of how women and girls in these groups are usually excluded from the discussion in favor of producers and writers. The book occasionally goes off the rails to acknowledged metaconclusions such as the section on the relation of the term "Shangri-La" to the group's music (though the girls have stated they chose the name of a local Chinese restaurant with no understanding of the terms history).

If you are interested in the Shangri-Las this book should be a definite buy. Not every argument is completely sound and at times it can get repetitive, but overall in a world where very little has been written for a popular audience on girl groups that treats the girls as agents it is a worthwhile attempt.

Great history of this important girl group and the effect they continue to have on contemporary music. Thorough analysis of their songs and their image as the “bad girls” of the girl groups era.

I am very fond of the 33 1/3rd series, coming from something like 50 years of record collecting with a passion for liner notes, album reviews, and free form music essays. I remember long ago, when everything was not everywhere, sometimes the only glimpse you got of a musical star or group was a lip-synched appearance on television or a chance hearing of your favorite song on the radio.
This book is kind of a wonder. I always loved the Shangri-Las but never delved into their story. And the like the stories of many of these groups, there is not that much to tell because nobody ever cared enough to create the kinds of biographies, studies, or critical discographies that would provide background information.
I love the detail and research into this book, particularly the insights into the songwriting factories of the time and how groups like the Shangri-Las struggled for an identity beyond their image. Nicely done and highly recommended.

Wolin’s breakdown the album by the Shangr-las is a mixed bag with some interesting facts but a lot of conjuncture and ideologies. She tries to make a case that the Shangri-las are vital for the annals of pop history and ties them to punk history. Overall, this works quite well but it would have been nice to have some more inside knowledge of this bad that could portray pop genius at a drop of a hat.

We do get a bit of information about Mary and her last album in 2007. We also get a breakdown of the songs which is like a greatest album spat out by a record company at the end of a group’s career which didn’t always include the best of their catalogue though all their hits are included. It might have been more interesting to do another greatest hits album that included most of their catalogue to give a fuller understanding of this group.

At the end of the day, this is an essay about songs on an album and although if this was a concept album that was meticulously put together by the band, it probably would have come across as more substantial. It does have interesting titbits and as I am a huge fan of the Shangri-las, I found this interesting though it does become somewhat repetitive on occasion. If you know nothing of the band, it may leave the reader a bit cold and probably will not garner them any new fans. This is basically an essay in book form but it does have some merit.

I was disappointed that this book didn’t focus more on the Shangra-Las, their producer, Shadow Morton, and the development of their sound, their songs, and their image. Instead the author spent an inordinate amount of time detailing how the Shangra-Las didn’t quite fit into the girl group genre, which didn’t get respect from rock critics. For a short book, it felt like the author, much like many early 60’s albums, included way too much “filler”. It felt like what could have been clarified in a sentence or two was several paragraphs or pages long. For example, the author spent pages describing the origin of the term Shangra-La from the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, only to admit that it had nothing to do with the naming of the group. Kind of interesting, but totally irrelevant. It would be like a chapter on beetles (the insect) in a book about The Beatles. Not to say, I didn’t enjoy the analysis of the songs but the book took too many irrelevant tangents.

Now, I love the music of the Shangri-Las so had this earmarked for a long time as one wanted to read, however, I have to admit to being very disappointed with this- I was hopng for more details about their lives and backgrounds rather than a very in-depth look into their music and on that score it really didn't deliver. Perhaps this is one for anyone doing a music course ( degree level?) where some of what Wolin would make sense in context, but as a book aimed at a more casual fan of the group it definitely didn't meet my expectations.

I love this series of books, and I love girl groups - I adored the idea that the Shangri-Las were a proto-punk group. I totally agree!

One for music nerds, for sure.

Definitely informative, well-researched and well-written. It's just... the Shangri-Las are fun. Even the sad songs, you listen and you want to get up and dance, singalong, wear shades and bangs, and look as cool as Mary.

This book doesn't give you that. It feels as though much of it was written with a permanent frown of scholarly disapproval, and I felt a little empty by the end.

Maybe it should be redrafted as a graphic novel....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40230022-the-shangri-las-golden-hits-of-the-shangri-las?from_search=true

Entertaining account of the 1960s girl group best known for Leader of the Pack. The author makes a rather dubious case that the Shangri-Las were a proto-punk group, foreshadowing the melodramatic, death-obsessed underground rock of the 1980s.

The Shangri-Las should be taken seriously. You can picture a lecture in a class on ’60s Pop, along with “Socioeconomic Dialectics and Notions of Masculinity in the Work of the Four Seasons,” or “Hedonism, Insecurity, and the Perfect Wave: the Beach Boys and the Crisis of Identity.” Maybe “The Boy: Idealism, Sacrifice, and Sexuality in the World of the Shangri-Las.” They are worthy of a book, and now they have one. Ada Wolin has written, for the 33 1/3 series from Bloomsbury Academic, a study of the album Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las. Wolin has a deep appreciation for the group, does a good job of putting them in geographical (Queens, NY) context, and has a keen ear for Mary Weiss’ distinctive vocal phrasing and local accent.

The Shangri Las were one of the most interesting bands of the Sixties, despite often being dismissed as kitsch - their influence spread as far as the Ramones (and, though not mentioned here, more recent acts like Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey.) Ada Wolin's history of the group reveals that they were working-class teenage girls from New York, and the stories they told were not removed from their experience. Unlike most of the other girl groups of that era, they were white - which if anything, makes you realise these groups weren't all the same, and you could pick out the Ronettes, say, and find equally unique histories. The Shangri-Las weren't Motown girls, and despite their melodramatic sound, neither did they work with Phil Spector. Like most of the groups, they didn't write their own material - and although they had started their band in high school, it was their alliance with producer George 'Shadow' Morton that put them on the map. Although Morton might be seen as a Svengali figure, the girls had a uniquely rebellious attitude and their output was rather subversive. Unfortunately, the group's history isn't particularly well-documented, which makes them challenging to write about - but Ada Wolin succeeds in getting to the heart of their music. Although the 33 1/3 books are necessarily short, it would have been nice to see a few photos, trade ads etc alongside her compelling text.

This book does a great job of explaining who the Shangri La’s were, their start, their legacy and influence. The author really looks at how the Shangir-La’s are remembered from all possible angles, discussing melodrama, guilty pleasures and a short history of girl groups along the way. I don’t want to give too much of an overview because part of the fun was seeing where the author went next

After reading a few 33 1/3 books, my expectations have greatly changed. These are enjoyed more if you’re not expecting a comprehensive history and analysis of the album. I approach the books like I am taking a music history class with the instructor (the author) using a certain album or genre to teach a number of things. I feel they are more enjoyable from that angle. The books are great, most can be read in a day and I always leave them knowing more than I did before

If you want to read about the Shangri-La’s, girl groups, the Shangri-La’s influence on pun k and indie music, The Shangri-La’s tendency to focus on the morose and what that means about their music and legacy you will greatly enjoy this book

Here is a link to a playlist I made on Spotify to accompany the book

https://open.spotify.com/user/123678847/playlist/20tWvnYVXfnQlq0em9UQUq?si=W3NgGtQjTGO7jt4uG9heBg

A book trying to do a lot of things in the relatively small space a 33 1/3 allows, and not always succeeding, but still a very interesting read. The most obvious problem is one of constituency – I started this assuming it would be aimed, as the series generally is, at people who already have at least a passing fondness for the act and album in question. Instead, the opening is concerned largely with making a case for the Shangri-Las as deserving of notice, against a background of implied scorn. Various rockist bores are quoted as evidence more for rockism in general than any particular problem with the Shangri-Las, but also a girl group consensus which apparently considers them inferior to the genre's core Phil Spector productions. Which is news to me, because I'm fortunate enough to live in a bubble where two mates have run entirely separate nights named after Shangri-Las songs, and in so far as they come up, they're generally taken to be kind of a big deal. On the other hand, in one shocking recent development I learned that a bunch of people I know, including some close friends, really can't abide Come On Eileen (not even at weddings!), so perhaps even among my nearest and dearest, this section would be needed for some readers. The point stands: at least in a book explicitly about the Shangri-Las, and to this reader, it felt as puzzlingly 'is this really necessary?' as opening a discussion of global warming with having to explain, again, that yes, it's a real thing.

Still, there is one feature here which will recur throughout the book and which, while sometimes frustrating, generally works to its advantage. Wolin will often turn back on her own line of argument, interrogating its assumptions. While in places this can have the frustrating air of an academic reluctance to state a position, more often it's arresting, as when in defence of the Shangri-Las she quotes various acts who acknowledged their influence, before herself admitting that this argument pays deference to the very canon (largely white, male and guitar-based) she's trying to call into question. Or the tension she admits between wanting to look at the ways in which they differed from other girl groups, without turning that into an argument which elevates one act from a disrespected genre precisely by arguing that they're not really part of said genre. Something which, of course, would have extra connotations here – "they're not like normal girls, they're cool girls". This naturally ties in to a discussion of the relative contributions of the band themselves, their producers and their songwriters. One weakness which becomes apparent here is that while Wolin is careful not to take the rockist step of dismissing modern pop in the cause of critically salvaging the classics, she does talk more about the Shangri-Las' rock legacy than the throughline to subsequent bad girl girl groups such as Bananarama, Girls Aloud, even that first Spice Girls video. Similarly, the discussion of producers' role and the tendency, creatively or critically, to regard singers as just another instrument could fruitfully have drawn on modern heirs of that school of precision-tuned pop manufacture. I'm thinking here particularly of the recent BBC4 documentary on nineties Swedish production house Cheiron, in which male and female pop star alumni alike attested to the way in which their vocal performances had to fit exactly the vision the producers had in mind for the song, with no room for their own take outside what had been prescribed for them.

On the songs themselves, though, Wolin soars, admitting that they're melodramatic but refusing to admit that as a problem – indeed, making a case for the truth of it: "As most of us will remember, teendom is a landscape that is both tragic and silly". Similarly, where one often sees critics tie themselves in knots over irony, she has a handle which I really wish weren't so rare on the difference between irony as technique or component, and irony as in the whole project being a joke: she knows that taking them seriously doesn't mean taking every aspect of them as serious. Interestingly, the one song of which she wasn't initially a fan was the sepulchral 'Past, Present and Future', whereas for me that was the one which won me over to the band's mythos precisely by being, even compared to the rest of their material, so utterly OTT in its despair. Beyond the mood, she digs into the specifics, noting that compared to their peers' material the Boy in Shangri-Las songs often gets a much more specific description: these aren't just templates on which listeners can project their own crush. Similarly, where other girl groups presented love within the social sphere, a potential precursor to marriage, the Shangri-Las tip the usual adolescent ambivalence about growing up over into a consistent denial of the future as even a possibility – something Wolin suggests might be an expression of the sixties' undercurrent of nuclear dread. Equally, though this isn't a possibility she mentions, I wondered if it might be the first step of what would become a wider social realisation that the old social structures were no longer fit for purpose, the same current which would subsequently blossom into free love and other alternatives to lifelong heterosexual monogamy (or the pretence thereof).

Still, even if I don't wholeheartedly buy Wolin's argument there, it's a compelling one, and feeds into one of the book's wildest, strongest moments, the cosmic vision of the songs' narrator as always the same Girl, forever trapped in a series of bad romances on some level of the Twilight Zone. There are a few glimpses like this of a more poetic, less academic version of the book, and I loved them all; describing the bike crash sound effects on 'Leader of the Pack' as a Brechtian refusal to hide art's workings is one thing, but the image of Sappho and her crew as girl group pioneers is just fabulous. And these flights of fancy are assisted by the comparative shortage of solid facts on which to draw; such interviews as exist are quoted, basic biographical sketches ironed out, but the band themselves all remain shadowy figures, with only Mary Weiss attaining any degree of solidity, not least because she was the only one to make any kind of comeback (whether or not the songs' denial of a future was true for a generation, it was certainly true of the band themselves). As Wolin points out, there is no accepted Shangri-Las narrative, more "a legacy refracted in all the songs that exist in their wake". Where plenty of 33 1/3 authors could tell you which mic in which studio on which day was used to record a given song, Wolin can't even be entirely sure who's singing lead on 'What Is Love'. But that's no bad thing. Even if it starts off feeling like it's arguing with a presumed typical 33 1/3 reader, there's really no such thing as a typical 33 1/3 book, and this one is at its best when it's an album critique written as a socially conscious teenage ghost story.