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Hoodoo Gurus
 "We blasted them with a death ray," says Brad Shepherd of the Hoodoo Gurus recent show at the SXSW conference in Texas. "While we were there, we thought we'd have a whip around the block. So we played in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Maybe they'd forgotten the Hoodoo Gurus are a pretty consistent live act, dependable, you know. I like to think people come away thinking they got their money's worth when they come and see us play. That's the old showbiz hooker in me," he laughs.
During the 1980s, the Hoodoo Gurus achieved a lot of success in the US, mainly through the college radio circuit. Back in the US recently, they've regenerated interest in the Hoodoo Gurus, playing some of the same clubs they played in the eighties. As a result of those US shows, the Hoodoo Gurus are about to tour the UK, Spain and the US for three weeks. They'll be back in Australia in September touring with Radio Birdman and The Stems. "Radio Birdman and the Hoodoo Gurus, to the best of my knowledge, have never played a show together. I'm excited and a little bit nervous. I'm excited because I'm a huge fan and what they do and what they introduced to me as a music fan through their influences, you know MC5, the Stooges, I'd never heard of these bands prior to becoming aware of Radio Birdman. That still informs what I do to this day as a musician. At the same time both the Hoodoo Gurus and Radio Birdman have a scorched earth policy, they're not leaving that stage until they're sure there's nothing left of the Hoodoo Gurus, we're going on after them so we're gonna have to find something. We need a sort of strategic plan; they're very good at what they do. We'll have to dig deep to find something extra. This is going to fiercely competitive, I have no illusions about that."
Inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame last month, Shepherd says that it came as a surprise to the band. "We never really thought of ourselves as an ARIA type band or being part of the recording industry if you will, we've rarely been nominated and never won an ARIA. We seem to operate in our own universe, which we're pretty comfortable with these days. It was something we were forced into," he says with a laugh. "When the band started, we sort of had our own demented set of standards and morality and things that mattered to us. The way we operated wasn't particularly resonant with too many people in the industry."
Shepherd moved to Sydney in 1980 and formed the Hoodoo Gurus soon after with guitarist Dave Faulkner. "We used to cop a lot of flak when the band first started playing, we moved out of the immediate Darlinghurst area and would go and play shows in Parramatta and Penrith or out at Blacktown. We essentially lost our core audience in the inner city because we were uncool now because we would go and play in the suburbs. Which to us was appallingly elitist and that's not what the band's about at all. It's about making music for people that might find some value in it not keeping it some sort of inner city secret."
While their commercial success has waxed and waned throughout the years and all members have been involved in other projects, they've never lost sight of themselves and what they were doing. "Well, we only broke up once! The beginning of '98... we weren't really looking to get back together again particularly, we were all in other bands. The Persian Rugs was very much a sixties inspired thing. Our philosophy was pretty much that nothing after 1966 existed at all. We were invited to play the Homebake festival here in Sydney and to be the Hoodoo Gurus again, to be playing those songs again, we all pretty much realised there onstage that there is a real magic here that can't be duplicated," he says thoughtfully.
"I'm sure you'd hear the same story from any band that have been together for a serious period of time, that you're so familiar with the way the other guys play that you can sort of anticipate what they're gonna do, and have a creative empathy with what they're going to do. Like when you all hit your mark at the same time and the energy that's created from that."
Blake Lewis
The Hoodoo Gurus play The Gov on Tues 18 Sept with Radio Birdman and The Stems.
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