The Jamie Hoover Web Site - Review: Jamie Hoover's Pop Odyssey

Review: Jamie Hoover's Pop Odyssey

By Alan Haber

The perfect pop song, says pop renaissance man Jamie Hoover, "is one that you have to play over immediately after you hear it. You can't get it out of your head. When you hear it on the radio, you have to drive to the store before you go wherever you're goin'. You have to drive to the record store and buy it."

The perfect pop song, muses Hoover, is "a beautiful thing." And Hoover ought to know: he's written more than a few of them himself. He doesn't have the faintest idea where they come from, but come they have, landing on five Spongetones albums (okay, one's an EP) and the recently-released Van DeLecki's (Hoover and bandmate Bryan Shumate of "Let's Get Mikey" fame) collection, Letters from the Desk of Count S. Van DeLecki (the name "Van DeLecki" conjures up memories of an episode of "The Andy Griffith Show," in which Barney Fife contacted a similarly-named spirit).

As Hoover says with a laugh, "All roads lead to Mayberry." And that's probably true, if Mayberry can indeed be considered a state of mind in which pop music provides the soundtrack (for the purposes of this article, that is).

Although the first song Hoover remembers hearing is Kyu Sakamoto's 1963 number one smash "Sukiyaki," Hoover's pop-tinged life didn't really got going until, as a first-grader, he discovered the Beatles by messing about in his sister's record collection, which was also peppered with records by such sixties favorites as the Dave Clark Five and Herman's Hermits.

It was the Beatles, however, that got Hoover's musical motor running. "Their stuff just had magic," he says.

Surprisingly, the future Spongetone and Van DeLecki grew up listening to the radio in a distinctly non-musical household in Charlotte, North Carolina. "There was no piano," he remembers. "There was nobody that could hum in my family." Nobody, that is, save for little Jamie Hoover, whose ears were tuned to the intoxicating sounds of the British Invasion. Right off the bat, Hoover wanted to play the guitar. "I used to stand in front of the mirror when I was six, with a broom," he says, practicing to be the premier air guitarist of his generation. "I just saw myself as that Fifth Beatle."

When he was 10, Hoover was able to retire his broom - he received a Harmony acoustic guitar for Christmas (it cost all of about $20, and he still owns it). Immediately, he learned to play the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" by listening to the 45 which he also had received as a gift that December. The next year, 11 year old Hoover "plugged in" with his brand spankin' new Teisco Del Rey electric guitar (the lead licks in the Spongetones' "(My Girl) Maryanne" and the Van DeLecki's' "Moonlight" were played on a Silvertone guitar, made by Teisco Del Rey, that was retrieved from a trash can by a music store clerk and sold to Hoover for the princely sum of ten dollars).

Hoover's first band, formed when he was 11, was of the pantomime variety: the Surfers played only one gig, however - they lip synched to a couple of Monkees records at a school function, nattily-attired in their matching white blue jeans, black boots and black turtleneck sweaters. "We had sort of bangs going and stuff," he says.

The next major event in Hoover's musical life was a cheap gold sparkle drum set obtained when he was 12 (the set now belongs to his nephew). A succession of bands brought him closer to the Spongetones; while in these bands, he found himself playing a plethora of covers, from the Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" to perennial favorite "Louie Louie." One of those bands - The Happy Eggs - was Hoover's stab at punk rock, tackled around the time the Spongetones formed. The Eggs, who made a Todd Rundgren/Klaatu-like 12-inch, and a Richard Hell-meets-Devo-esque four-song EP entitled "Wake Up," was extremely popular in the Charlotte area. On stage, the band wore outlandish clothes, purchased on the day of each show at Goodwill for around five dollars; Hoover's groovy outfits were topped by a rotating beacon helmet which sat atop his head.

While the Eggs were hatching (so to speak), the newly-formed Spongetones (Hoover sneaked into the lineup after the band had played four or five shows and two other guitarists had departed) were making an early name for themselves at places like the Double Door Inn in Charlotte. Hoover found he shared a love for Beatle-esque pop with the other Spongetones, Steve Stoeckel, Rob Thorne and Pat Walters. The Spongetones wanted to capture, in newly-written songs, the sound of the sixties' best groups. "That was kind of our mission from God at that point," says Hoover. The group's first release, an album called Beat Music, was released in 1982 on the Columbia, South Carolina Ripete label.

By the time the Spongetones' EP "Torn Apart" was released in 1984, the group had gained quite a following in the Charlotte area - it was not uncommon for their shows to attract as many as 1,500 fans (a free concert at nearby Freedom Park netted an audience of around 6,000). And, oh, the adoring female fans! They "would drive around," says Hoover, "looking for our houses. I remember seeing a couple of girls trying to find out where I lived."

Around the time of "Torn Apart," Hoover says the Spongetones were "getting into a rut," playing the same areas and the same covers. To compound the fracture, bass player Stoeckel temporarily left the band (he returned in time to make Oh Yeah! in 1991). The Spongetones' next album, Where-Ever-Land - released on the band's own label, Triapore - was made without Stoeckel and featured a tougher, more psychedelic-laden sound.

The fracture was as good as healed in 1991, when the Spongetones signed to the Shoes' Black Vinyl Records; the label has been the band's home ever since. The 'Tones' latest album - last year's wonderful Textural Drone Thing (as much a stylistic departure from the band's Beatle-esque pop as Where-Ever-Land) featured songs by Stoeckel and Walters, and a trio of co-writes by Hoover and pop favorite Bill Lloyd.

There have been more recent Spongetones sightings: a song entitled "Eyedoan Geddit" (recently recorded but written around the time of "Torn Apart") appeared on this year's Hit the Hay Vol. 2 on Sound Asleep records; a gorgeous holiday tune featuring the group's trademark golden harmonies, "Christmas Boy," appears on the new Optional Art holiday compilation Cool Yule.

With the Van DeLecki's album, released by pop label Permanent Press, making some waves at Adult Album Alternative radio, Hoover is working hard to keep pop happening. He's also keeping busy touring with buddy Don Dixon and his wife Marti Jones, and producing a variety of bands in his studio, the Washateria, which began life in a 12' x 12' room in his former house in Charlotte (the studio got its name because the room had a washer and dryer in it). The current version of the studio is in Clover, South Carolina. When he's not touring with Dixon and Jones, or out promoting the Van DeLecki's (the band recently played a successful concert in Los Angeles on John Lennon's birthday), Hoover hangs out (not necessarily to dry) in the Washateria, trying out new musical ideas.

That some of these ideas harken back to the Beatle-esque sounds of the 1960's (with a 1990's perspective) is somehow fitting - after all, Hoover does own "a fabulous collarless Beatles jacket. I went to Liverpool and did the Beatles tour. There's a place called The Beatles Shop. I went in there and there was the jacket, and I just said, 'I'll have that.'" Legions of pop fans, loving Hoover's solo work (he released an album in the late 1980's), his stints with countless early bands, his work with the Spongetones, and his work with the Van DeLecki's, are saying the very same thing.

Alan Haber is a free-lance writer and host of the radio program Pure Pop.