BLACK FLAG – LOUIE
LOUIE (SST RECORDS)
Everyone learns a
version of “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen
when they first get a guitar. In theory
it is the easiest song in the world to play and if you slow it down slightly
you can also pass yourself off as playing “Smoke On The Water”. This is a song for cheats.
At school for the
longest time my friend Chris Wright and I were obsessed by this song. You have to bear in mind this was the 90s and
music was only available on physical formats and with that came limited
selection. We knew “Louie Louie” from
the movies, mainly the trailer to Coupe
De Ville and the party scene in Animal House, but could not
procure the track anywhere. Apparently
it was on the soundtrack to Quadrophenia
but that was Mod shit, stuff our parents and retro losers listened to. We were not going to buy into that. Also it was a double album, too expensive for
our coffers. Eventually I would finally
own the track via a cheesy compilation entitled This
Is…Son Of Cult Fiction but in many ways it was too late for that period of
my life. Before this I had purchased the
Animal
House soundtrack while on holiday in Florida
By the time I got into
Black Flag I was a much different person to who I was at school. It would probably have benefited me to be
into punk at school but better late than never during what I describe as my
“wilderness years” between education and career I was now fostering a snide
attitude which was not necessarily endearing me to my surroundings even though
it was amusing it.
The Black Flag take on
“Louie Louie” is unique and crushing. No
other band has delivered it in quite this way and indeed it was used in Old School as a direct and
updated homage/recognition to Animal House.
When sung by these punkers with fresh bite the words still hold and fit
– punkers fall in love too. “You know
the pain in my heart, it just shows I’m not very smart” is a line born to be
used by dumb punk types as lyrically the band overhauls the tone and sentiments. Later the line “who needs love when you’ve
got a gun, who needs love to have any fun” shreds any soppy sensation before
“screw it Louie” is screamed ahead of a destructive Ginn solo making the song
his own. Black Flag were officially well
on the road to reconstructing rock and roll.
On the other side is
an early version of “Damaged I” which would later become the theme and centre
piece of their finest
studio album of the same name.
Longer, slower and more measured than most of their material to date it
exhibits a new heavy side of their personality dealing with danger and internal
frustration. This was the band moving
onto progressive punk, inhabiting sludge and loving it. Described as “wallowing trauma” it taps into
our inner worst thoughts and hangs them like a Picasso. In other words “as comforting as the screams
that relieve pain”.
For years a copy of
this seven inch sat in the racks of my local record store Time Records in Colchester. It was the only Black Flag release I could
see anywhere. Unfortunately being old it
was a collector’s piece and came with an inflated collector’s price tag which
went against punk ethos but perhaps tapped into Ginn’s. It went against the ethos and busted my
brains, ignited my imagination as I needed to know what this legendary band
sounded like. Once heard I never went
back.
Take the horrible and
make it worse.
Thesaurus moment: wrench.
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