The Best of The Kingsmen

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Total Tracks: 26   Total Length: 65:05

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Douglas Wolk

eMusic Contributor

Douglas Wolk writes about pop music and comic books for Time, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired and elsewhere. He's the author of Reading Comics: How Gra...more »

04.22.11
Dum-dum-dum. Dum-dum. Dum-dum-dum. Dum-dum.
2006 | Label: Kingsmen Int'l Licensing, Inc. / The Orchard

As late as the '60s, Portland, Oregon, was still considered a wretched hive of scum and villainy (okay, fine, so we have "shanghai tunnels" under the downtown area). So when this boozy Portland party band had a national hit with their unintelligible cover of Richard Berry's "Louie Louie," everyone assumed they had to have turned it into something dirty. This collection has all their hits and then some — their repertoire was mostly juiced-up covers (dig their ridiculous version of Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns '"Don't You Just Know It"), but they made a lot of them their own, especially P.F. Sloan's uber-appropriate "That's Cool, That's Trash."

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old live performances, but worth it.

OldCodger

Yes, indeed there is a lot of background noise, but to hear some of these by the Kingsmen is like being back in 1966 and 16 again. They sound like we did back then, with amp loud and distorting, and lots of fun. I say, garage band at its best. And, live performances from that era do not come up to today's standards. This is genuine stuff.

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Portland was considered?

jugaluck

Portland is STILL considered to be a hive of scum and villiany, but the Kingsmen are a lot of fun!!!

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Listen first

heavywater

Many of these tracks sound like they were recorded at the county fair- watch out for excessive background noise from the crowd.

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