Pop, Rocks!

Album: Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Romeos, 1984

Best Track: "I Want You Back"

Lasting Memory: This one time -- oh, my God. This one time, when I was heading back up to Tech from Virginia Beach with my roommate Barry, Barry was driving, and he took 64 through downtown Richmond 'stead of the Beltway 'cause he needed gas and stuff. But it was Sunday morning, right, and this one gas station that he, like, knew was closed. So we drove 'round looking for a place that was open, and we got lost. I mean, we wound up in this reallllly bad part of town, and Barry finally pulled over to ask this chick for directions. But -- I swear to God -- the chick was a prostitute, and her pimp got mad at us us for wasting her time. We we were so freakin' scared!

Stoneage Romeos was playing on the car's cassette deck the whole time.

The story is true. I tell it in breathless Southern American suburban white teenspeak in homage to its soundtrack, which perfectly blends pop lyrics about love sought and lost with not-quite-punk power chords. Being as that is what the album is, it is perfectly titled as Stoneage Romeos.

From the very first note note of the album's first track, "I Want You Back," to the final line of the album's last track, "My Girl" -- which runs "My girl don't love me at all/ Anymore./ Not at all. -- you know you're in for a rocking, pimple-pussed and angst-filled good time.

What American listeners such as myself probably weren't expecting when they first heard Stoneage Romeos are all the metaphorical uses of World War II Japan. While it is undeniably true that "Tojo" never did make it Darwin and that some unfortunates were briefly able to claim in all honesty "I Was A Kamikaze Pilot," who would ever expect those verities to be employed as descriptions of failed relationships?

The only explanation I can assert is that the Hoodoo Gurus are from Australia, which was very nearly invaded by Imperial Japan. That would be like how us Americans are still trying to calm ourselves after being threatened by Grenada and Nicaragua in the 1980s. October 25, 1983, is a date that shall live in infamy.

"Infamy" means "not famous," doesn't it?

Up Next: Hoodoo Gurus, Mars Needs Guitars!, 1985