Rock and Roll is fun!!!
Over at Althouse, there is a discussion about the Rolling Stone article “25 Songs with a Secret“. The first song on the list was the Kingsmen version of Louie Louie, which is impossible to decipher just what they’re singing. That is the mystery of the song. A mystery for me was this: What the hell is Elton John or Bruce Springsteen or Michael Stipe singing in half of their songs.
My San Diego band, RareForm, sometimes performs Chris Isac’s “Wicked Games”. Well, when we learned the song, we didn’t know what the backing vocals were, so we improvised. We would sing the chorus “And I wanna fall in love”, then in a very low muddled tone we sang “somebody tell us what we’re singing now”. It was so indiscernible no one caught on. One night at a gig in the Kohl Center in downtown San Diego, I guess we were not muddled enough ’cause halfway through the song some in the audience started laughing as we realized we had sung the line way too clearly. We barely made it through the song without busting up ourselves. Rock and Roll is fun!!!
PS. Yes, we know now what the real lyrics are, but we still sing it the funner way.
Music / Video | Sonicfrog April 17, 2007
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By Johnny, April 19, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
What about Don McLean’s American Pie? Sure, most of it’s been deciphered now, but it’s string of references to musical culture the has never commented on. Surely that’s more secret than Lola and Louie Louie combined.
By Johnny, April 19, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
Okay, that should read “that Don McLean has never commented on.”