The Repo Zone: 1999

[Komorebi-D]

Your Wild Nothing review was spot on. I used to that album & Gemini (Tatum's debut) a lot in high school. It's strongly embedded in a memory I have of my best friend & I cutting down south to see beaches in New South Wales around New Years, three years ago. It's just so fun. His next album with the project is fairly decent, he took a kind of predictable route on it but it's not without its supply of repayable tracks. Have you heard his album? I doubt it will be something you expect. It's pretty chamber pop orientated.
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[Repo]

[Komorebi-D]

[Repo]

50. The Professionals


The Very Best Of The Shirelles by The Shirelles

Sha la la la la… (Baby, It’s You)

Do Be Do Be Do... (Everybody Loves a Lover)

They were just regular-old boy crazy teenagers like the rest of us. Talked into entering the talent show by their music teacher supposedly. Luckily for all of us, they were positively obsessed with the local radio R&B station WWRL, so they decided to write a song. Their own song. “I Met Him on A Sunday.” And what happened next, they never could have imagined. A random girl in their high school positively LOVED the song. And knew her Mom - Florence “Force of Nature” Greenberg — was looking to break into the music business. So our heroines auditioned for her. In Florence’s banal living room. And that was it. Life took over. The situation was out of their control. Because this was not just some Florence Greenberg. This was Florence “Veritable Force of Nature” Greenberg. And you pretty much had to be if you were going to start your very own DIY record label - Scepter Records - in the 50s as a woman. She was indie way before there was indie. I mean she makes Ian Mackay look like a freakin’ slacker.

You see Florence Greenberg was positively enamored with the music industry. Once her children got into high school in the NYC suburb of Passaic , she’d got pulled into the gravitational field of Manhatten. And hung out at this place called The Turf. It had the bestest location in the whole world as far as Florence was concerned - right next door to the Brill Building. So she’d hang there. Talking to songwriters at times, but mostly just soaking in its energy. The excitement. The chaos. All these people hustling songs. It was filled with life. Producers from the nearby Brill Building would just stop in and yell ”We Need a bass player! Who plays bass?” It must have been positively delirious. Especially for a housewife from Jersey.

The Shirelle girls themselves never wrote another hit. It didn’t matter. The machinery was in place. The professionals of The Brill Building were brought in. Producer Luther Dixon moved in. And he and the songwriters from the Brill building such as Gooff-King became chiefly responsible for the rest of their hits. Hell, even Mrs. Greenberg herself helped write one.

And that was good thing! Because while “I Met Him a on Sunday” is a cute boy crush song, it honestly doesn’t hold a candle to the rest of the cuts on this comp. The attention to detail, the choruses, the sense of humor - the writing is top notch through & through - and you immediately know why the Brill Building became legendary. And you value the work of these professionals.

But what makes The Shirelles so god honestly notable is the little things . The things that take guts. Add just enough daring. How they paint outside the lines of a traditional pop songs. Add just enough snarling proto-punk attitude and city smarts to their songs. And that’s the key to a great POP song. Give us the sticky sweet but also a little something extra. Something with heart. Something creative. Something just a bit deferent so that it gets you noticed.

And that’s mostly due to Florence. I mean she’s the one who knew NOT to mess with “Louie, Louie” by The Kingsmen despite the fact that the one microphone for the vocals was not working. The vocals instead just bled into the instrumental mic. And she had the ear to realize that THAT’S what made it exceptional. What made it cool.

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Tomorrow is his wedding day and you’ll keep quiet if your smart! (Foolish Little Girl)

Grade: A- It’s crazy. I mean I knew the girl groups were a huge influence on punk and all. You can’t be a record geek and not know that. But I never knew how positively proto-punk some of these songs were. The opening belted line of “Dedicated To The One I Love” is positively New York Dollish. In fact, David Johansen’s entire personna seems to be culled together from snippets of these songs. Or take a looksie at stuff like the taunting, chiding refrain “Tomorrow is his wedding day and you’ll keep quiet if your smart” from “Foolish Little Girl”. It’s meta way before there was meta. It’s like something lifted straight from KD’s music diary. Or The Leftovers for that matter. It makes me giddy to hear the roots of punk in these here songs. That inimitable New York City attitude. So do yourself a favor this Christmas season and don’t wait as long I did to figure that out. Because this shit is proto-punk gold.

Merry Christmas, Motherfuckers!

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[drakonium]

Awesome write-up. Have you listened to an album by them? Do you think a best-of is more consistent? I've never got into them but I'd like to now haha

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[mickilennial]

[Repo]

[mickilennial]

Baby It’s You is a full-length studio record, not a compilation, and no it is NOT mediocre or "weak".

This is why I hate Best Of compilations. It shows a weighted sample of what a band, group, or artist was instead of really showing the band at its purest, as intended. Compilations are the fast food of the music world and outside of some very niche exceptions, they’re all unneeded cash-grabs that lose perspective on an artist. The Shirelles deserve better. Just like their contemporaries. The Shirelles’ don’t have a large discography – it’s not hard to take a look into their records. This compilation while showing snippets of the Shirelles’ quality performances is just that. Snippets. During the peak of their time on Scepter Records they cut only five records. The Shirelles deserve to be taken seriously and for someone who cares about them to listen to those five records. Depending on a compilation and heralding it as such seems to me disingenuous at best.

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