Michaelangelo Matos is the music editor of Seattle Weekly, the owner of two blogs and a freelancer for numerous publications. Oh, and he also just authored a book about Prince.

The Liverpools– Hey, Quiet Down There!, [Wyncote, 1964]

The Beatles were my introduction to music-as-life-obsession, back when I was 12, and I shared my obsession with my best friend Eric, who became a musician while I became a critic. (I’m writing this on Eric’s birthday, in tribute.) One of the odder finds of our foraging into Beatles territory was the Liverpools’ Beatle Mania! In the U.S.A., on Wyncote, a budget subsidiary of Cameo-Parkway, and one of a number of phony Beatles albums released in early 1964. (Others included the Buggs’ The Beetle Beat, LPs by two bands calling themselves Manchesters, the Liverpool Kids’ Beattle Mash, and a conglomeration known as BEATS!!!!) The song Eric and I glommed onto wasn’t a cover, though the ones on the Liverpools’ album were suitably entertaining in a way that encouraged us to be even bigger smartasses than we already were, but an original, the ridiculous “Hey, Quiet Down There!,” in which a whiny dude asks a girl for “a goodnight kiss, goodnight kiss,” only to be interrupted by some fifth-string imitator of the Coasters’ bass singer, Bobby Nunn, moaning the title phrase. It’s a glorious mess, with a cheesy guitar riff that sounds like something some jazz-ager cooked up as being suitably simpleminded and “hep” for the kids whose love for the Fab Four would no doubt recede in a few months. Little did anyone suspect.

[find more information on Beatles covers albums here]

The Wyncote Squirrels– Hey, Quiet Down There!, [Wyncote, 1964]

And little did Eric and I suspect that there was, in fact, more to the story. Not the song’s story—the Liverpools end their tune with ol’ blubber-voice saying, “Hey—it’s awful quiet down there” (I’m guessing she got sick of the singer’s whining and finally kneed him in the nuts)—but the story of the song itself. Earlier this year, at the Experience Music Project Pop Music Studies Conference, Douglas Wolk presented a paper on phony Beatles albums, in which I learned not only about most of the above-mentioned records but about the Wyncote Squirrels, a remix project ahead of its own time. The Squirrels were to the Chipmunks what the Liverpools were to the Beatles (they were, in fact, originally called the Four Chipmunks before the lawyers stepped in), and on their album, the ever thrifty Wyncote recycled several Liverpools songs, sped up to helium-voiced speed. The biggest mystery-solver for me: the refrain of the original version was slowed down on tape; here, it sounds normal. (Big thanks to Douglas for the fake-Beatles CD-R from which I took both these songs.)

[for more information on the Wyncote label here]

Young Stars– Ulova, [The History of Township Music, Wrasse, 1962]

Shortly before the Beatles’ ascent, girl groups reigned supreme, and not just in America. The Young Stars were led by Irene Mawela, who was sort of the Darlene Love of South Africa, releasing a series of singles with several groups, including the Sweet Sixteens, the Killingstone Stars, and the Dark City Sisters. Mawela had a buttery soprano that seemed to flutter and remain earthbound both at once. I have a friend who put the Sisters’ “Sekusile,” the lead track on Earthworks’ great 1993 compilation Dark City Sisters and Flying Jazz Queens, on every mixtape he made for about three years (the song is also included on Rounder’s fabulous Kwanzaa Party! comp). That song was a smash it, while the Mawela-written “Ulova,” according to the liner notes of The History of Township Music, the essential compilation I got the song from, came and went without leaving much of a trace. I like both songs equally, though; “Ulova” is slipperier, more elusive, and has a hint of fatalism around its edges–sort of a S.A. equivalent of the Jaynetts’ “Sally Go ’Round the Roses,” if you will.

[visit and buy the record from the Wrasse Records website here]