Louie Louie Kaphooie!

Jack Ely, the lead singer of The Kingsmen, most well-known for their 1963 seminal hit, Louie Louie, sadly passed away on the 27th of April. RIP.

In case you didn't know (like, by not having read E@L's FB post, or the link above to the Wikipedia page) this song was investigated by no other just arbiter of morality, niceness, appropriateness, and generally good social behaviour than the FBI, for being a menace to society!

"This land of ours [USA?] is headed for an extreme state of degradation what with this record, the biggest hit movies and the sex and violence on T.V." said a concerned father in a letter to the Attorney General, no less. Gee willikers, you don't hear that exact complaint almost word for word anymore, do you? Right...?

The FBI file is most entertaining. E@L wonders what importance there could possibly be in the redacted sections.

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*The Controversy*



Listen to this song while you read the "explicit lyrics" dear old dad found buried in there.

E@L is certain that you too are outraged!

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Now listen to again again while you read the actual lyrics...

Oh. Pretty tame really, but Jack Ely, man, what a brilliant performance he slurs out. It really does sound like he should be singing bawdy, subversive lyrics! E@L reckons he's been smokin' serious amounts of those Jamaican tea leaves prior to the recording session... E@L wishes he had been there! Except he would have been 6yo at the time, andy don't smoke.

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OK, great, but apart from being famous for Ely's obviously almost unintelligble singing, the song has had quite a seminal role in what became what we know as rock music, influencing strongly The Kinks' You Really Got Me, which in E@L's opinion is the first truly modern rock song.



Brilliant. Especially the flag-waving at the end!

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Louie Louie has been in a squidillion movies and TV shows (see the Wikipedia link, above).

For an example, making the most of the incompehensible lyrics with their drunken slurring, John Belushi at al have a great go at it in National Lampoon's Animal House... (set in 1962, although The Kingmen's version that's playing on the juke-box wasn't released until 1963).



Awesome!

E@L