Songoftheday 11/10/14 - Surrender into the night silently take my hand, nobody knows what's inside us nobody understands...

The Hooters with Patty Smyth - "Where Do The Children Go"
from the album Nervous Night (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1

Today's Song of the Day comes from the Philadelphia-based bar-rock band the Hooters, who took their spotlight from performing as the opening act at Live Aid in 1985 and went from a local favorite to a national act, scoring back to back top-40 pop hits with "And We Danced" and "Day By Day". For the fourth single from the record they recruited singer Patty Smyth, who had reached the pop top 10 in 1984 with "The Warrior" with her old band Scandal. They collaborated on the mid-tempo vaguely reflective song "Where Do The Children Go". Written by bandleaders Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, it calls out somehow to a disenfranchised youth...

(Fun fact - before I bought the album I thought they were singing "before that peg-leg piper leads them away")

"Where Do The Children Go" became the third and so-far last top-40 pop hit for the Hooters in May of 1986. The single also climbed to #34 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the record was a top-20 hit in New Zealand (#20) and a minor hit in Canada (#97).

The Hooters would release their next album, One Way Home, in 1987, but missed the top-40 with any of its tracks, though "Johnny B" would climb to #3 on the rock radio chart. They closed out the decade with their Zig Zag album, with a minor pop hit with "500 Miles" (#97). But they remain a state treasure in Pennsylvania...


...and here's the band live in Philly from their 1987 cable-broadcasted concert...

Up tomorrow: Veteran English prog-rockers come back sleepily...