Last year, I wrote about some odd little snippets of The Shangri-Las which had been uploaded to YouTube. They included an unreleased song, rehearsals for “Remember”, studio chatter, and an excerpt of a whole different version of “Leader of the Pack”. As I’m sure you’ll agree, this is one of the most exciting things which has ever happened in the entire history of recorded music.
Recently, I decided to go and listen to it again. And… hang on, what’s all this? Surely the video isn’t shorter? Am I imagining things?
Luckily, I had downloaded the original version of the video at the time. (My spidey-sense was tingling enough on my original listen that I thought that would be a sensible thing to do.) The version of the video I downloaded last year was 3:38 in duration. The version currently on YouTube is 2:35. Hang on, a whole minute missing? I can’t hide the tears, but I don’t care.
So, for those of you who want to hear that minute which mysteriously went missing from the upload, here you go. An alternate take of the start of “Leader of the Pack”, which according to the video description has Betty on lead vocals1:
As for why that minute was silently removed… who knows. The account where this bootleg audio was uploaded is arcane to say the least. For instance, they also uploaded this amazing stereo version of the Shangs magnum opus “Out in the Streets”, which has never been officially released anywhere:
So, a minute of Shangri-Las history: we don’t know where it came from, and we don’t know why it disappeared. But hey, I said last year that the Shangs were “fuelled by myth and mystery”. Even in 2020, mysterious things keep happening. It’s all highly appropriate.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t grab an extra minute of fun if we can get it.
Health warning on this claim: a noted Shangri-Las expert who I’ve had the odd email exchange with doesn’t think it actually sounds like Betty. This is precisely the kind of stuff I’m terrible at figuring out, so at this I just throw my hands up and say “Whatever it actually is, it’s interesting, innit?” ↩