Back in November, we learned about a special video and performance of THE SONG by the band known as The Cry!, featuring Mike Mitchell of the Kingsmen. This version was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kingsmen’s iconic recording.
Three months later, we’ve got another very special LOUIE LOUIE video from The Cry! (and special guest Mike Michell)!
This particular video, I’ve been told, is from a new documentary entitled Animal House of Blues, which also ties into the work of Harold Ramis, who just passed away this week.
The Eugene International Film Festival, which awarded this film the “Best Documentary Feature by a Pacific Northwest Filmmaker,” described this film as ….
The untold story of how the Merry Pranksters from Ken Kesey to Curtis Salgado and the Robert Cray Band helped create the Hollywood Blockbuster and Eugene movie icon, “Animal House.”
At the Oregon Movies, A to Z blog, producer Katherine Wilson discusses the origin of this project at Oregon Film Factory, a Eugene production company, where she worked as a casting agent. Ken Kesey, who owned one of the 16mm film cameras at the factory, used to have some amazing parties at Kesey’s farm. Bill Murray and Harold Ramis of the National Lampooon were members of a video collective that visited one of Kesey’s events in 1976- something called a Poetic Hoo Haw!
Not long after after that event, Harold Ramis was one of the writers for the National Lampoon Animal House movie that was being filmed in Eugene. The Oregon Movies, A to Z blog describes the situation….
(John) Belushi traveled between Eugene and New York to make weekly appearances on Saturday Night Live throughout the duration of the Animal House shoot…
The centerpiece of Animal House Of Blues is a fascinating chorale of four interwoven eyewitness accounts, none of which corroborate each other, of the first encounter between John Belushi and Eugene blues musician Curtis Salgado. Floored by Salgado’s stage presence and musicianship, which he first witnessed at the Eugene Hotel while he was in Eugene shooting Animal House, Belushi initiated a friendship/mentorship which would culminate in the creation of Jake and Elwood Blues. One of the eyewitness accounts comes from Salgado himself, a tart, unsentimental presence in a film which easily could have become wall to wall nostalgia.
The Oregon Confluence webpage provided more information about this documentary, and relationships that exist between the Hollywood and Eugene filmmakers, who all call “Animal House’ their ‘Alma Mater,’ with more details about the special celebrations in the Eugene area…
For the 25th Anniversary of the film, the community of Cottage Grove hosted 5,000 fans from all over the world to an “Animal House” Parade, replete with marching bands and restorations of the Deathmobile and Playboy Bunny Float. That night, over 2000 fans donned Togas to rock out to Otis Day and the Knights, and the Kingsmen of ‘Louie Louie’ fame, creating the Guinness Book of World Record’s largest Toga Party.
More details on this film can be found at:
IMDB page on Animal House House of Blues
Eugene International Film Festival page on Animal House of Blues