My Amazon Reviews: The Undertones "The Undertones"

You Gotta Getta
5 Out of 5 Stars

This was a great blast of rock sugar from a bunch of teenage dreamers. They armed themselves with guitars, a DIY work ethic, and began bashing out three chord ditties about girls, cars, guys they were jealous of, girls and more girls. (And Mars Bars.) Whatever they may have lacked in experience, they more than made up for in exuberance. Feargel Sharkey had a voice that just boiled over with hormonal confusion and cockiness, and was so unique that no-one's matched him since. The rest of the band just tore into their instruments with all the speed that their systems' race through adolescent upheaval could keep up with. And while many slogged them off as non-political kids in punk's nihilist rage, The Undertones probably had a greater impact than most of the angry messengers of the era. Why, you may ask?

Because The Undertones inherently understood that "Teenage Kicks" and its never distant parallel of teenage pain never fade from the scope of human existence, but momentary anger of and rage at the times usually does. Well, then again, maybe they didn't at the time. But this music still means more today than most of, say, Stiff Little Fingers or Gang of Four's library. And let's face it, there was only one Clash. Seeing as most of The Undertones were under 18 at the time of their first album, "The Undertones" subject matter of "She's a Run Around" probably weighed in heavier on their lives than "Julie's In The Drug Squad."

It's that kind of joyous carousing that keeps "The Undertones" from ever once sounding like less than a rock and roll epiphany. My only real quibble is the cover art (I miss the colorful high angle shot; the drab picture used here siphons off the fun feeling of the album I originally owned). Along with the first three Ramones albums, The Undertones' first two albums are a cheering jolt of electricity from a period when you could still pick up a guitar and feel like you could say whatever was on your mind. Even if the priority topic was "Let's Talk About Girls."

     

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Passings: George "Shadow" Morton

George "Shadow" Morton, a New York-based producer and songwriter best known for his work with 1960s girl group the Shangri-Las, has died at 72, according to reports. A family friend told the New York Times that the cause was cancer.

Morton was born in Virginia and raised in Brooklyn and then Hicksville, Long Island where he began his career singing in a doo-wop group called the Marquees. According to the Long Island Music Hall of Fame website, Morton got his start in songwriting and production through his childhood friend and Brill Building songwriter Ellie Greenwich.

"He pulled together a young girl
group from Astoria, some local musicians (including a young Billy Joel)
and a basement studio in Bethpage, Morton created 'Remember (Walking in
the Sand)' and presented it to Greenwich's employers [legendary
producer-songwriting team] Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who loved the
track and sent Morton into the studio to record the song, and the
Shangri-Las were born."

"Remember" was the first attempt at songwriting for Morton, who did not play an instrument or read music. It reached No. 5 on the Hot 100. He would become chief producer of Lieber and Stoller’s Red Bird label and went on to work on other mid-60s hits for the Shangri-Las including "I Can Never Go Home Anymore" and their best known song "Leader of the Pack." Morton co-wrote "Leader of the Pack" with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. The song, a melodramatic tale about a girl telling her friends about her motorcycle-riding boyfriend, topped the Hot 100 in late 1964.


The echo-drenched track was also featured in the 1980s jukebox musical of the same name, which co-starred and told the story of Greenwich, the prolific songwriter behind hits including "Be My Baby," Da Doo Ron Ron," "River Deep, Mountain High," among others. The Shangri-Las were made up of two sets of sisters from Queens, New York: lead singer Mary Weiss and Betty Weiss, and identical twins Marge and Mary Ann Ganser. In a 2008 interview with Stomp and Stammer, Mary Weiss gave several reasons why she thought Morton was drawn to them. "We were very into harmony. We sang harmony all the time and really worked on it," she said, adding, "There's an honesty and street sound that’s unmistakable. I guess if we had started ten years later I would have been in the punk scene."
On Morton's songwriting style, Weiss continued: "They’re very intricate, especially vocally. They're the hardest things for my current band to do. They're syncopated and metered. You have to be right on the money. It’s complicated -- more so than most music." He later produced a diverse slate of artists, including: Janice Ian' ("Society Child”), heavier rock bands Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly, (including the latter’s epic hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida") and early New York punk-glam rock band The New York Dolls (1974'a “Too Much Too Soon”).

On Friday, Janis Ian wrote the following tribute on her Facebook page: "Shadow Morton, who produced 'Society's Child,' 'Leader of the Pack' and other seminal records, is gone. A sad start to the day."