Year’s Best: My Heart is Beating by Mary Weiss

Mary Weiss. Name don’t ring a bell? How about: The Shangri-las? Okay now I got your attention. Bad birls, chewing gum – a girl group, but with the long-straight hair look. Not bouffants. Maybe black leather. And not New Jersy. No, Staten Island. Dark eyed girl children of the damned that paved the way for…oh.. I don’t know…let’s say The New York Dolls. Mary Weiss was the singer.

And she has come back. Little Steven [of Little Steven’s Underground Garage] hipped me to this one. Enter a pool parlor of youth. Racing nights. Figuring out the rules of love. Wondering about Juanita and saying why not.

The record plays. My Heart is Beating. Big chords and castanets. Brill Street beckons. But this is now and that was then!

When you held me close
That’s when I knew
Chilled me though and through
I couldn’t let you go
I couldn’t let it show

Got a buzz guitar. A doo-wap chorus bit sound. Her voice has the same plaintive tone. Her teen self sings through the filter of adult pain.

And this whole world’s unfair
I know it’s true
What can I do?

It could be the Shangri-las. The important thing is this sound has not aged a bit. It’s a hit in my blue heaven in 2007. This is garage music.

…My heart is beating, beating ….
I know you've been cheating

But if I take you back ….
You have to walk a straight and narrow path...

http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Game-Mary-Weiss/dp/B000N3SSQC