The Liverpool Kids "Beattle Mash" (Palance, PST-777, 1964)
I’ve got a number of these “Beatle rip off albums” which emerged as the first wave of Beatlemania was hitting the US. Basically Beatle sound-alike (or in some cases, not so sound-alike) cash-ins that were designed to fool the less attentive members of the public (read: little kids or their hapless parents), they were released on budget labels with ambiguous and/ or misleading cover design that tossed in exotic buzz words like “Liverpool”, “Mersey Beat” or just “England”. Then when the consumer got home and dropped the needle down, they’d be confusingly greeted by a made-up group ineptly covering a song or two by the “fabs” and 20 more minutes of throwaway filler that ranged from “pretty close” to “guh?”.
For my money, “Beattle Mash” has the best cover of the whole slew (I don’t know if you can tell how out of focus it is, or how little this helps disguise the age of these guys), while the group themselves (referred to on the front as “The Liverpool Kids”, in the liners as “The Liverpool Moptops” and on the label as “The Schoolboys”) mostly stick to churning out lame recycled frat rock and twist riffs, pausing now and then to slip in a not-very-rewritten rewrite of an actual Beatle song. Or as the back cover puts it:
…these four men, who with a group of excellent musicians, have adopted the style of BEATLING, the hottest craze in show business on either side of the Atlantic. [snip] Our interpretation of the style by our own talented group will give you the great pleasure you are looking for.
So I hope the great pleasure you are looking for finds you today, because I have little doubt that it eluded the original purchaser of this record.
Hey kids! Listen to your Dad’s friends sing like the Beatles! Its HIP, its FAR OUT, and it only costs 99 CENTS! So buy it already!
Terrific stuff. All your stuff is terrific. I think I love you.
I like to think that oblivious parents bought these after their kids asked for the new Beatles record.
It’s like every dream I have where I am either going to a concert, or buying an album and it turns into some horrible imitation of the thing/event I’d intended to go to/get.
Great blog site!!
Love these “rip-off” look-alike Beatle records.
Exactly the type of shit my parents would have bought and thought they were doing a 7 year-old a favour.
Bad enought they thought they were hip with their James Last stuff…hell, I thought “Light My Fire” was a James Last original…imagine my surprise the first time I heard “THE DOORS”!!
Keep up the good work.
– MEESTER MUSIC
I saw these records for years in thrift store bins and never picked them…my loss. Great stuff though the majority of of this album sounds like it was recorded long before 1964 (and proably was)! “Take a Chance” rips off Chubby Checker’s “Huckabuck” right down to the sax solos.
BTW I have been looking for the Monkees rip-off LP “Monkee Business” (Wyncote 1966) for years. If anyone has it please share it..
I have a copy of Beattle Mash too and it’s odd that they would put these old guys on the cover, especially when it’s so obvious these dudes are not even the musicians on the album. Every track is some low budget public domain (black) Rhytm and Blues that the label had previously released as a twist LP. Ah, what these budget labels won’t stoop to! I have a 45 called “Beatle Yeah Yeah Yeah” which is just a surf instrumental that had been re-released with a new name to cash in on the Beatle crazy, and they just dubbed in someone yelling “Loves you YEAH YEAH YEAH” over the surf guitar.
I have a copy of Beattle Mash too and it’s odd that they would put these old guys on the cover, especially when it’s so obvious these dudes are not even the musicians on the album. Every track is some low budget public domain (black) Rhytm and Blues that the label had previously released as a twist LP. Ah, what these budget labels won’t stoop to! I have a 45 called “Beatle Yeah Yeah Yeah” which is just a surf instrumental that had been re-released with a new name to cash in on the Beatle crazy, and they just dubbed in someone yelling “Loves you YEAH YEAH YEAH” over the surf guitar.