CHASING OUT SOME HOODOO THERE!
NEW YORK—First the bad news: Rock ‘n’ Roll is dead. (Anyone who has ever read the NME or seen Van Halen in concert already knows this.) Now the good news: A bunch of mad ghouls from Kangaroo-land called the Hoodoo Gurus have arrived, and they’re having none of that.
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CHASING OUT SOME HOODOO THERE!
The Beat Goes On
NEW YORK—First the bad news: Rock ‘n’ Roll is dead. (Anyone who has ever read the NME or seen Van Halen in concert already knows this.)
Now the good news: A bunch of mad ghouls from Kangaroo-land called the Hoodoo Gurus have arrived, and they’re having none of that. Picking over rock’s still-warm carcass like a pack of musical Frankensteins, they’re putting pieces back together in whatever combinations suit their fancy and giving them the kiss of life. The finished monstrosities are nothing you’d want to take home to mom, but it’s kind of fun to watch them lurch around the garage...
Parts is parts, as they say on TV, and after a quick spin of the Guru’s Stoneage Romeos LP you’ll be spotting the parts with the best of them: a little Cramps (“Dig It Up,” about a post-mortem romance), some ‘60s pastiche (“My Girl”), some Gary Glitter strut (“In The Echo Chamber"), a little Suzi Quatro riffing there, a little “Stranded In The Jungle” there (“Leilani”)...you know... parts!
If you’d rather let them do the spotting for you, just check “(Let’s All) Turn On,” a virtual roll-call of influences set to a churning steamroller of a backbeat...a song that lets you know the Gurus are fans first and foremost.
“This way we can play all the songs we used to dig in our diverse musical childhoods," guitarist Brad Shepherd explains. “That’s what people accuse us of, anyway. If we played just one sort of music, however, people’d say we were pigeonholing ourselves, so you just can't win.”
“It’s really only an issue because people are just hearing about us now, and they need to know ‘what is it?”’ singer Dave Faulkner chimes in. “When we’ve got another couple of albums out they’ll just ignore that sort of thing. Like no one worries about asking Prince what his musical persona is—they just accept it as being Prince.”
Despite the album’s polish and the popleanings of potential hits like “I Want You Back,” on stage these Gurus ain’t nothin’ but rock. Propelled by newcomer Mark’s powerful stickwork and anchored by Clyde Bramley on bass, the band invests their tunes with a power that could raise the dead, and even manage to transform wimp-bait like Glenn Campbell’s “Galveston” into something that could take your breath away.
Birds of a feather that they are, the Gurus managed to form a mutual admiration society with the Fleshtones while in New York, culminating with the CBGB’s blowout that saw both bands onstage trying to outdo the other on favorite covers like Gary Glitter’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pt.1 ”. As the evening dissolved into a haze of alcohol and reverb, the corpse of rock ‘n’ roll could be heard to roll over in its grave.
As the Trashmen would say, “That’s Cool. That’s Trash."
As the Gurus would say, “That’s what I like.”
John Neilson
