I was stuck at home today with a sore throat. I was ostensibly working from home, but still spent an inordinate amount of time watching stupid bullshit on YouTube. As it happened, both Facebook and Instagram were somewhat inaccessible today, which definitely led to me being more productive.
In any case, during the course of same, I stumbled upon the below clip of the mighty Hoodoo Gurus playing the Ritz in May of 1987 on what would have been the tour for their sorely under appreciated Blow Your Cool album. The Hoodoo Gurus were one of those bands I discovered upon entering college, wherein several crucially informed friends of mine tried to shake me out of some rigid listening habits (i.e. punk, hardcore and histrionic gothic rock), by turning me onto bands like The Feelies, the Modern Lovers, the Velvet Underground, the Smithereens, Guadalcanal Diary, Let's Active, The Dream Syndicate, The Plimsouls and --- yea verily -- the Hoodoo Gurus.
In any case, I loved the Mars Needs Guitars album that spawned this single, as well as the afore-cited Blow Your Cool. This clip is also fun as it gives you a great feel for what shows at the Ritz were like. I was thinking how crisp and fresh this looked, ... and then I did the math.
When this was filmed ... I was all 19 years old. Talk about bittersweet!
Thirty-two years later, I am 51. The Hoodoo Gurus, I think, are still going, if their very cool official website is to be believed. The Ritz, as laboriously over-documented here, closed, reverted to its original name -- Webster Hall -- and became less of a live music venue and more of just a giant dance club, only to close and fall into dispiriting disrepair.
But as reported earlier this year, it's now back!
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