If you thought these 80's music posts I've been putting up was going back to the old school, then let me take you all the way back to one of the oldest schools of all time—the doo-wop era of the 1960's. Yes, I'm a huge sucker for those old 'Malt Shop' tunes.....even if they were about two decades before my time. Of course, they don't bring back any warm memories for me like they most surely did for the senior generation still living right now, but I've always loved that vintage big-band sound; it has the same effect on me that jazz and classical music has. So a couple of days ago, while I was re-organizing my music collection, I came across one of my favorite early all-girl pop groups and decided I'd talk about them tonight—THE ANGELS. Who cannot adore their sweet little voices and their even sweeter lyrics? If the sub-genre 'bubblegum pop' existed back in the 60's, then THE ANGELS would've been right at the top of the list of artists who fall into that category. How can anyone not love their unforgettable #1 hit, "My Boyfriend's Back"? A very simple song that tells a very simple story, but it's so addicting that you couldn't just play it once. Bet those people in the malt shops spent a small fortune playing it on the jukebox. The parts of the song I like is when the girls on background vocals sing 'He knows that you been cheatin, now you're gonna get a beatin'' and when the girl on lead vocals sings 'If I were you, I'd take a permanent vacation'. Boyfriends, it seems—finding them, getting them back and keeping them once they have them—was the subject to the vast majority of their songs. "My Boyfriend's Back" is the one song that everybody knows so well and continues to be a favorite in popular culture, but I don't think so many of us younger folks know anything about the other fun tunes that THE ANGELS recorded. There's a couple that I definitely recall hearing once or twice in movies or TV commercials: "I Adore Him" and "He's So Fine" (the latter sounds like one of those sunny surfin'-in-California kinda classics that causes warm memories to surface no matter if you were alive in the Malt Shop era or not. "Thank You And Goodnight", with its marvelous vocal harmony and the starry bluesy beat, is a song that can make you dream about someone special; it's another favorite of mine. All of these tunes and so much more can be found on this 1998 digital remastering of THE ANGELS' original 1963 album:
1. My Boyfriend's Back
2. I Adore Him
3. Dream Boy
4. Little Beatle Boy
5. Thank You And Goodnight
6. Why Don't The Boy Leave Me Alone?
7. He's The Kissing Kind
8. (You Can't Take) My Boyfriend's Woody
9. Has Anybody Seen My Boyfriend?
10. He's So Fine
11. Wow Wow Wee (He's The Boy For Me)
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