Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
(Paul Kaufman gives new meaning to the phrase “Trivial Pursuit.”)
Here’s another parlor-type game: Describe two songs that seemingly have nothing in common (era, style, etc.) yet have multiple disturbingly similar characteristics once you list them.
Here’s an example: The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night” by KISS. You’re thinking this is crazy, but hear me out:
“Do you remember the fifth of November?”
Having exploited Bastille Day 2009 to open a discussion of arcane French rock ‘n’ roll, I thought it only fair that Guy Fawkes Day acknowledge a landmass many of us identify more closely with the genre: the U.K.
From the Beatles to the Pretty Things to Monty Python to the Sex Pistols to the Clash to the Damned to Crass to Siouxie to “Quadrophenia” to everything else that little cluster of islands produced … Our interest in British art and culture seemed especially plangent in contrast with the San Diego landscape in which we grew up.
(Ray Brandes offers a brief history of misheard lyrics in rock ‘n’ roll.)
Music fans have long been thwarted by misinterpretations of lyrics mumbled by rock ‘n’ rollers, with often hilarious results called “mondegreens.” Numerous such misinterpretations were to be found in the Kingsmen’s 1963 version of Richard Berry’s “Louie, Louie,” and led to an FBI obscenity investigation after a parent wrote of her disgust with the lyrics to then Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In his book about “Louie, Louie” Richard Marsh describes the phenomenon:
Back in 1963, everyone who knew anything about rock ‘n’ roll knew that the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” concealed dirty words that could be unveiled only by playing the 45 rpm single at 33-1/3. This preposterous fable bore no scrutiny even at the time, but kids used to pretend it did, in order to panic parents, teachers, and other authority figures.
Read more‘Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza, and Count the Head Lice on the Highway’