Songoftheday 6/16/14 - She was a be-bop baby on a hard day's night, she was hangin' on Johnny he was holdin' on tight...

The Hooters - "And We Danced"
from the album Nervous Night (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day comes from a local Philly band that's dear to my heart, The Hooters, who came together in the early 80s behind leaders Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman. Named for the breath-operated keyboard that showed up on many of their songs, The Hooters became a big draw in the tri-State area (and when I say "tri-State", I mean PA/NJ/DE). They released their debut album Amore in 1983, and it sold over a hundred thousand copies, mostly from rabid fan-kids in the area. They were then asked to work on an album for an up and coming solo artist named Cyndi Lauper, and their band sound on her She's So Unusual debut was a big part of its success (Rob co-wrote "Time After Time" with Cyndi).

In 1985, with a few band member changes (which brought in members of fellow local hero Robert Hazard's band), the Hooters released their first major-label album Nervous Night, re-recording the track "All You Zombies" from their debut as the first single. The reggae-tinged song full of Jewish history became their first hit nationwide, going to #58 on the Hot 100 pop chart and just missing the top 10 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart at #11. The exposure gave the group their biggest break of all, opening the Philly portion of the Live Aid charity concert in July of 1985.

The band's next single, "And We Danced", was a perfect slice of 80's rock party music that was the best club closer around. Written by Hyman and Bazilian and produced by their label in-man Rick Chertoff (who helmed She's So Unusual), it brought pub-rock back on to top-40 radio...

"And We Danced" became the Hooters' first top-40 hit in October of 1985, while scaling to #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. But in my neck of the woods, it was the only thing stopping Duran Duran from topping local station WPST's nightly top-5 of their top requested songs (remember when that actually was a thing?). Internationally, the single went to #9 down under in New Zealand, and was a minor hit in Germany and Canada.

My biggest memory about this time was filling out hundreds of index cards with "the Hooters WMMR 93.3" for my school to try to win a concert from the band. There was absolutely no chance (we were a small school of a few hundred kids from sixth to twelfth grade) but damned did we all try our hardest. Of course I went to see them live after that, and wished I'd have saved a couple of those cards as a joke...

And I still well up in emotion hearing this song. Back to the 80s indeed.

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Here are the Hooters in the MTV-broadcasted concert in Philly's Spectrum in 1987...

..and again live introduced by Cyndi Lauper for a reunion show...

...finally, here they are last year on "Hooters Appreciation Day" in the State Capital of Harrisburg...

Up tomorrow: an Eagle flies to Miami.