Just a harmless little song...
Louie, Louie: The frat-house/any other drunken reverie classic song song has a few unusual distinctions; in addition to being covered by hundreds of bands/singers over the decades since Richard Berry recorder his original in 1955, the song has been routinely banned, scrutinized, analyzed, and has been the source of some of the most ridiculous overreactions ever over a song/recording; the main target of the frenzy has been the 1963 recording of the song by The Kingsmen, done in one take for in a recording session that cost all of USD $50.00; allegedly, the band had been imbibing a bit before and during the session and that, coupled with the bargain-basement recording session, contributed to the muddled, almost indecipherable vocal on the song; an urban legend grew up about the lyrics and parents, government officials/agencies, educators, etc., were convinced, if they couldn't understand the song, it had to be really, really dirty, so a long and lingering effort was launched to suss out the filth and ban the song forever...
How bad did it get? Would you believe there were actual US Congressional hearings and that the FBI spent about two (2) years investigating the lyrics in an effort to defend common decency:
'Louie Louie': Indecipherable, Or Indecent? An FBI Investigation --
https://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/40362...-investigation
The above article not only describes the wildly extreme extents the FBI engaged in try to preserve 'Merican morality, it also includes a link to the actual FBI report on the song, complete with the FBI's analysis and text of the lyrics which are, to say the least, way far off from the actual lyrics of the song; it kind of makes one wonder if the FBI was engaging in a bit of imbibing while they were listening intently to those 'immoral' lyrics...
Oddly, if you listen to the original, unedited recording, the lead singer misses the cue after the middle guitar break and comes in too soon, catches his error, and stops to wait for the right cue; as he stops his mis-start, you can hear him, under his breath, swear, with a decidedly not clean word; oddly, the actual swear word in the recording is almost always missed by those commenting on the record...
An even weirder fact about
Louie Louie is that the song was banned by a US university, the University of South Carolina, not because of the song's alleged racy lyrics, but because the song was seriously damaging the university's football stadium; the schools marching band would, like so many other school bands, play the song as part of their performances and the stadium crowd would join in singing the song, stomping their feet and swaying to the rhythm; so many people stomping and swaying at the same tome caused a resonance effect with the vibrations being at a near-perfect harmony with the structure's elements, cause alarming damage to the building; worries that continued renditions of
Louie, Louie might bring the structure down caused the school's administration to ban any further performances; as far as I know,
Louie, Louie is the only song ever to be banned for being structurally dangerous...
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