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As probably should be expected, the Louie Louie Committee Committee’s guiding purpose seems easier to appreciate than fully understand. The compulsion to host a madcap array of Portland-area acts performing successive interpretations of the deathless ’60s jam and soundtrack staple “Louie Louie” first struck veteran indie drummer and Nuggets mini-festival organizer Luke Strahota (The High Violets, The Satin Chaps).
Over the past decade, Strahota enlisted the aid of fellow committee founders Michael Joyce (press relations and artist outreach), Julie Madsen (social media and production coordinator) and artful nightlife provocateur Matt Stanger (stage manager and co-MC).
Inside the Afru gallery warehouse this Saturday and Sunday, they’ll assemble a daunting cavalcade of genre-spanning local talents for a raucous marathon bookended by appearances of the PDX garage rock legends whose garbled shouting and immortal riff first fueled the iconic party anthem.
WW recently spoke with the founding members of LLCC and Kingsmen drummer Dick Peterson to hear more about this daft crusade and learn just why we all gotta go (a separate Peterson interview covering his band’s remarkable history can be found here).
So, how’s all of this going to work?
Julie Madsen: It’s a marathon. In the warehouse space behind [Afru] Gallery, they’ve set up a big stage, a smaller stage and, basically, a microphone as backup.
Luke Strahota: The mic’s just a backup gap filler so we don’t drop the ball.
Michael Joyce: All of the committee members have committed to stepping in at any point so that it never stops being a live performance of the song.
Strahota: That’s why we’re gonna have a ringer on the third microphone playing on a ukulele or tin can or just going “duh duh duh dutdut dut dut dut...”
Matt Stanger: We want “Louie Louie” to be played in some iteration at all times for 24 hours. The Kingsmen will kick things off and clear the stage for the third band to get set up. Then, after the band on stage two finishes, they’ll pass the proverbial baton back to stage one where the third band will do their version of “Louie Louie.”
Strahota: Some sets are gonna be at least 15 minutes, some maybe even an hour. One band signed up for 120 minutes. Some people are gonna be grooving out on the song as long as they can.
It’s always “Louie Louie,” though?
Strahota: Every rendition you could imagine: ska, drone, ASMR, ukulele solo performance, Tuvan throat singing.
Madsen: We’ll have the Unipiper.
And rehearsals?
Peterson: Now, you are a comic. Why would anyone need to rehearse “Louie Louie”?
How closely need performers cover the song?
Strahota: All we’re asking is that performers keep the chord structure and sing the chorus. As far as the verses go, if you want to sing about your dog and your cat, that’s fine! They can make up lyrics, whatever can be whatever, because historically they’ve always done that anyways, right? No one knows the real words.
Peterson: I mean, there are real words, Richard Berry wrote real words, but the Kingsmen’s version has been deemed unintelligible at any speed by the FCC. Then, when John Belushi sang the dirty version in Animal House, that resurrected the song for a whole new set of college kids wearing togas who thought the Kingsmen fooled everyone. Even 60 years later, I still get people coming up to ask, “Come on, what’re the real lyrics?” It’s the Where’s Waldo of music!
So much fits to those three chords: The Ramones, The Righteous Brothers. You’ve got the Sandpipers, you’ve got the Beach Boys, almost everybody who was ever in a band. That riff was used in “Hang On, Sloopy,” “Wild Thing.” I met Bing Crosby once, and he told me, “You can sing ‘White Christmas’ to ‘Louie Louie’ and it still fits!”