Show me your hooters!...(and I'll show you mine...)

Two or three years ago I was reading an article on Eighties post-punk/New Wave, that in its intro namedropped The Hooters for reasons I don't recall. But I did think to myself, "Wow, The Hooters. Here's a band I haven't thought of in a while". A while being, like, two decades. But me and The Hooters became fast friends again, especially after I realized that we were old friends. In the US, they might be mainly remembered for "And We Danced", and maybe follow-up "Day By Day", but when I started to more or less intently listening to the radio in the mid-80s, "All You Zombies" played all over the stations in my neck of the woods. Clicking on Yotube after reading that article invited a warm rush of nostalgia: Dum-dada-dada-dada-dum. All you zombies hide your faces! All you people in the street! And what a weird hit that was, (which of course I only realized later) from its Robert Heinlein-quoting title to its Biblical figure protagonists. 

But Hooters nostalgia runs deeper, and longer. Fast forward to about ten years later, and I'm now an advanced age teenager, going out to clubs or "discos", as they were still called here. Being not much of a fiend of the techno/pop/dance variety, me and my friends often gravitated towards clubs with alternative and rock music. And there seemed to be an unwritten rule that every one of these had to always during every evening play three songs: "Entre Dos Terras" by Spanish hard rock outfit Héroes Del Silencio, "Like I Do" by Melissa Etheridge and "Johnny B" by The Hooters, despite the two last ones being almost a decade old by that point. Admittedly, I never liked "Johnny B" that much, maybe because of the half-drunk crowd trying to sing along with it. Half-drunk hooligans yelling "Johnny B, how much there is to see" while accidentally (?) spitting on you during their empassioned performance - Yeah, thanks, but no, thanks, man... 

Whoops, it seems the art department took the wrong Hooters picture to insert here. We apologize for the inconvenience. 

But enough about me, eh. So, the Hooters, who - for all intents and purposes - are the central duo of Rob Hyman and Eric Bazillian, who met as students in 1971 and played for local Philadelphia band Baby Grand before launching the Hooters in 1980. The early Hooters were essentially a party band, and a second-generation ska band, mixing reggae and rock rhythms, similar to and probably inspired by what the 2Tone crew was doing in Great Britain. Moving forward the reggae rhythms receded, replaced by a more traditional pop sound, culminating in their breakthrough album Nervous Night that went double platinum and spawned three US Top 40 hits and "All you Zombies" as a turntable hit and chart entry around the world. 

But even before their breakthrough, the Hooters had already struck gold: Long-time friend and record producer Robert Chertoff hired Hyman and Bazilian to knock Cindy Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual in shape, with the Hooters braintrust responsible for all but one of the arrangements while also adding songwriting (Hyman co-wrote "Time After Time" with Lauper), backing vocals and their plethora of instruments. A surprise invitation to Live Aid in Philadelphia, as local heroes backed by organiser Bill Graham and against Bob "Who the fuck are the Hooters?" Geldof's wishes helped them break through with Nervous Night and its singles. By the way, who the fuck is Bob Geldof? That dude is known for Live Aid and nothing else, so he better shut the fuck up. I can still happily sing along to a bunch of Hooters songs, while other than "I Don't Like Mondays" I couldn't tell you of a single worthwhile musical thing from Geldof.

Goshdarnit, the art department messed up again. You guys are all fired! Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. 

What is really interesting about the Hooters is the musical turn they took afterwards. Starting from follow-up album One Way Home on, they accentuated more and more of an acoustic, folk sound, culminating in their cover of "500 Miles" backed by Peter, Paul and Mary on 1989's Zig Zag. How acoustic and folk-ish the Hooters became in the early 90s is also borne out by their guest spot on, of all places, the 1993 comeback album by The Band, Jericho. It's the Hooters duo of Hyman & Bazilian (mislabeled as Eric Brazilian in the credits, more exotic for sure, but also wrong!) that liven up the album's best track, The Band's cover of Springsteen's "Atlantic City", on keyboards and mandolin, respectively. The same year they issued Out Of Body, which wasn't a success in the US, but cemented their standing in Europe, especially Germany and Sweden. However, the band went on hiatus two years later. 

Eric Bazilian kept himself busy launching the careers of young female singer-songwriters, becoming musical director for Joan Osborne's major label debut and first studio album Relish and giving her "One Of Us", which dutifully becamme her biggest hit, then co-wrote Billie Myers' breakthrough single "Kiss The Rain". And then, in 2007 - after some one-off reunions along the way - the Hooters reunited and came back with the surprisingly good Time Stand Still. They have been touring and playing since, and are a big concert draw in Europe, still. 

Ah, here is the right Hooters picture that you, dear readers, have been waiting for the entire article. Whew, catastrophe avoided...

Show Me Your Hooters! A Hooters Anthology 1983 - 2007 covers the main period of Hooters activity. It has the band's biggest songs, which admittedly often were also the best ones from their respective albums. My comp is a bit unusual in that it has two pairs of "doubled" songs, i.e. in two different versions. The album opens with their 1983 studio version of "All You Zombies", arguably a song that was already as good as it was gonna get and didn't need future embellishments. But I also included the 1985 hit version of Nervous Night because that's the one that most remember. The other song represented two times is "Fighting On The Same Side", which they sang in a ska style on their independently released 1983 album Amore and then in a more folky style on 1987's One Way Home. I thought it interesting that the same song would show the evolution of the Hooters' music, so both versions are here. 

The Hooters' songs from their highlight years sound of their time, but "And We Danced" and "Day By Day" are great, catchy numbers with or without their 80s production. Other highlights are "Satellite", their biggest UK hit that skewers televangelists, the aforementioned "500 Miles" and their folky version of Don Henley's "The Boys Of Summer" which in closing this comp gives the song the folky, autumnal sound its sentiments always deserved.  

The Hooters might be more or less forgotten by the general public, but not over here at One Buck Records! So check out some of the best work of some of Philly's favorites...

Since the European Championship in football/soccer is currently on, here's some bonus football-related hooters...