Friday, November 11, 2011

Why hasn't there been a Cookie Monster cover?

The young are always depraved, always monsters. History shows it to be true. And there is always a frantic search to find out just why this is. The old hysteria about "Louie Louie" is a case in point.


Once concerned parents began to report their outrage about this allegedly "obscene" song to the FBI, the Bureau made the mistake of expending all their effort in proving it true rather than investigating the rumor itself. It was as if a frightened mother had written to J. Edgar Hoover concerning a story she'd heard about a maniac with a hook being on the loose, and Hoover responded by sending out field agents to investigate whether or not a criminal with a missing hand had recently escaped from a psychiatric hospital. The FBI didn't try to find out where these dirty lyric sheets were coming from; instead, they spent two and a half years analyzing "Louie Louie" played at a variety of speeds and interrogating nearly everyone connected with the song, including Paul Revere and the Raiders, Richard Berry, the Kingsmen, and even record company executives. One person they never, ever talked to was the one person who indisputably knew what words had been sung on the Kingsmen's recording: singer Jack Ely. (Ely had been fired from the band well before "Louie, Louie" hit it big, a fact the remaining Kingsmen were not anxious to publicize.) After thirty-one months of trying to unravel the mysteries of "Louie Louie," the FBI could conclude only that they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record."


Need it be said? If the new Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover movie doesn't explore this incident, it must be considered a failure.

3 comments:

Ben said...

Hey other bloggers, speaking of diets, I like mine to be free of spam.

susan said...

That was a pretty funny story and who could blame whoever started that rumor? You can almost picture Hoover with his headphones on saying 'Play it again'.

Ben said...

He-he. Yeah, that is fun to picture.