HOODOO YOU LOVE?

HOODOO YOU LOVE?

There’s a Get Smart episode in which Larry “F Troop” Storch plays “the Groovy Guru.” First, he locks Max and Agent 99 in a studio and feeds them back their own heartbeats at a Blue Cheer decibel-level. The ghoulishly groovy one then forms and leads the “Sacred Cows,” a band that plays "hip-hip-hip-no-tiz-ing" rock ’n’ roll to twist teenage minds, making them violent automatons that will overthrow the state.

The Hoodoo Gurus dig it. That’s how the Sydney, Australia quartet came to be the Gurus and wrote “In The Echo Chamber” for their first LP. Neo-classic ’60s culture is their scene: Vox amps, Lost In Space, leather fringes and Felix the Cat colored their formative years. Images from twodecades-plus of TV-addiction have stuck, and as their third LP (Blow Your Cool) demonstrates, the catch-phrases have stuck as well.

“There’s a cartoon element in our songs,” says main Guru Dave Faulkner, “but there’s nothing cartoonish about ‘Bittersweet’—or ‘I Was The One’ or ‘Where Nowhere Is’ from the new LP. They’re straight from the heart, not from a sense of nostalgia for a different time. They’re fairly grown-up songs.”

The Gurus have grown up a lot since their original line-up of two guitars, drums and no bass. Now, as on their three LPs, the Gurus (guitarist and singer Faulkner, guitarist Brad Shepherd, drummer Mark Kingsmill) play with a bassist (Clyde Bramley). And they also play with the Bangles. Work with them, too: Blow Your Coo/’s first U.S. single, “Good Times,” features the unmistakable la-la-las of the L.A. starlets. But the Bangles and the Gurus? You’d think that the grotty Aussies would at least have the decency to be sensitive about their looks in such stellar company.

“We couldn’t be. Otherwise, we never would have come out of the paper bag," says Dave. "We’re not the handsomest band alive. We know that, we don’t pretend. We don’t tidy ourselves up with makeup to cover up the fact that we’re no oil paintings.”

The albums, on the other hand, are pop masterpieces. Stoneage Romeos was their lyrically-fIippant debut, featuring “I Want You Back,” the greatest overlooked single of 1984. On the followup, Mars Needs Guitars, "I didn’t want to be some sort of court jester of pop,” says the songsmith, so they took a more direct, slightly more serious approach. The latest LP, Blow Your Cool, reverts back to the original “whatever happens, happens” plan of attack. As a result, the record features a variety, from the romantic "Come On” and its antithesis “Where Nowhere Is” (“a pure ‘fuck you’ ”), to the hip "What’s My Scene” and the Arabesque “My Caravan.” “Not many songs look at things from an Arab point of view,” he giggles.

Even though there have been a whole mess of Guru songs about death, they’re all light-hearted. “Some people find death and fun mutually exclusive, but I don’t,” Faulkner muses, citing the necrophiliac funny-bone tickler “Dig It Up.” "Gurus fans aren't easily offended, as I’ve proven a couple of times. ‘Dig It Up’ is really a metaphor for someone not letting go of a relationship. You can’t bring some things back. And if you do, they smell. That’s the message.”

So it’s safe to say that the Gurus aren’t exactly a “message” band. Face-to-face, Faulkner is quite vocal about the world's bleak moral climate, but you’ll never hear the Gurus preaching anything but the gospel according to Rickenbacker.

“We’re not that sort of band. I almost hope that we can be a respite from those sorts of bands. A broadcast tells you so much more than a melody can. Music is inarticulate. It’s something you go through that changes everyone for three hours or three years. I’ve certainly changed my life because of my encounters with music and bands that inspired me.”

Encounters with the likes of Paul Revere & The Raiders, the Flaming Groovies, the N.Y. Dolls, Gary Glitter and the Heartbreakers left imprints on the impressionable young Guru minds.

“I see them as being rock ’n’ roll bands— that’s what we are. But they’re not that similar to each other. The Ramones and Alice Cooper and the Hoodoo Gurus share a certain amount of spirit, but we’re not playing the same music."

Pregnant pause.

"I guess we are, actually.”

Vicki Arkoff