Tracklist:

1. Manfred Mann - Do Wah Diddy Diddy 2:24
2. The Zombies - She's Not There 2:25
3. The Tams - What Kind Of Fool (Do You Think I Am) 2:02
4. Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell 2:43
5. The Newbeats - Bread And Butter 1:58
6. The Supremes - Come See About Me 2:44
7. The Searchers - Needles And Pins 2:14
8. The Beach Boys - I Get Around 2:10
9. Gerry & The Pacemakers - How Do You Do It 1:56
10. The Premiers - Farmer John 2:15
11. The Marketts - Out Of Limits 2:06
12. Peter & Gordon - Nobody I Know 2:30
13. The Shangri-Las - Remember (Walkin' In The Sand) 2:19
14. The Swinging Blue Jeans - Hippy Hippy Shake 1:46
15. The Kinks - You Really Got Me 2:15
16. Jan & Dean - Dead Man's Curve 2:31
17. Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas - Bad To Me 2:21
18. The Temptations - The Way You Do The Things You Do 2:45
19. Chad & Jeremy - A Summer Song 2:39
20. The Beach Boys - Fun, Fun, Fun 2:05
21. Gerry & The Pacemakers - I Like It 2:16
22. Jay & The Americans - Come A Little Bit Closer 2:47
23. Peter & Gordon - A World Without Love 2:42
24. Dale & Grace - Stop And Think It Over 2:33
25. The Impressions - I'm So Proud 2:49

Media Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)
Sleeve Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)

Cat # : 2CLR-03, OPCD-2555A

Barcode :

Rock, Funk / Soul / Surf, Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Pop Rock

Notes:

[r581629 is the original release from 1987, with 22 tracks and the "A Go-Go" cover art.

This is a reissue from 1989, with "RE-1" in the matrix number, with 25 tracks (adding "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Hippy Hippy Shake", and "She's Not There", and reordering the tracks) and the painted lady face cover art.  In general, the RE-1 reissue uses significantly better-sounding source tapes that what were used on the original release.

[r10510183 is a reissue from 1993, with "RE-2" in the matrix number, with 24 tracks (deleting "A Summer Song") and the painted lady face cover art.  The RE-2 reissue has comparable sound to the RE-1.  All 24 tracks are digital clones from the RE-1 reissue, with adjustments for levels, balance, and EQ. "Come See About Me" is missing the opening drumbeat on RE-2, but is OK on RE-1.

"How Do You Do It" is mono on original release and stereo on RE-1 and RE-2.
"Fun Fun Fun" is mono LP mix on original release and is stereo LP mix on RE-1 and RE-2.
"Farmer John" is stereo LP version on original and is mono 45 version on RE-1 and RE-2.
"Needles And Pins" is mono on original release and stereo on RE-1 and RE-2.

Volume 3 of a 30 volume set.

Track durations obtained from software.

Complete liner notes:

On February 7, 1964, TWA Flight 101 from London landed at New York City's Kennedy Airport. Four smartly dressed young men from Liverpool disembarked and rock 'n' roll - really, all of popular culture - was never the same again. Two nights later, an estimated 73 million Americans watched the Beatles shake their heads on The Ed Sullivan Show. On April 4, Billboard's pop singles chart showed the top five positions occupied by this Liverpudlian quartet. Beatlemania, a cultural phenomenon as cataclysmic as Elvis Presley's breakthrough in 1956, had struck America. 

Though Beatlemania seemed an overnight sensation, its explosion here in 1964, and a year earlier in England, really represented the coming of age of British rock 'n' roll. English teenagers had enthusiastically embraced American rock 'n' roll since the mid-'50s, but the British music industry had turned out only pale facsimiles of America's rock stars - teen idols whose stage names (Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, etc.) revealed their contrived character. By 1963, however, hundreds of guitar bands had emerged that not only were thoroughly schooled in R & B and rock 'n' roll but were able to bring a freshness and enthusiasm to the music missing in American pop. 

The Beatles' success had record company executives tripping over one another in the rush to sign English groups. Initially much of their interest centered on the Beatles' hometown of Liverpool, an industrial port city that by 1963 had nurtured a vibrant rock scene with more than 500 active bands. Liverpool rock groups battled for popularity in local clubs like the Cavern, and many tried to make a reputation in the bars of Hamburg's seedy Reeperbahn district, an early training ground for the Beatles. 

Outside of the Beatles, Liverpool's finest group was the Searchers, a clean-cut quartet that took its name from the 1956 John Ford western. The Searchers' most enduring hit was Needles and Pins, written by Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche (musical arranger for Phil Spector) and first recorded by Jackie DeShannon. The song's ringing guitar riff, created by two six-string guitars played in unison, and its cool harmonies anticipated the folk­rock sound of the Byrds by more than a year. 

Because of the sudden rage in America for all things English, Beatles manager Brian Epstein was able to guide two modestly talented Liverpool bands, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, to stateside success. How Do You Do It and I Like It typified the ability of Gerry and the Pacemakers to fill the most innocuous pop tunes with enough giddy energy to render them irresistible to teenagers. In 1965, the somewhat nerdy Gerry Marsden starred in Ferry Cross the Mersey, a flimsy rags-to-riches flick designed to capitalize on Liverpool's short-lived status as a music capital. 

It was Epstein who shrewdly teamed up a tame, pompadoured crooner named Billy J. Kramer with a Manchester band, the Dakotas. With John Lennon and Paul McCartney contributing some melodically engaging songs like Bad to Me and From a Window, Kramer and the Dakotas marched in the front lines of the British Invasion. 

Peter Asher and Gordon Waller also launched a successful career with a lot of help from their friend Paul McCartney, who was dating Jane Asher, Peter's sister. The Everly Brothers-style duo of Peter and Gordon were handed three chart-bound Lennon-McCartney compositions in 1964 - A World without Love, Nobody I Know and I Don't Want to See You Again. Asher later worked as talent scout for the Beatles' Apple Records, then managed and produced James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. An even folkier sound came from Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde, who scored no hits back home in England, but managed a string of them in the States, including the gentle A Summer Song. 

In contrast to the Liverpool scene, London's bands generally featured a tougher and angrier sound, largely due to their obsession with black blues. The Kinks, one of England's longest-surviving groups, hit the American airwaves like a sledgehammer in late 1964 with You Really Got Me, whose stop-and-go rhythm created the kind of bludgeoning effect later prominent in heavy metal and punk rock. Ray Davies' flat, passionless vocal is juxtaposed against brother Dave's distorted guitar chords and metallic solo, a masterpiece of single-note freneticism obviously swiped from the Kingsmen's Louie Louie. 

Many British Invasion bands covered girl-group hits, but these remakes rarely projected the same heart­wrenching innocence and anxiety. In their pathos­drenched songs of good girls falling for bad boys, the Shangri-Las took teen laments to epic extremes. Opening with some ominous piano chords from producer Shadow Morton, Remember (Walkin' in the Sand) recounts the tale of a young woman who gives in to her lover on a beach (to the sound of crashing waves and seagulls) only to be dumped by him later. 

The Supremes overshadowed all other girl groups in 1964 by racking up three consecutive No. 1 hits, the last one being Come See about Me. The Temptations also broke through nationally that year with a clever Smokey Robinson composition, The Way You Do the Things You Do. Motown head Berry Gordy Jr. and Robinson openly competed to create the Temps' first hit, and it was Robinson's song that received the nod from a panel of the label's creative personnel. Who else but Robinson could compare his girlfriend to a candle, a handle, a broom and perfume and make it sound so romantic? 

Rivaling the mid-'60s success of the Temptations, the Four Tops and the Miracles were the Impressions, a sweet-soul trio from Chicago led by singer-songwriter Curtis Mayfield. While his compositions alternated between transcendent love songs like I'm So Proud and message songs like People Get Ready, all of them had the strong gospel feel and lilting rhythms that characterized the cool, light style of Chicago soul. A similarly seductive sound was heard in What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am) by Atlanta's Tams, a group that remains popular in the college and beach towns of the Southeast. 

On the West Coast, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson continued to create perfect teen-culture evocations, including two cruise-worthy tributes to the automobile, Fun, Fun, Fun and I Get Around. In December 1964, Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown, dropped out of live performing and was briefly replaced by Glen Campbell (who was in turn replaced by Bruce Johnston). While the Beach Boys may have seemed terminally unhip compared with the new English bands, they did share a similar passion for Chuck Berry's music (the opening riff in Fun, Fun, Fun is taken from Johnny B. Goode). Missing from the charts since 1960, Berry came roaring back in 1964 with five hits, including You Never Can Tell. 

Jan and Dean, the other surfside serenaders from L.A., recorded one of rock's most famous "death songs," Dead Man's Curve, which was inspired by a dangerous downhill curve on Sunset Boulevard near the UCLA campus. Jan Berry and DJ Roger Christian wrote the song after Mel Blanc, the voice of such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, was injured in a car crash there. The hit proved prophetic in 1966 when Berry was in a car crash that killed three and left him severely disabled. Dead Man's Curve, a television account of Berry's heroic comeback attempt, aired in 1978. 

Southern California was also the home of hundreds of instrumental groups like the Marketts, who used the theme from The Twilight Zone as the basis for their space-rock hit, Out of Limits. Television served them well again in 1966 when they released the Batman Theme. In East Los Angeles, the brief stardom of Mexican-American rocker Ritchie Valens had produced a fertile Chicano rock scene ripe with one-hit groups like the Blendells, Cannibal and the Headhunters, and the Premiers. Though the record label for the Premiers' Farmer John stated, "Live at the Rhythm Room in Fullerton (Cal.)," the song was actually a studio recording with the group's friends hooting and hollering throughout. 

It seems that every year produces at least one big hit that is so inane and strange sounding that it becomes the exclusive property of the young. In 1964, the American teenager's appetite for the freakish was doubly sated by the Trashmen's Surfin' Bird and the Newbeats' Bread and Butter. Unlike other falsetto specialists, Larry Henley of the Newbeats did not take his falsetto seriously or apply it judiciously. His voice was an irritant, a sharp-edged weapon, an aural gimmick and a mating call rolled into one high-pitched wonder. 

- Joe Sasfy