https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1p1dM3snQ
Jack Ely, lead singer of The Kingsmen on their classic hit single "Louie Louie," died Monday at age 71. The song is not only one of the greatest party songs of all time; it is also infamous for Ely's garbled vocals that led to an FCC investigation after Indiana governor Matthew Welsh declared it "pornographic" for its mangled mouthings. The song hit #2 in December 1963 and stayed there for 6 weeks (behind The Singing Nun!), and the FCC later declared that the words were "unintelligible at any speed." (In fact, the only nasty thing is about it is a garbled F-bomb dropped by the drummer at the :56 mark.) While the song's Cookie Monster-isms like "me gotta go" and "think of girl, constantly" weren't exactly poetic, a story on Yahoo! this morning about Mariah Carey's new song "Infinity" got me contemplating lyrics in general. The song's words, which the article's author interpreted as a slam at ex Nick Cannon, probably wouldn't look so stupid if they weren't printed. Seeing as I am now 40 and have earned my crankiness, they seemed so ridiculous as to remind me how the quality of pop declined somewhere around 1989. Let's see, there's "Name hold weight like kilos," which sounds like caveman speak: "Ug club bird for din-din." And then there's the baby talk of "Ain't no come again (duh)/ That's the story, ain't no happy ends." My end is happy right now because I started the day with a good bowel purging, but I doubt that's what Mariah means. I did listen to the song, which I rate a C+ for tolerability. At least you can avoid the trademark Carey air raid siren shriek by stopping it 30 seconds from the end. R.I.P. Jack Ely. Here's "Louie Louie":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1p1dM3snQ
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'80s singer Johnny Kemp was found dead Thursday on a beach at Montego Bay. The cause of death has not been determined. Kemp, who was 55, was a two-hit wonder. His first success, "Just Got Paid," made #10 in 1988 and the follow-up "Birthday Suit" made #36 in 1989. He never recorded another solo album after the success of those two songs. "Birthday" is one of my favorite 1980s songs, and I even mentioned it in my book Cannibals and Vixens on the River Styx as one of the greatest "lost singles" of the decade for its creativity and non-blatant sexual innuendo. Here's "Birthday Suit":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DziRRWd8vM Here's "Just Got Paid": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1mQASHc48 I was in a local library the other day looking through some bound People magazines from 1980 - 35 years ago - when an article in the May 12, 1980, issue (cover shown below) caught my eye. There was a page headed "A ROUNDUP OF ROLLER-DISCO RINKS" and one particular entry caught my eye, the one describing the Hidden Valley Disco Skate Center in Houston. The entry attracted me not only because I am a Texan who has visited that city several times, but also because of the venue's unusual characteristic. I'll quote directly from the article: "Hidden Valley's unique feature is Garcan II, a remote-controlled robot made of garbage cans, with a tape-recorded voice. Garcan bumps and grinds, literally sometimes, and his remote mike acts as a gentle bouncer, reprimanding obstreperous patrons." Unfortunately, there is no visual record online of what Garcan II looked like. One blog claims to have done research finding that Hidden Valley was located out in the middle of nowhere, burned down in 1984, and was never rebuilt. Other highlights from the article include a paragraph covering New York's disco Roxy, where Keith Richards "disco-skated for the first time" (there's an image for you to imagine) and this politically-incorrect quote from Britt Ekland (Bond girl in The Man With the Golden Gun and whose bedpost notches would eventually include Peter Sellers, Rod Stewart, and Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats) describing the atmosphere at West Hollywood's disco Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace: "I like it a lot," she said. "It's one of the few totally up places in L.A. that isn't totally gay. And people can't be too stoned or drunk because they'll fall." According to the piece, the decor of Flipper's was "simulated Amazon jungle," and patrons included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. As far as I'm concerned, that's still no match for Garcan.
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Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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