Today is a very special date for me, this LOUIE project, and the LOUIE universe. My friend Stretch Riedle sent out a little email reminder today at the LOUIE PARTY Yahoo group:

On August 19th, 1983, at 6:00pm [it was a Friday] I sat in the studios at KFJC with several others and began what is referred to as “Maximum Louie Louie”. We played versions, 99% unrepeated, for 63 hours and 10 minutes. It ended on Monday, August 22nd at approximately 9:10am. Twenty five years later we still discuss it, and relate stories that have occurred as a result of that great event.
Me gotta go now,
Stretch

I view today’s date with mixed emotions. My immediate reaction is “it’s been HOW long?” In all honesty, it does feel pretty darned weird to be working on this thing as long as I have. It feels kinda strange right now.

The past 24 hours have been interesting for me. I’ve been helping my friend Laurel transfer some audio cassettes of her late friend, Andy Mazzilli, an amazing local blues player that passed away last year. I never met Andy, and I wish I did. He was really quite a talented musician, and as I listen these tracks I’m blown by his virtuosity on guitar. Laurel used to describe him as San Jose’s own “Jimi Hendrix,” and I can see why. I can also hear comparisons to George Harrison and Jeff Beck. As I transfer these recordings, it feels really good to know that I’m helping others remember loved ones.

One of the thing I didn’t expect was the crash of two different hard drives. One was the main external hard drive where I keep all my LOUIE LOUIE audio recordings - the master database of the world’s most recorded song. Luckily, this drive was fairly easy to recover, as it strictly a matter of dealing with a funky Firewire-USB hard drive case. That being said, it’s a good reminder of why I need to continue to make backups of everything that’s important.

The second drive was a bit more problematic. It was an internal hard drive on my desktop computer. One of my utility software applications couldn’t repair it, but luckily, the second worked like a champ. For those of you on the Mac, I’d like to recommend DRIVE GENIUS, which has allowed me to recover my data more times than I ever expected.

Hard drives are on my mind right now for other reasons, as I’ve hit a roadblock in my LOUIE edits. I use about 10-12 TB of hard drive space, and I’ve reached the point where it’s difficult to continue editing until I can get more hard drives. I’m grateful that drives are cheaper now than they’ve ever been before, but I still have to wait until the next paycheck before I can buy any more drives to continue.

And once again, it’s the matter of waiting. Waiting for the money. Waiting for the tools. Waiting for things to fall in place. The story of my life.

Yes, I am a little frustrated over things right now, but that’s just the way it is. I’ll deal with it one way or another.

Reading the news, I’m tickled to see that rock music is actually saving lives. A man in England was in a coma for 10 weeks. He had a 30% chance of recovering. His wife decided to try something different, so she put some earphones on her husband, and played his favorite rock and roll song by the Rolling Stones.

Sam said: “I can’t remember much from being in a coma, but I do remember that when that song came on it took me right back to when I was a youngster.

“I could remember how excited I was to get it down at the record shop.

“I suddenly had a burst of energy and knew I had a lot more life left in me and that’s when I woke up - to the sound of the first song I ever bought.”

Same, who has three children and six grandchildren, added: “I would love to thank Mick and the rest of the Stones personally - I feel they really did help wake me from my coma.”

Wife Eva said she had switched on the radio at Stoke’s City General Hospital in a last-ditch attempt to bring him back a fortnight ago, after growing increasingly frustrated with his lack of progress.

She said: “I didn’t really think it would work.

“I couldn’t believe it when he started opening his eyes and looked at me. It was like we had been given another chance.”

This is what dreams are made of. Using rock and roll as a tool for awakening one’s self and becoming empowered by the power of music. This is The Meaning of LOUIE.

Stay tuned… more to come…

This week, the LOUIE REPORT recognizes Graziano Romani of Italy, for performing an excellent version of LOUIE LOUIE that I discovered on YouTube.

Graziano Romani started his career forming his first band, The Rocking Chairs in 1982, and performing covers of rock’n’soul classics in clubs and theatres all over Italy. The band later signed with the label Ala Bianca/EMI and released their first album “New Egypt” in 1987. Since then, he’s been involved with a lot of different recordings, done a lot of touring, and is doing quite well as a solo artist.

You can read more about his exhaustive career by going to his Myspace page at:
http://www.myspace.com/grazianoromani
or by visiting his main webpage at:
GrazianoRomani.it

Congratulations, Graziano Romani! You are the winner of this week’s LOUIE OF THE WEEK!

A couple of good things to report….

One year ago, I reported the death of Jim Philbrook, publisher of Record Collector News. Based on conversations I had with people involved with the publication and the way things are with these days with the business of record stores in 2008, I didn’t expect to ever see this publication resumed. As it turns out, I’m glad I’m glad to be proven wrong.

The Record Collector News is back, providing reviews, a calendar of events, and a great publication for music archivists to find record stores and conventions. Most of the focus is on California stores, but there’s a definite goal of expanding beyond the west coast. Jim Kaplan is the new publisher for this revived pile of paper, and he’s got some of the original staff, including my pal Steve Propes, who’s been a wonderful asset to the LOUIE project.

The publication has a website - RecordCollectorNews.com, where you can download a PDF of the latest issue. As a Tarzan enthusiast from way back, I enjoyed reading the article about the record collection of Danton Burroughs, the grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who passed away a few months ago. Not only was Danton responsible for running the corporation established by his grandfather, but he was also an avid collector of music recordings.

Another blow last year for record collector was the demise of Village Music in September. I had so many great memories of that store, which was a wonderful wonderful resource on so many different levels.

Luckily, Gary Scheuenstuhl, who worked with John Goddard at Village Music for 25 years, decided to open up his own record shop in Mill Valley. It’s a one mile walk from the original location of Village Music, on Miller Avenue, not far from the 2 AM Club, where Huey Lewis & the News once shot a cover for their third album. The official website for the store is MillValleymusic.com.

For some crazy reason, when I was browsing through the store, within about 10 minutes, I heard LOUIE LOUIE by the Kingsmen. Gary claims it was a completely random shuffle of his CD player, but I’m not sure I believe him. Either way, he’s got a real nice new store, and I hope he gets plenty of support from record collectors.

As it turns out, John Goddard is still maintaining a mail-order operation for Village Music, as well as occasional sidewalk sale from his storage space. Check in at VillageMusic.com for more details. If you send either Gary or John your want-lists, there’s a good chance they may actually be able to help you!

Speaking of musical icons in Mill Valley, it looks like Sweetwater Salon is coming back!

Around the same time as Village Music was closing, the original Sweetwater was also shutting down. With news like this, I was wondering if I’d ever have a reason to visit Mill Valley again.

Here’s what my friend David Gross, aka the Punmaster reported in his Music Wire newsletter:

As a happy postscript, to the sad news of the demise of Sweetwater at its current location we are ecstatic to report that the Sweetwater has found a new home at 32 Miller Avenue – smack dab between the soon-to-open Balboa Café (from the Plumpjack folk) and Piazza D’Angelo. We’re all very excited about this site, which – with its high ceiling and skylights – will be quite reminiscent of the Throckmorton Avenue venue. That similarity will be enhanced by the preservation of much of the memorabilia which has so long adorned the walls of the former site. What will be DIFFERENT about the new space will be the greater space and comfort that it will afford to both patrons and performers. As Bob Weir said, “I think I might like this new place better”, and I’m sure he’ll not be alone in that!

You can find more about the new Sweetwater 2.0 by going over to SweetwaterSaloon.com.

Here’s one of the sloppier versions of LOUIE LOUIE to ever win the LOUIE OF THE WEEK award. It’s called “louie louie sf madness” and the description is simply “stuiees in the middle of sf madness.” So I guess we’ll just call this group “sf madness.” Is it San Francisco? Science Fiction? Silly F-heads? It could be one of these, all of these, or none of the above…. I have no idea….

In some ways, this epitomizes what LOUIE is all about. A bunch of people hanging out at a party, singing along to a karaoke disc of LOUIE LOUIE playing on their TV set, having fun, and embracing the power that is LOUIE LOUIE.

What the hey…. you’ve heard worse music…

UPDATE: stuiees writes: “I was the man behind the camera… Yes SF is San Fransisco, but we are also silly F*ck Heads too… Hope you enjoy.”

On Saturday, I attended the 19th San Jose Jazz Festival, one of the best annual music festivals in the San Francisco bay area. One of the bands I saw there really impressed me by being so very different from all the other jazz, salsa, and blues groups at this event. The NYPD Jazz Band is a big band comprised entirely of police officers from the New York City Police Department. It’s quite spectacular to hear swing music done well with an 18 piece band, and these guys did a fantastic job, covering songs made popular by Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Frank Sinatra, and even the lovely Norah Jones. I was so impressed by this group that I had to pull my little pocket camera out to shoot a little video of these performances.

One of the songs I was lucky enough capture on video was a performance of the “Theme From Shaft,” one of the greatest songs ever composed for a motion picture soundtrack.

As fate would happen, within 24 hours of seeing this excellent rendition, the man who wrote this song, Isaac Hayes died at his home in Memphis, Tennessee.

Here’s the video that I shot on Saturday:

Isaac Hayes had an impressive musical career, starting off as a songwriter and producer for Stax Records in Memphis — an R&B label of the 1960s that was often considered the southern counterpart to Motown in Detroit. Some of his best known compositions from this period included ”Soul Man” (recorded by Sam & Dave, revived by the Blues Brothers), ”Hold On! I’m Comin’,” and ”B-A-B-Y” (made popular by Carla Thomas).

Hayes’ breakout as a performer came in 1969 with his Hot Buttered Soul album. In 1971, his ”Theme from ‘Shaft,”’ won an Oscar and his performance at the Academy Awards catapulted him into the national consciousness.

His increased profile led to a career in movies, which included Tough Guys and Truck Turner (1974), Escape from New York (1981), I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), and Hustle and Flow (2005). On television, he wound up as the voice of “Chef” on the controversial animated series South Park, which ended in 2006 when he had a dispute with creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone over some religious satire.

Hayes recently finished work on a movie called Soul Men, which also stars Bernie Mac, who passed away on Saturday. The film is scheduled to be released in November 2008.

UPDATE: I posted another clip of the NYPD Jazz Band at the SJ Jazz Festival. Check out the other video clip I posted to YouTube. You can hear some of the jazz standards they performed, and a pretty amazing version of the Star-Spangled Banner. I have a lot of respect for these guys - policing one of the toughest cities in America, and performing really beautiful music. This is the kind of thing that speaks to a higher power of serving others, and I can’t help but admire this kind of service.

I wish more police departments had jazz bands.

Here’s the official word on the Las Vegas show, direct from the source:

The cat is out of the bag.

The “Sand Dollar Blues Nightclub and Lounge,” Las Vegas, NV. will be the place of the Oct. 1, 2008 reunion gig by Jack Ely and The Courtmen. We Will play one set only, not all night. Hope to see you there.

Me Gotta Go Now,

Jack

I got an interesting announcement from Jack Ely, the original lead vocalist for the Kingsmen on the infamous LOUIE LOUIE recording:

Wednesday evening, October 1, 2008, JACK ELY and the original COURTMEN will be performing a set at a club in Las Vegas, and you can bet we’re gonna play Louie Louie. Live music starts at 10:00 pm and we will probably come on in the second set. The name of the venue is being withheld until they can make sure there won’t be a run on the club. I can say, though, that this is a club and not a casino, so it will be dancin’ and party time. Hope to see some of you bloggers there. I will let everyone know exactly where we will be as soon as I am given the go-ahead from the owner, but the date is set, Oct. 1, 2008.

Me gotta go now,

Jack

This is gonna be wild. An announcement of a show, but without specific details of the location until the day of the show? I like it. Reminds me of the rules of “Fight Club” (rule 1: do not talk about fight club).

Those that want to see Jack Ely & the Courtmen perform should make their travel arrangements now. I can’t make any personal guarantees, but I will provide location updates as they are made public.

Here’s a little preview of what to expect in Las Vegas:

Here’s the kind of LOUIE just feels really great to listen to. Four guys crammed in a crowded garage. A solid drumbeat. A wailing harmonica. Guitars that are more or less in tune. Vocals with just the right attitude to sing rock and roll.

Desgaste Natural is the name of the band that wins this week’s LOUIE OF THE WEEK award. Other than the YouTube video, I couldn’t find much else about the band, whose name translated from Spanish to English means “natural wear.” This video was submitted by CamposMIC, who is based in Farroupilha, Brazil, which means that that band is probably from Brazil.

Good job, gentlemen. Keep up the fine work!

HEY! Anyone out there remember Rank and File? How about The Dils? Cowboy Nation?

All of the bands featured the very talented Chip Kinman, whose name kinda sounds like “Kingsmen” if you put a little chewing gum in your ears… not that you’d ever do such a thing…

Anyways, Chip’s got a new band and a new album. His new band is callled Chip Kinman & PCH. His new album is called “My First Punk Rock Record.”

Can you guess what one of the songs is on this new record? YUP, it’s a recording that allows me to present him with the official LOUIE OF THE WEEK award! You can hear this special recording by going to his official MySpace page at:
http://www.myspace.com/chipkinmanandpch

IN 1983, I saw an amazing Rank & File show at the Saddle Rack in San Jose. Last year, I saw Chip play with No Alternative at the DirkFest in San Francisco. He’s still a fantastic musician.

His MySpace page has some pretty interesting stuff, including an ongoing blog entry he calls “confessions of a rapidly aging punk rocker.” You can read all about his PCH band, which used to be called Pacific Coast Highway.

Next weekend, if you’re in Los Angeles, you can go to Chip’s Official Record Release Party. On Saturday, August 2, from 6pm-8pm, Chip will be the star of the show at the luz de Jesus Gallery on 4633 Hollywood Boulevard. There’s going to be free food, and the band will perform the entire album, including LOUIE LOUIE.

Show up, mention the LOUIE REPORT, and maybe you’ll get something special! I can’t promise anything, but it’s worth a shot!

Continuing with more memories from the Hunter Hancock tribute event produced by Doo Wop Society of Southern California of March 4, 2000, I’m sharing another clip from the same show, the same videotape.

This is the Calvanes performing the song “Crazy Over You.” My friend Steve Propes is the man introducing the band, which features Herman Pruitt, Bobby Adams, James Corbett, and Fred Willis. You can read a nice little overview of that evening by going to the Doo-Society review page.

Back in October 2006, I reported that Freddie Willis of the Calvanes, died of cancer. Freddie joined the group in 1958 and recorded on their Deck singles. He was a member of the group during the last 16 years.

I’m not sure which one of these gentleman is Freddie, but I’m happy to share this video, just as I shared video of Hunter Hancock and Johnny Flamingo from the same videotape. If friends and family of the departed are able to find some joy in seeing their loved ones preserved for posterity on YouTube, then I’m glad to share.

Another performer from that night’s performance, Vernon Green of the Medallions, also passed away not long after I saw him, coincidentally on the same day as Johnny Flamingo left us - December 24, 2000.