Temple Of Goo Turns Two: A Celebration Post And A Gift

They grow up so fast. It was merely 24 months ago when this blog’s first post saw the light of day. Well, the light of internet, rather. Superstar Car Wash: Trivia And Curiosities had to be the initial step towards an unknown journey, given the fact that album and the mysterious years surrounding it were one of the factors that inspired this whole endeavor.

Initially, the blog was intended as a public space where I could share some of the rare live shows, pictures, and trivia I had collected over time, which I considered to be pretty rare. All of the fans I had interacted with never saw the stuff I was able to obtain after years of research. I wasn’t expecting the site to become something not even remotely relevant, and planned to run it just for a few months in order to make it searchable on the net and indexed by search engines, so other fans could get the little treasures I owned. After that, I planned to just leave it like that, one of the many projects forgotten in a corner of the web.

Today, we are shy of 45k all-time views and have amassed more than 400 posts, spanning from interviews to video clips, from bootlegs to pictures, from trivia to various Goo Goo Dolls-related projects such as APP or Good Goo Radio.

First and foremost, we should always remember that a website’s success depends on its builders just as much than it does on its members. In the Temple Of Goo’s case, our growth has been achievable especially thanks to our strong and supportive community of Collaborators, Avid Commenters, Occasional Commenters, and Readers. Every single component of this intricate mechanism is what elevated the Temple from mere minor project to a trusted and valuable source of Goo information. I would like to thank members such as Sean, Bailey, Christina, Javier, and everyone else who has directly engaged with us for whichever reason, even for just once. The vast majority of the releases included in here come from their precious support, altruism and initiative, not from mine.

Let’s talk a bit about statistics, which are always helpful to identify trends and the overall sentiment of a given phenomenon. As you can see from the graph below, from April 2023 to today, on a month-to-month basis, we’ve had at least 1,000 views and we even managed to break 3,000 in four occasions.

Which posts did attract the most attention from our readers? You can ignore the first line, which merely means people who browsed the blog without clicking on a particular post during a session. For the period of time covering April 2023 until December 2023, this is what we get:

For the period of time covering January 2024 until today, here it is:

Does something stand out? Of course it does. For me, this is what I gathered from these statistics:

• People love topics about Laurie Farinacci (John Rzeznik’s former wife, with a surprisingly influential role on the band’s evolution) and George Tutuska, original member and drummer who our research shows had even greater impact on the best sides the Goo Goo Dolls had to offer, from songwriting to melody adjustments, from lyrics composition to artwork. It goes to show that users seem to enjoy uncovering those older aspects of the band which, for whatever reason, had not been clear and were rarely talked about during the pre-“Dizzy Up The Girl” eras.

Where do our readers hail from? Let’s see. For April 2023 to December 2023, we get this:

For the year 2024, beginning from January until today, here it is:

Obviously, being a North American band, the Goo Goo Dolls attract most of the viewers from the USA. However, there are other countries which seem to love reading about vintage Goo, such as Chile, Canada, UK, Australia, Italy, and even some nice surprises such as South Korea and India. This goes to show that the blog is easy to reach out and discover regardless of where users connect from, which actually was one of the original intents of its owner: give access to rare Goo material to everyone, not only to those who hail from countries that are, historically, more deeply interconnected to the band when compared to others.

Alright, enough about statistics. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes. Firstly, I originally wanted to provide you all with two gifts for this occasion: a file, and a trivia post. Due to being overworked (and underpaid), I couldn’t find enough time to finish the latter (which will come in the near future), hence today I can only offer the first gift. Nevertheless, it is one of the rarest, if not THE rarest material we have been putting out so far. I know it’s not comparable to what we shared for our first anniversary in terms of how much content is offered, that is the infamous “Melodic Minimalism” compilation (Part 1, Part 2), however what you will be looking at soon is just as marvelous and fascinating for the Goo history aficionados.

The Temple’s second birthday’s gift was provided by none other than contributor Christina a while back, who has been flooding us with amazing stuff during the past weeks. Therefore, I invite you all to thank her for this precious content, rather than me. I am merely the messenger here. Furthermore, I’m sorry about the quality. I know it’s not up to standards, but please try to overcome the issue by focusing on the uniqueness of the release.

We have already written about 1994, one of the “Bleak Years” which separated “Hold Me Up” from the worldwide success that “Dizzy Up The Girl” brought upon John et al. That year was peculiar because not only the band did manage to play just in a very small number of occasions, and to make almost non-existent TV appearances, but mostly because of the intragroup tensions between Tutuska and Rzeznik. If you need a refresher, this is certainly the best post for it. Let’s firstly open the gift, and then make a brief comment on it:

Christina has something to say about it too:

Yes, we’ve got an elusive 1994 clip here! This comes from Channel 7 Eyewitness News in Buffalo; based on the American Music Awards footage it should date to February 7 of that year. It’s short but sweet, and looks like they were eager to put a local spin what it’s like to be a successful musician. It’s nice to see George there, even if the newscaster pronounces his name wrong.

This is a VHS rip coming with the standardized 640x480p encoding format. I am not sure what is going on with those vertical yellow bars popping out of nowhere in the middle of the interview. Also, to me Robby’s face seems a bit deformed. Maybe he was just as tired and overworked as I am. Nonetheless, this is extremely rare and great material which the Temple is happy and proud to share with you all today.

Anyhow, did you notice something interesting here? I did. Maybe it is just me, but let’s discuss it. The interviewer mentions that the band was in the middle of preparing their next release, which turned out to be titled “A Boy Named Goo” (the title of the album was changed from “You Ain’t The Boss Of Me” after Tutuska’s departure from the band). We know pre-production for “ABNG” was filled with conflict, anger, resentment, and tension due to the cheques dilemma discussed in the George Tutuska dedicated post. We know that despite the intragroup fights, George managed to fully participate to the recording sessions before being kicked out for good just shy of the album’s release. The interview likely took place during a time when George had recently discovered the issues with the money not being paid to him, as the single “Fallin’ Down” was by then already released. Why do I mention this? Because I look at John in this interview and I see some rigidity and stress when he talks. He casts his eyes down and keeps them low, avoiding eye contact with both George and the interviewer. Conversely, Robby is happy to talk much, just as always. The entire 1994 year was filled with issues at a band level and at a personal level, with John changing his mind almost on a daily basis between keeping up with the Goo Goo Dolls project and giving up to go back to school to study for a Political Sciences degree. There were also discussions between him and the drummer in relation to the music direction the band was going towards. My feeling is that him and George were already barely speaking and mostly fighting due to the aforementioned issues while the interview was shot, and John’s body language gives it away. But again, maybe it’s just my impression and I am misinterpreting things.

I hope you have liked what we had in store for today’s special event. I look forward to another celebration post in April 2025. Until then, I want to express my gratitude once again to ALL OF YOU, for making the Temple what it is right now: The expression of its followers, who have shaped it and forged it into a way better version than its creator had envisioned for it.

Download links are provided below. Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

DOWNLOAD (Main Source)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror 1)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror 2)