Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking: “The Hooters? Are they even still together?” Well, actually, if you’d asked that question between 1995 and 2001, the answer would’ve been a resounding “No.” After the tremendous success of the band’s 1985 breakthrough, Nervous Night, their commercial success in the States began a gradual descent; simultaneously, however, their stock was rising overseas. When the band took a break in 1995, singer-guitarist Eric Bazilian proceeded to keep very busy as a songwriter, working with everyone from Midge Ure to Jon Bon Jovi, but when the gang got back together in 2001 he was right there with them. The Hooters did a fair amount of touring in Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, but it wasn’t ’til 2006 that the band finally started doing some shows in the U.S. The next thing you know, the band was back in the studio to record Time Stand Still, their first album in 14 years. Popdose had the good fortune to speak with Eric about the history of the band as well as his solo career, touching on subjects like the Hooters’ omission from the Live Aid DVD, what it’s like to meet three out of four Beatles, and what a glorious gift it was to have Joan Osborne record “One of Us.”

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Stop laughing, you bastards!

A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with David Medsker – my comrade in arms both here and over at Bullz-Eye.com – about Kylie Minogue. He’d just heard “Wow,” the first single from her new album, X, and in the process of researching a post he was writing about the song, he learned that Kylie had gone to Number One in every major country in the world…except, of course, for the US.“Here,” he informed me, “she has two Top Ten singles, which are also her only two Top 20 singles. In England, she has seven Number One singles, 30 Top Tens, and 40 Top 20 singles. Forty. Here? Two. Jesus.”

I totally get his frustration, but I also understand why Kylie ended up being shunned by American audiences.

In 1987, Kylie was already a proven entity in both the UK and her native Australia, courtesy of her years spent as a cast member of “Neighbours,” so it was easy enough for her to score attention with her first single, the dangerously catchy “I Should Be So Lucky,” and take it to the top of the British charts. Stateside, however, it only crawled to #28, so Geffen played the cover-song card and giggled gleefully as Kylie’s take on the Little Eva classic, “The Locomotion,” soared to #3. Unfortunately, instead of making her into a household name, it merely served to transform her into an instant novelty; the follow-up single, “It’s No Secret,” struggled its way into the lower reaches of the Top 40 before dying a quick death soon after, and if Geffen bothered to release any singles from her second album, 1989’s Enjoy Yourself, they didn’t manage to chart. It took the U.S. twelve years to renew their membership in the Kylie Minogue Appreciation Society, and they only did it then because it was painfully evident that no-one…no, not even slope-browed American radio listeners…could deny the brilliance of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.”

Well, that and the fact that she looked like this:

It was more than half a decade prior to that, however, when I first began to realize that there was very possibly more to Ms. Minogue that I’d originally been led to believe. I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves prone to appreciating someone’s work simply because of the company they keep, and that’s what started me on the road to rediscovering Kylie.

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