Louie Louie

Love that.

Or Louie Louie by the King's Men.

Yes, totally.

That sort of, I wanted it to have a retro 60s novelty vibe.

in retrospect

... their display, or I, I don't know if they still have it up, but they had a display about the song Louie Louie.

[laughs]

Oh, that's a perfect one.

And all the letters from the FBI worried about the lyrics to Louie Louie are making kids crazy.

[laughs]

[laughs] Now, that's a good one.

Yeah, like the first big rock and roll controversy if you think about it, right?

W- we're talking of course about Louie Louie.

A- and particularly we have to specify, because we're gonna get into this, there's a lot of versions.

Uh, particularly the 1963 version by a group called The Kingsmen.

So it's, it's-

Got myself a beer.

[laughs] So it's, it, it's really simple for the Kingsmen, right? They had this gig one night, and I guess when they take a break, kids hit the jukebox and they start playing this song by Rockin' Robin Roberts "Louie Louie," and the, and the kids are loving it, and they're taking note of how, how into it everybody seems to be

Special version of that song.

You think it's a different one?

I think it's Louie Louie.

Oh, that's what it is.

You were right.

Ah, yeah, that's the, um, is it the Kingsmen? No.

Louie Louie, yeah.

I mean, I used to listen to that on the little 45, uh, at my house, Louie Louie all the time.

Really?

Jack Ely was born in 1943 as well.

He was the original lead vocalist for the Kingsmen, who had the big hit Louie Louie, which no one has any idea what it is that he's actually singing in it.

Literally.

Dennis Tufano was born in 1946.

Um, also the Kingsmen out of Portland.

Um, and the Kingsmen actually played a song that I used to play all the time on a little record player when I was a kid, which was called Louie Louie, which I'm sure you've heard of.

Oh, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, they had a song called Steppin' Out, and then their own song Louie Go Home was later covered by David Bowie and The Who.

And then the Kingsmen.

Louie Louie, um, the genre's ground zero single.

Uh, probably the most famous garage rock song, covered by Iggy and The Stooges.

It was the first serious outlet for New York's scene and began codifying what people were calling punk on paper.

The earliest musical DNA is found in the Kingsmen's 1963 take on Louie Louie, a riff-heavy, slurred vocal record that sounded as chaotic as later punk but still came out of a garage club.

That tune became an urtext for those who wanted to break up rock and roll into its simplest pieces.

Across the pond in Britain, mod in inspired bands like The Kinks dropped hits such as You Really Got Me that pushed guitar distortion and aggression.

Now, you know, so, we get up there and throw it in.

Louie Louie by the Kingsman comes off.

And I'm thinking, and I remember what she said to me.

She was like, oh, I remember when this came out when I was in college.

And then the record scratched and I was like, Louie Louie by the Kingsman came out when you were in college.

So presumably from the time between you were 18 to like 22, 23, right? Now I'm just going to go to the tape real quick.

And the Kingsman, Louie Louie.

let's say, not the Kingston Trio, not the Kingsman Quartet, the Kingsman, 1960s American rock band.