The Score: Please Please Me (1966)

Manchester band the Score was short-lived, just one single released at the end of 1966 when the world of pop was moving in a more psychedelic and exploratory direction after the Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver, and the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations single and Pet Sounds.

So the Score covering what by then was a hoary old Beatles' song which they'd left behind seems like a strange choice.

But it's what they did with it.

Singer Eddie Lamb seems to channel the spirit, energy and delivery of Eric Burdon (Animals) and Paul Jones (Manfred Mann) as the band helmed by lead guitarist Kenny White overhauls the Beatles pop into something huge with quotes from the Yardbirds and the Stones.

It is quite unrecognisable as Please Please Me for first 30 psychedelic seconds. It's a heavy, clubland stomper.

But that was it for the Score, one single on the Stones' label Decca and then members dispersing into other bands and White becoming the sound tech for the Creation.

Two minutes and 43 seconds of unexpectedness, available on the 3-CD compilation Looking Through a Glass Onion: The Beatles Psychedelic Songbook 1966-72.

Play loud. 

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.