Tonight, I'm gonna take you on a journey into the darkside. It is not a journey for the faint hearted, there's angst, rebellion, teenage pregnancies, rape, motorcycle wrecks, heartbreak and the highest body count this side of a Nick Cave album. Because tonight I give you the weirdly dark world of the Shangri-las. The Shangri-las were four streetwise New York girls. Although as, St.Etienne's Pete Wiggs has pointed out, there are only three present in most of the photographs. I expect at any given time one or other of the girls was off running with a bad crowd, having a child out of wedlock, or mourning the death of their latest squeeze. I like to think of them as the Ramones in bobby-sox. The girl's were produced and managed by Shadow Morton - a man who took Phil Spector's "teenage symphonies" and turned them the kind of melodrama usually more at home on the cineplex screen than the gramphone. So to the songs ...The Shangri-Las - Remember (Walking in the Sand)The group's debut hit. In a way the most straightforward song here. Girl gets dumped and relives all the good times she had enjoyed with her beau. It is Morton's arrangement that sets this apart - the hearbroken pauses, the melancholy "no, no, no's" and the earnest "remembers" leaves me believing she's gonna carry on walking into the surf. The Shangri-Las - I Can Never Go Home AnymoreHere a "big sister" advises a potential runaway to stay at home, because "You Can Never Go Home Anymore". We learn that she has first hand experience of what she speaks. Natuarally there's a boy involved, and parental disapproval, but at night she wishes Mum was there to hush her to sleep. Only that can't happen - Mum died of a broken heart. This is an epic recording. There are so many elements to it - spoken monologues, lullabies, lush strings, dramatic strings, pathos, and anguished singing.The Shangri-Las - Past, Present, FutureThis is an odd track. The music is Beethoven Moonlight Sonata, and the spoken lyrics tell the tale of a girl who can never love again. She'll date you, dance with you, and can walk on the beach together - but don't ever touch her. The depth of the singer's emotional rendition, leave you wondering if the cause of her repuduation of romantic caresses is driven by something infinitely more traumatic than a broken heart.The Shangri-Las - The Leader of The PackTheir most famous song and their most cinematic. In under three minutes Grease meets The Wild One meets Rebel Without A Cause; while Girl meets Boy, Boy meets motorbike, motorbike meets wall. LINKHistory of RockThere's nothing on Amazon by the Shangri-las - I suggest you try your local service station, or newsagents.