{"id":4097,"date":"2012-07-24T15:06:41","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T22:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=4097"},"modified":"2012-07-24T15:06:41","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T22:06:41","slug":"the-stevens-live-at-kfjc-1983-louie-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=4097","title":{"rendered":"The Stevens LIVE at KFJC 1983 – LOUIE of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lately, I’ve been celebrating a little more than usual. For years, I’ve been pestering my pal Buddy Awreetus<\/strong> to get off his proverbial heinie and do some proper digital transfers of the barely-heard audio recordings of his old “Live Open Mike” shows that he hosted on KFJC radio way back in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

KFJC Radio was the place where the LOUIE project began for me. It was the spot where the infamous 63-hour, “no version repeated twice,” 800+ version MAXIMUM LOUIE LOUIE marathon took place, and where I happened to meet Richard Berry<\/strong>, author of the song, and Jack Ely<\/strong>, original vocalist of the Kingsmen<\/strong>, who had never met each other before. I happened to be the ONLY one shooting video of this historic occasion, and it launched an extremely ambitious documentary project that I’m still trying to finish.<\/p>\n

Before the marathon took place in August 1983, there was a serious effort to gather all versions of this song, and gather new ones for this very special event. A lot of new versions were recorded on the KFJC Open Mike show, hosted by Mr. Buddy Awreetus<\/strong> aka Paul Korntheuer<\/strong>. I happened to attend quite a few of those of those live shows, and often took still photos of the various musicians that performed on this show.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I made a serious effort to digitize all of my photos from these KFJC live shows, which I shared via my Flickr account<\/a>. As a result of these images, I’ve reconnected with a lot of these musicians, who were very excited to see that I preserved some of these special moments. Invariably, I’d often get folks asking if I had any AUDIO recordings of these shows. Other than a few select shows, I really didn’t have much of an audio archive of those performances, but I knew that Buddy did record many of them.<\/p>\n

Sadly, many of Buddy’s original audiotapes were falling apart, and needed some serious help before they could be properly transferred. <\/p>\n

This month, all of that changed, as Buddy recently invested in some equipment to “bake” the tapes, and he’s been able to do some excellent transfers of these special shows. <\/p>\n

This week, we will celebrate with a special performance from Buddy’s archives! The band was The Stevens<\/strong>, a rockin’ pop band from the San Jose-Saratoga area, featuring my old friends Kevin McCaughey, Marc Spooner<\/strong>, and Wesley Billingslea<\/strong>, who I’ve reconnected with all these years later via the Facebook experience. I really loved this band, who always put on a fun show!<\/p>\n

Would you believe TODAY is actually Buddy’s Birthday?<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, my friend! Thank you again for all that you do!<\/p>\n