There is a passage in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book “Outliers: The Story of Success” that has already become somewhat infamous, a passage in which Gladwell brings up the well-known fact that before the Beatles had hit it big in America in early 1964, they had already appeared on stage an estimated 1200 times in Hamburg, Germany, often playing live for more than five hours at a time.
The point that Gladwell is trying to make by citing this is that success often has less to do with talent and more to do with hard work. If the Beatles hadn’t played those shows and put in the time honing their craft, both as musicians as well as public figures, it is doubtful that they would have enjoyed the same type of success as quickly as they did. They were a great band, of course, but their seeming innate knack for appearing on camera and for playing flawless, effortless sets in front of hundreds of screaming fans stems directly from their time spent in Hamburg. John and
George cracking jokes with the press? Try spending several hours on stage a day as an entertainer and see just how funny you get to be, see how good you get at being a personality. Paul’s seemingly unending knack for churning out perfect pop melodies? Try spending days and days playing in between vaudeville acts and see how good you get at it, at knowing what entertains an audience most.
It’s a baptism by fire really, it is success by elimination, and it is about finding what you’re really good at and then practicing it over and over again until you get it just right. The reason I bring this up now in relation to downtown Phoenix’s beloved Hooves is that I feel their career path could well be following a similar trajectory.
They are an immensely talented band, both live and on record, but have perhaps gotten that way in part by playing live just as much as they do. I have seen Hooves play in a house and I have seen them play in someone’s living room. I have seen them play in a backyard, and in an art gallery, and in a dive bar, and in a condemned building for over two hundred ecstatic people. The common denominator to all these performances is not so much the quality of the music, though their songs are admittedly really good, it is rather in the fact that the sheer joy and exuberance that Hooves bring to their live shows is something that is truly infectious. They don’t play these songs as much as they attack them, savagely, extracting what is best about the music, and then letting you in on the thrill ride for free.
There’s a kind of satisfying glee in watching this band play live, it’s a cathartic and jubilant experience, as all rock music should be, but it’s also a decidedly pointed political act as well, whether the band freely admits to it or not. By making the personal public, by letting you in on the audition process, as it were, what this band is really giving you is a taste of unmediated rock and roll magic. By coming through and delivering the goods, time and time again, by their obvious sacrifice and their almost heroic level of commitment to playing monster sets, anytime and at any place, what Hooves are bringing to the Valley is an almost unspeakably refreshing burst of courage, artistic pride, and palpable creative energy. They don’t have to do this is the point. They are and were a good enough band to simply hole up and play a show once every couple months or something or else just shop their demo around incessantly to the powers that be. The fact that they chose not to is smart, commendable, gracious, and a really tender act of love and endearment to a town and to a scene that gave to them and that they have given back to.
Hooves are recording a new record now, but if you get the chance, go see them live, in their primacy and wherever they happen to be playing, not so much so that you can say “wow, I was there way back when” but rather so that you might get an object lesson, a reminder of what it means to truly believe in what it is that you do, in what it is that you create. So that you might thankfully remember what it is that you love so much about music in the first place, not just the devout passion on the faces of those that are performing it, but also the joy and equal fire residing in the hands and the feet of the guy that is dancing his ass off next to you as well. Go ahead. Go see Hooves. John Lennon would have wanted you to. This is rock and roll.
