The Shangri-Las were four Catholic high-school girls from Queens who sang traumatic teen operettas then disappeared, casualties of the British Invasion that changed pop music.

The girls, all attitude and angst, wore high black boots and leather vests and left plenty of footprints. The Ramones were huge fans, as were Blondie's Deborah Harry and the New York Dolls.

Mary Weiss was the 15-year-old lead singer. She could sound sexy and dangerous with one breathy sigh. Sociologist Donna Gaines described Weiss's voice as a "squelp" -- a "combination squeal and yelp" that is "the sound of a real teenage girl declaring her love."

Weiss went into exile when the band folded in a flurry of litigation and hurt feelings. Now she's back with a new album, Dangerous Games, and there's gonna be ... tortured, tangled hearts, deep regrets and spiky recriminations.

In I Can Never Go Home Any More, a girl runs away because her Mom bugs her relentlessly about her boyfriend; Mom dies without ever finding out that her daughter really loves her. The eloping teenage couple in Give Us Your Blessing dies in a car crash -- yes, their eyes were filled with tears -- because their parents refuse to approve their marriage.

Songwriter Jeff Barry, who had a hand in writing and producing the Shangri-Las' best songs, said their records were "a movie for the ear" by design.

"We were conscious that we were making little soap operas with sound effects," he says in Always Magic In The Air, a superb history of the Brill Building era by Ken Emerson.

"I directed her in it, saying 'Look what happened to this guy. Here he is. He loves this girl. And just think about her: she stands there and sees him pull away on his motorcycle.' I got her all psyched up and she was crying. When she sang, 'Look out! Look out! Look out!' you can hear it. Her performance is a big part of the success of that record."

Producer-hustler George "Shadow" Morton dreamed up the sound effects for the records. To get the vroom-vroom sound on Leader of the Pack, he brought a motorcycle into the recording studio, and revved it up as the tape rolled. Walkin' In The Sand, Morton's first record with the Shangri-Las, brought together the main elements -- an over-the-top storyline, spoken words, sound effects and surging harmonies.

This is cache, read story here