Following up on the LOUIE on TV – part 1 post from last week, here’s an update…
(original post)
China Beach,
Season 3/episode 15 / 1990-02-07
”A Rumor of Peace”
08:11 – Kingsmen LL re-recording (with Dick Peterson vocals) is broadcast over pirate radio by disc jockey Pvt. Samuel Beckett (Michael Boatman), who introduces the song with this statement – “Remember everything you hear tonight is not real, but an incredible simulation, including me – Doctor Dark.”
Looking at a VHS recording of the original TV broadcast shared by friend Stretch, I see that the original Kingsmen recording with Jack Ely vocals was used in that particular episode. I’m guessing the price of re-licensing this recording for the DVD release was a bit more than the producers wanted to spend.
This certainly wasn’t the only time this sort of thing happened. I’m guessing that might have also been the case with the A-Team episode that I also mentioned in last week’s post. I don’t have a copy of the original broadcast, but the version used in the official A-Team DVD seemed like a weak imitation of the Kingsmen, which wasn’t acknowledged anywhere in the credits.
Until I get more information about the original broadcast of the A-Team episode that aired on October 24, 1986, which may or may not have used the actual Kingsmen recording, we’ll leave that as an open question for now. I’m actually more curious about which band was used for the DVD release, as I’ve never heard that one before.
In upcoming posts, I will be sharing more examples of this phenomenon with other TV shows that used a different recording or a complete replacement of LOUIE LOUIE in the DVD release.
In the meantime, here’s a few more documented LOUIE LOUIE moments as seen on television…
3rd Rock from the Sun (NBC)
Season 1 | Episode 1 / 1996-01-09
“Brains and Eggs” (pilot)
The Kingsmen recording of LOUIE LOUIE is shared, and is a topic of conversation as space alien family ponders their new life on Earth with opening sequence of the pilot episode of this show.
03:11 Dr. Dick Solomon (John Lithgow) – “Listen… it’s that the signal they keep sending us us in space!”
Coach (ABC)
Season 1 / episode 13 / 1989-06-07
“Dauber’s Blow-Out”
Dauber Dybinski (Bill Fagerbakke) hosts a large party for their college football team and, despite Coach Hayden Fox (Craig T. Nelson) promising to take Asst. Coach Luther Horatio Van Dam (Jerry Van Dyke) fishing that night, he is roped into chaperoning the bash instead.
10:49 – A rock instrumental version of LOUIE LOUIE is played as the story takes us to the football team party. Again, I have no idea who the band is, and couldn’t find any credits on such things.
19:47 – A marching band instrumental (perhaps the Rice University Marching Owl Band?) of LOUIE LOUIE can be heard as anti-fun Riley Pringle (Raye Birk) of the Conduct Committee enters this party, and is soon to discover that his car was the subject of an absurd party antic.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (syndicated)
Season 3 / episode 14 / 1995-02-06
“Heart of Stone”
There’s no LOUIE performance, but the song is discussed in this TV show moment.
In this episode, Odo (René Auberjonois) and Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) travel to a moon in the Badlands as they try to track down a Maquis vessel. They wind up in a small cave, where Kira’s foot is caught in an expanding crystal mass, and it appears her foot cannot be removed from this thing.
24:34 – Odo discusses with Nana the idea of LOUIE LOUIE as a therapeutic sea chanty, and somewhere in this conversation, they discover they are both in love with each other.
On Wikipedia, there’s some solid information about the backstory on this particular episode:
The idea of having a character trapped was taken from the Ken Kesey novel “Sometimes a Great Notion” in which a character is trapped under a log and drowned by rising water. (Co-Screenwriter Ira Steven) Behr described the same scene in the 1971 film as “a great scene in a not so great movie”.The episode was intended to be low budget, but heavy on characterization.
At one point it was intended for Odo to sing the 1955 Richard Berry song “Louie Louie”, which the character described as a sea shanty, but producers couldn’t acquire the rights in time.
Full details on this particular back story can be found in Terry Erdmann‘s 2000 book – “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion.”
Next week, we’ll sharing some other documented LOUIE on TV moments…
…. to be continued….