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STILL HOOTER-RIFIC

The local-fave band has a new outlook and album - and it's about time

"TIME STAND Still," hitting stores and download sites today, is a particularly apt title for the new album by Philadelphia's rock 'n' roll legends The Hooters.

Made outside the major recording company hustle, cut in The Hooters' own (but extremely well-equipped) "home" studios in the western suburbs, its distinctive personality and DIY production nature recall the guys' indie roots as a ska-flavored, pop-rock group of the early '80s.

Back then, their first, self-produced, labor-of-love long-player, "Amore," was sold out of the trunks of their cars. "Only difference now is that we're selling the new album out of our virtual trunks," cracked guitarist/singer Eric Bazilian in a conversation the other day at writing partner/pianist/singer Rob Hyman's very spiffy setup in Conshohocken.

Gazing at this lanky pair - who've "never been in better shape," allowed Hyman - and listening to their new tunes, it's hard to believe 14 years have passed since last we heard new music from this collective, which also includes guitarist John Lilley, bassist Fran Smith Jr. and drummer David Uosikkinen.

And I can't believe I've been appreciating Hyman and Bazilian's work since the '70s, when they were starting out with their college band Wax, and then graduated with the Arista-label act Baby Grand.

There still ain't no dust on their tails. "Time Stand Still" is as vital a piece of work as anything The Hooters have ever done. It still revels in their patented (and oft imitated) mix of town and country flavors, with beautifully finessed song constructions and rootsy, folksy sonic textures (spunky mandolin, swirling keyboards, exploding guitar lines). And it sips repeatedly from the fountain of rock 'n' roll youth with affirmations like the music-makes-the-difference- themed "Ordinary Lives," the gleefully twisted and mysterious hoedown "Morning Buzz" and the amazingly sunny, sure-footed "I'm Alive" - a production and notion so perfectly realized it brings tears to my eyes.

"The amazing thing is that I wrote and recorded a lot of that [last] song on my laptop, sitting in a barn in Sweden on this perfect summer day," said Bazilian, whose wife and in-laws hail from over there.

"After he got back, Eric was game to redo the vocal, maybe 20 times, but he could never top the demo," added Hyman. "Same thing for his guitar part which he'd plugged into the computer through a 'virtual amp.' I did jump in to help him flesh out the chorus, though, and to add a couple of bridges. That's always been the process for us - gathering fragments, lyrics, guitar lines, then putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle."

As a national recording and touring act, The Hooters' peak years in the United States were the mid-1980s, when they were riding high on radio and MTV and at megaconcerts like "Live Aid" with the tunes "And We Danced," "Day By Day," "Where Do the Children Go?" and "All You Zombies" from their first and most successful of three Columbia albums, "Nervous Night."

After a bit of a lapse, they signed to MCA in 1993 and delivered "Out of Body" - more good work that went nowhere fast. Truth is, the fashion had changed and U.S. listeners moved on to the next big thing. But The Hooters at least had other stuff to fall back on.

Hyman and Bazilian's work as sidemen/songwriters for hire helped generate big hit albums for others, starting with Cyndi Lauper, for whom Hyman co-wrote the much-covered "Time After Time."

And in 1995, they were all over Joan Osborne's smash "Relish" - the first to record Bazilian's "(What If God Was) One of Us." Also piling on for that one was Mike Myers' alter ego, Dr. Evil, in the second Austin Powers movie. He's seen playing "One of Us" with Mini-Me at matched pianos and then declares cheerfully, "I wrote that" - a source of great amusement to Bazilian.

From those mega hits, the guys became super-active as creative guns for hire, keeping their chops sharpened as they wrote for and played on projects with everyone from Ricky Martin to Jonatha Brooke, Dar Williams and - shock upon shock - the latest album by the Germany heavy metal band Scorpions, for whom Bazilian contributed six tunes. "It's a different, more mature sound for them," he assessed. "I don't know how they feel about it, but I think it's good."

And just recently, Bazilian got a call from producer/writing-pal Desmond Child to play guitar on a project for Ace Young - yes, the "American Idol" season-five semi-finalist. "I went online to a server, downloaded the tracks, recorded my parts and then uploaded the results," Bazilian said. "It's a new day. That's how you often make music nowadays, communicating from studio to studio with iChat, although I'm much happier actually being in the same room with the other players."

As for The Hooters, they've kept a much higher profile in places like Germany, the Scandinavian countries and Japan, where, irony of ironies, "our career actually took off after we made that sharp left turn with the second and third Columbia albums, 'One Way Home' and 'Zig Zag,' and the U.S. audience dropped off," noted Hyman. "Our version of '500 Miles' was popular in Sweden, 'Johnny B' and 'Satellite' were big anthems in Germany. We've even translated songs into German and Japanese."

So while fans here in the States thought that the Hooters were completely dormant - 'cause they were - they were at least doing some summer tours overseas, playing concerts and music festivals.

"A lot of U.S. artists who've disappeared off the U.S. radar screen are now working, if not living, in places like Germany," said Bazilian. "The audiences over there are loyal and well-informed about American music and, until recently, the radio was a lot more open to mixing things up."

A request by WMMR's Pierre Robert to perform at his 20th anniversary birthday bash at the Wachovia Spectrum in 2001 finally got the guys together on a U.S. stage for the first time since, oh, 1995. "We played for a half-hour," recalled Hyman. "It was an amazing moment. The audience was there, we clicked. We thought: 'What took us so long?' "

Since then, they've been prepping material, plotting this new album. "In that way, too, it has been like a debut," added the methodical Hyman. "You have your whole lifetime to gather material for the first record, then when it comes time to do the second album, you have to put it together in just a few months. Here we had the luxury to collect about 50 songs, and then whittle it down to the ones that were best and fit the theme we set up with the first two songs [the scene-setting "I'm Alive" and "Time Stand Still"]."

Overseas, where the new album came out in November, it's been winning great reviews and excellent response. "The German production company that's making a music video for 'I'm Alive' put out an alert the other day that they were looking for fan video contributions," said Bazilian. "In two days, they got 33,000 responses."

Here in the States, the album is carrying The Hooters' own label imprint, and they'll probably move a lot of copies through their own Web site, www.hootersmusic.com. But Sony/BMG's indie label distributing arm, Red, has been assigned to get it to retail. The Hooters also hired their own promotion team to work the disc to radio and the media, and recently scored a nice exposure in USA Today.

"Now we feel we're not fitting in any trend, and that's just fine" said Hyman. "There's no pressure on us - Did it get airplay? Is the video being played? - which was the whole focus when we were on major labels. Now we're our own master. It's a new day in the business. We're just following the music completely and it's working. The outlook is different. Now it's all about getting the fans to take the ride with you."

The guys feel so good about the project, they're clearing the calendar of outside work, booking tour dates and already plotting the next creative step - a live, unplugged album reconstructing their past hits. Warming up for that, the band has been doing all-acoustic radio performances - one's debuting Valentine's Day on Sirius Satellite Radio's "Big '80s" channel, hosted by Mark Goodman, an old pal/fan from his WMMR and MTV days.

"Working acoustic is lots of fun, and it's amazing how it opens up the music," said Hooters drummer Uosikkinen, who's ventured back from his home in California to help rebuild The Hooters. "Instead of a full kit, I'm often just banging away on a percussion instrument that's essentially a box with a hole. It's simple but it works. That's our new mantra." *