Album review : THE CRYIN’ SHAMES – Please Stay, Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes

Cherry Red [Release date: 12.04.24]

The Cryin’ Shames were late to the Merseybeat party, and departed almost as soon as they arrived.

This a 2 CD reissue of every recording made by the band in its various guises. 48 tracks in all.

They were a very young band who had been taken under the wing of music production innovator, Joe Meek, in 1966. He produced the band’s minor hit, ‘Please Stay’. A song written by Burt Bacharach, and originally a US hit for the Drifters in 1961.

After turning down a management offer from Brian Epstein (gulp!), the band splintered, reforming after some key line up changes.

Again they recorded with Meek, and again they chose another classy song as their next single. ‘September In The Rain’, was written by the Tin Pan Alley pair, Warren and Dubin for thirties’ movie musical ‘Melody For Two’, and had now become a “standard”.

Maybe the effect had been diluted … the song had been covered by so many artists, from Peggy Lee to Brenda Lee. From Frank Sinatra to Rod Stewart, and by a few dozen others. To their credit, the band, guided by Meek in the studio, managed to bring the nostalgia at the heart of the song to life.

Much of the rest of this 2 CD anthology will be of huge interest to aficionados and pop music historians.

The artists who broke through in the sixties were creating a new normal for popular music, worldwide. No surprise then that the Cryin Shames’ audition tape covers many of the songs charting around that time: ‘She Belongs To Me’ (Bob Dylan, 1965); ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ (The Byrds, 1965); ‘Gloria’ (Van Morrison/Them, 1964); ‘Land Of 1000 Dances’ (Wilson Pickett, 1966); ‘My Girl’ (Smokey Robinson, 1964); ‘As Tears Go By’ (The Stones, 1964), and so on.

These complete the first CD.

And for die-hard followers, the second CD is where the real treasure lies.

It’s chocka with multiple edits of the singles released by the band in its short lifetime. A paradise for fans, bringing new meaning to the words “thorough” and “complete” (and maybe “obsessive”). ‘Please Stay’ has 3 versions: a “no overdubs”; an “overdubs only, Take 2”, and an “alternate version”.

There are two versions of the band’s Freakbeat classic, ‘Come On Back’, and four versions of ‘Nobody Waved Goodbye’, which we won’t list. All well documented online.

The icing on the cake though, is three tracks that have survived the years since they appeared on BBC Radio’s Saturday Club. Two of them, ‘Circles’ and ‘Shake’, in 45 RPM vinyl have unsurprisingly become collector’s items.

Memories are made of this. ***

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)