Ada Wolin, at times, offers a sharp observation about the music. She provides some useful information. Otherwise, what I said in passing to my brother Miguel, another fan of the group, midway through the Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las hasn't changed: the Shangri-Las are fun and the book is not.
I'm sorry to say so because there doesn't seem to be much written about them and I had high hopes that they'd finally receive loving treatment. But the analysis is too dry and dispassionate to be called loving. In fact, while she details the many (!) criticisms that have been directed at the Shangri-Las, she doesn't mount an adequate defense. At times she almost agrees with their detractors, saying that "we" know they're "slightly tacky" and that the production is crude. Whether true or not, despite how far she attempts to go, it reads as though she has only a slight interest in the group, a slight interest in clarifying aspects of their sound. Someone new to the Shangri-Las would be unlikely to leave the book keen to check them out.
Which is to say it's less of an introduction for a general audience, more of a collection of pieces for the converted, or at least those who are already aware of the group. Speaking as someone who loves the Shangri-Las, despite Wolin's repeated and reckless use of "we," I mostly don't recognize the group presented in these pages. They are weird and the book is not. They are exuberant and the book is not. They are amusing and the book is not. Why should it matter? I think of the final line of a review by Christopher Hitchens: "It is altogether wrong that a book about Mark Twain should be boring."
