This week, we’re still thinking of our friend Kathi Kamen Goldmark, who left us too soon.
On the WELL (an early online social network), Kathi wrote about bringing unlikely singers on stage to sing LOUIE LOUIE with the Rock Bottom Remainders…
We’re a truly bad-to-mediocre band, but we know how to get publicity. On the tour, we invited a couple of rock critics in each city to join us onstage for the evening singing “Louie Louie” with our own Critics Chorus. Of course, they’d assign the photographer to THAT story, and we ALWAYS got the front page above-the-fold-with-a-photo of the Lifestyle section. We were in Atlanta, and someone got hold of the Philadelphia paper that ran our review from a few nights before. There we were, the typical “I GOT WHIPPED BY AMY TAN ONSTAGE” story with a photo of Steve and Dave and Al. (All the stories were pretty much the same, about how much fun it was and how the band wasn’t “really that bad.”) In the lower corner of the page, there was a teensy one-column article: “STEELY DAN REUNION TOUR PLANNED” read the headline.
Hee Hee – that was fun.
The official VHS tape of the Rock Bottom Remainders show at Anaheim 1992 was already a major collectors item before Kathi’s passing. It’d gone out of print many years ago, and was already selling for big bucks on eBay and Amazon Marketplace. Good luck to anyone trying finding a copy of this thing for less than $75! Hardly the sort of thing you’d expect from a “Remainder!”
I’m glad I still have my copy…
We already posted the video clip in the last blog post, but it’s Tuesday, and it’s time for a LOUIE of the Week, so cue this video up to 5:06 and enjoy the essence of this magnificently maligned melody…
Let’s give it to ’em… right now!