The Hoodoo Gurus have issued an apology to Melbourne fans after they failed to return for a second encore at the Dig It Up festival they curated to celebrate their 30th anniversary. The band thought the crowd weren’t into it and couldn’t hear the cheering from the dressing room, so they decided not to return for the scheduled second encore. Frontman Dave Faulkner had planned for a second encore, but when he didn’t feel the vibe, he decided to include the second encore songs in the first encore. The band then went off and hit the change rooms, unaware of the fact that there had been “such a strong demand for an encore.”
Apology from Hoodoo Gurus:
Tonight, we watched The Sonics play and they got a great reaction – so much so that when we walked on stage it seemed like there was hardly a murmur of excitement for us. That was a bit disconcerting to us but, nevermind, we were gonna give it our best shot. We played ‘Stoneage Romeos’ and were quite enjoying ourselves but, again, it felt like “you guys” were all just kinda hanging back and checking it out. We honestly thought you had pretty much had your fill of entertainment and were pretty much worn out. I now know that was completely wrong and that in fact a lot of you were really digging it. The people in front of us, though, were not moving or cheering very much, reinforcing our feeling that we were “surplus to requirements”. It didn’t matter – we tried our hardest and put everything into it.
The real misunderstanding started after that: I thought that we would only be getting asked (by you) for one encore and that we would embarrass ourselves by trying to push for an extra one – it didn’t sound like anyone even wanted ONE because there wasn’t much cheering from where we stood backstage. I had planned on playing ‘Be A Woman’ for The Sonics and ‘Television Addict’ for the 5.6.7.8’s if we got a second encore but as that didn’t appear likely, I wrongly concluded, I decided to play them as the first (and only) encore instead of the songs I had originally planned for the encore (which some of you might have seen written on our setlist below the ‘Stoneage Romeos’ set).
So we came out for the encore (without much apparent fanfare) and we played ‘Be A Woman’, ‘Television Addict’ and ‘Be My Guru’ and after that it finally seemed like there was some cheering. We went up to our dressing room at the top of the building thinking to ourselves, “Great! At last – we’ve got some reaction.” Unfortunately, from that dressing room we couldn’t hear ANY of the continued cheering in the room and NO-ONE TOLD US. We were completely unaware of the strong reaction and we undressed and were towelling down. It was only after ten minutes that we found out that there had been such a strong demand for an encore and by then it was all too late.
We would have like to play more and I’m very sorry now that we didn’t. We completely misread you, the audience, and were oblivious to how much were enjoying yourselves so again, I’m very sorry about this misunderstanding.
I really mean every word of what I just wrote but I also really mean this: nobody was shortchanged tonight. It was a fucking GREAT day of rock’n’roll by everybody and anyone that thinks they didn’t get value for money is kidding themselves. We played ‘Stoneage Romeos’ exactly as we said we would which in itself was a unique thing. In no way was this a “regular” Hoodoo Gurus gig and we always knew that we couldn’t play many of our other songs because ‘Stoneage’ was the principal focus of these shows.
I’m sorry that we disappointed some of you (maybe many of you) but it was certainly not our intention however I do think we played a good show even if it wasn’t as long as you would have liked.
