I was a sophomore in high school in 1985. The 80's were a strange time to grow up. It seemed MTV ruled everything. There wasn't a facet of pop culture that wasn't influenced by its reach. VJs Martha Quinn, J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood and the rest weren't exactly iconoclasts in their own right, but they did have a defining influence on what was to be a revolution in music, culture and of course, BAD clothing and hairstyles. My taste in music back then wasn't as broad as it is today, but I also wasn't simply limited to whatever was being forced on me by radio and cable TV. There was a lot of music that defined that period for me. It was 1985, Reagan had just been elected for a second term, Gorbachev was just ascending in the U.S.S.R, Madonna was taking the Virgin tour on the road, Live Aid made history and played around the world, and right in the middle of it all, a band named 'The Hooters' opened the Philadelphia show at JFK Stadium in South Philly.
Looking back I can't say for sure if I was actually aware at the time of Live Aid or anything going on here in Philly in terms of the music scene, but had I grown up here I definitely would have been more aware of the Hooters. They were big, and Philly embraced them like a drunken frat brother... "I love you man... I LOVE you!" I remember my friend Brian really liked them. (The Hooters, not drunken frat brothers) and having had many musical discussions with him it was difficult for us to reconcile his usual eclectic tastes to a mainstream MTV pop phenomenon. But he wasn't the kind of guy who really cared. He'd let you say your piece, then tear you apart in a very eloquent way on some other front. One thing about Brian though was he tended not to believe you when you told him something. He refused to believe that my older sister had met Mickey Dolenz (Monkees) while on vacation in Hawaii. I had to produce a faded snapshot of the two sitting in the sand at Waikiki before he begrudgingly admitted, "Ok, I guess she DID meet him..." He was very much a 'Show Me' kind of guy.
Last Friday night I was standing backstage at the Electric Factory watching the Hooters perform I couldn't help but think about Brian. "Of course he wouldn't have believed me unless I produced some kind of proof of my presence there" so I snapped a bunch of pictures, and enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to pay for beer, but it was much more than that. The band was really on. Everything was tight. And they absolutely looked like they were having a ball up there; the crowd certainly was... a sold out house of EVERYONE singing along and dancing to every song. It was good to see them performing, to see them enjoying themselves. The band has come through some 'shit' you could call it. Not being entirely sure WHAT that 'shit' is I'm not going to comment on it, but like most 'artistic' groups of people there are always disagreements and what-not. Our friend John (guitarist for the band) has never really wanted to talk about the negatives, so we didn't push him. The band took a hiatus from 1995-2001 to pursue other interests, both in and out of music, and it seemed for a while that they wouldn't perform or go back into the studio together.
But they have a new album. They've been touring. They sound great. I can tell you that seeing these guys set aside differences to do what they really enjoy is a great thing.
So as I stood there listening to songs like 'Dance' and "All You Zombies" at the side of the stage I thought, "it's stupid, but Brian would really like this..." Unfortunately Brian died in the spring of 1986 from a congenital heart defect, so it's kind of moot. Yeah, I know, I waited to drop that until now, but you leave the downers until the end of the piece. I don't think about him a lot, I've gotten on with my life. And it was 20 years ago, so it's definitely something I've 'dealt with'. You do have these moments from time to time when someone or something strikes you in a way that makes you feel simultaneously happy AND sad. This was one of them. So Brian... I'm sure you WOULDN'T believe me unless I presented proof, and the pics are in this story. I've got a now useless VIP backstage pass that I'd be more than happy to let you have, but... oh well
Cheers, man.
