Too Long by Half

Album: Hoodoo Gurus, Blow Your Cool, 1987

Best Track: "What's My Scene"

Lasting Memory: I fought liking the Hoodoo Gurus for months after first hearing them in 1987 because every time I heard this album, it was the end of wrestling practice, and me and my teammates were either running endless laps around the mat or doing running-in-place jumping jacks.

Our coach was a fan of the band, and he had Blow Your Cool cued up at the end of pretty much every practice. The end of every practice sucked, so, therefore, the Hoodoo Gurus must have sucked.

Except they didn't. The Hoodoo Gurus actually kicked a lot of musical ass -- for a total of 13 songs, at least.

The first side of Blow Your Cool features five great rock songs. "Out That Door" segues into "What's My Scene," which is followed -- after a one-song interlude of just-okayness -- by "I Was the One," "Hell for Leather," and "Where Nowhere Is."

The less said about the songs on the second side of the album, the better. I wrote in my last post about how the Hoodoo Gurus recorded and released eight good songs on the 10-track Mars Needs Guitars. On Blow Your Cool, the band produced an EP's worth of great songs and a second EP's worth of filler.

I'm probably being too harsh in my criticism, but a song like "My Caravan" really never should have performed by anyone. That it is a song by a band obviously capable of much better work is disappointing. But an album needs to be album length, right?

The All Music Guide has this to say about Blow Your Cool:

For the Hoodoo Gurus' third album, the group's American record label was hoping the band could come up with something a bit easier to market than the witty,
'60s-obsessed pop/rock of Stoneage Romeos and Mars Needs
Guitars. ... As a result, Blow Your Cool is the least idiosyncratic album in the Hoodoo Gurus' catalog and doesn't reflect the sneaky wit or goofy charm that won them many of their early fans. ... Blow Your Cool is in some respects a compromised Hoodoo Gurus album, but it's strong enough to prove that these guys could make a worthwhile album even while playing by someone else's rules.

I couldn't write it any better, hence the quote.

Up Next: Hoodoo Gurus, Magnum Cum Louder, 1989