It seems fitting that the four of us in Expo’76 found each other. We’re the same age, we have the same hereditarily dictated hairstyles, and we all grew up on the same diet of TV variety shows, leaded gas, and Space Food Sticks. We were also fortunate to have been raised during the most vibrant and varied era of Top 40 radio: the ’70s — when rock, country, soul, schmaltz, easy listening, funk, metal, pop, and novelty tunes lived side by side on the charts and nobody made a big deal out of it. We loved and absorbed it all as it leapt out of our clock radios. So we like to think we’re reflecting that open-eared upbringing back to the people who come to see us, and that is what they like about us — the everythingness of our set list. We only have two rules: 1. No shorts. 2. No Doors. We take our playing seriously, although our presentation perhaps a bit less so. At heart, we’re a ski lodge band ; a bar band with no fixed allegiance to any genre or era; a live act. That we’ve decided to record a studio album might seem a little incongruous, but we wanted a document. So we set up in Mike Hagler’s studio and banged out some of our favorite songs, all of us playing together live, the way we work best. This record captures us, clean and big, with equal parts grit and polish, and a lot of first takes. We hope you invite Hot In The Dark to your next party, and we also hope you’ll slip into your Earth Shoes, grab a nice fondue dinner somewhere, hop into your AMC Pacer, and come out and see us live sometime, somewhere.