SHOOTING STAR (1980, #147) - After quickly gaining enormous popularity in the Kansas City area, Shooting Star obtained a deal with Virgin and recorded its debut album in England with legendary producer Gus Dudgeon, best known for his work with Elton John and David Bowie. The result was a filler free 10 song collection that ranks as one of the truly great melodic rock albums of all time. Indeed, it began the illustrious songwriting partnership of lead vocalists Gary West (known as Gary Hodgden in his previous group The Beckies) and Van McLain in great style! Musically, it contains echoes of many of the day's top rock acts (Kansas, of course, along with Styx and Foreigner, among others), but never leans too much in 1 direction. It's a bit progressive at a few points, partly due to Charles Waltz's violin and also encompasses a wide range of emotions. I rate it as their 2nd best, eclipsed only by Silent Scream. Actually, a few of the songs could have been country, given that kind of production, but all of the performances are clearly rock oriented. At the time, the album rock, top 40 and adult contemporary radio formats were prime for this release, which is full of quickly memorable material. But in the first piece of a long line of rotten luck for the band, Virgin folded its American based operation around the time that the song Last Chance was becoming a major radio hit. By the time that Epic picked it up, the song's popularity had already peaked. Still, it appeared at the time to be only a temporary setback. SS's future still looked quite bright.

1. You've Got What I Need (#76) - Any song from this album could have and should have been a hit, some on 3 formats! They had to start somewhere and it proved to be this, the album's most lightweight track. From the opening seconds, it's obvious that it's a nice chunk of very catchy, good time rock and roll, with a Foreigner type guitar riff and a pumping rhythm section. The chorus is the type that can easily have you singing along before your first complete listen to the song. And the closing switch into double time over Van's blood, sweat and tears type solo is a great effect that just you grinning from ear to ear! Cool prog-synth solo, too!

2. Don't Stop Now - Another infectious, feel good rocker, mostly faster than the opener. It's also where we get the first taste of Charles's violin. He always had a unique screech to his sound, which helped make his playing distinct from the few other rock violinists and this song is a good example. The slowed down instrumental break, with the violin runs is a nice effect and does a great job breaking into the last verse in climactic fashion!

3. Higher - I've heard that Jon Bon Jovi is a big SS fan. And apparently Motley Crue's Vince Neil is as well (see the analysis of Breakout below). I have the feeling that a fair number of rock stars are. Part of the reason that I believe that is the fact that 8 years later, David Lee Roth based his song Just Like Paradise around the intro and verses of this song and took it to #6. This song deserved a similar destiny. From the moment that I first heard the piano, bass and drums all thumping together in unison and Van's rocking guitar chorids join them, it's obvious that SS has no intention of letting the listener slip away! 1 thing that I think always helped place SS above almost everyone artistically was their ability to do the little things, such as dramatic pauses and entrances into new sections of their songs. One of the best examples is when, following a brief pause, Gary brings in the last verse with "SO TURN OUT THE LIGHTS NOW!" Also, great piano riff that follows the line "I wanna get higher with you."

4. Just Friends - Finally, a cool down song. It's too bad that even among SS die-hards, their ballads are often overlooked, as they represent some of their strongest material, this song being a prime example. Very acoustic guitar oriented, this is one of my favorites ever based around that instrument. Very sentimental and touching, it's a beautiful expression of the commitment of friendship through a crisis. A friend of mine who is also a SS die-hard, recently told me that she couldn't listen to this song because it reminded her of the recent break up with her boyfriend. But I don't think it's really about a broken romance, though the title makes it easy to interpret that way. I think it's actually a reminder from 1 friend to another that "we're here for such a short, short time" and "we're all in this together." This song also shows how well Van and Gary made use of dual lead vocals, something that became increasingly rare as their career progressed, sadly - Van: "I wanted to tell you" Gary: "I Want You to Know" Van: "That I really care" Gary: "About the hardships you know."

5. Bring it On - Another real blazer! It opens with acoustic piano, reminiscent of the intro of Supertramp's Take the Long Way Home. But as the pattern is repeated, bass guitar and bass drum enter and speed over it as does a thumping mid-range drum, eventually. An energetic guitar riff brings in the verses, which express SS's trademark nothing-to-lose, go-for-it all, mentality ("Seen a hard life, I know what I want, I'm a poor man's son"). The bridge slows down, which makes the transition into the scorching and instantly memorable hook particularly exciting. And like on "You've Got What I Need," the fade out is powered by a solo from Van.

6. Tonight - This mesmarizing rocker is easily their most overt allusion to Kansas, particularly the violin leads over the power chords, which bring to mind Kansas's Sparks of the Tempest, though the chords are identical to those of Van Halen's Where Have all the Good Times Gone. The eerie, atmospheric introduction is also well done, but is dramatically improved in elaborate sympho-synth style on the Live album. The lyrics are appropriately on the cosmic side ("I feel the earth and the sky touching our lives tonight/A celestial force somehow guiding our course tonight"). Unusual for SS, whose lyrics dave almost always been down to earth and usually deal with human relationships in some from.

7. Rainfall - Probably my least favorite song on the album, but still pretty good. SS's only campfire type song. A very pleasant, acoustic guitar dominated, country edged ballad. But it lacks the compelling drama of "Just Friends."

8. Midnight Man - Yet another song that's just a bundle of positive energy from start to finish! Opening with an intensely strummed acoustic guitar, it soon heads into relentless hard rock, perfectly matching the song's catch phrase, "I can't hold it in, hold it in." It should have become a party anthem for the ages! Running just under 3 minutes, it's among SS's shortest songs. They definitely didn't mess around on it, making their point shortly and sweetly!

9. Stranger - In a rare example of SS virtually repeating itself, this song is basically a half speed version of "Bring it On." The verses (including the guitar riff) and bridges are almost identical in melody and chord pattern. The chorus is typical of the day's AOR fodder. A fairly good song, but nowhere near the effectiveness of "Bring it On." Unfortunately this song, along with Sweet Elatia from the immediately succeeding Hang on for Your Life album, were deleted when the 2 albums were released together on CD in 1991.

10. Last Chance - I heard that Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour said that the ultra-intense High Hopes was the first song written for their last studio album, The Division Bell and that the other songs were written to build up to it, the album's closer. I don't know whether SS planned "Last Chance" for such a purpose, but it sure worked out that way! One of the great theatric rock pieces of all time, this song has got to go down in history of one of the biggest tragedies in music history. It became a huge radio hit in some markets at a time when the album was out of print! Nevertheless, SS die-hards almost universally love it and to this day, it often closes their shows. It also it arguably their best remembered song. In fact, when I watched a video tape of their first "farewell show" (12/27/86), the introduction of the song provoked a thunderous ovation. As for the song, it begins simply but powerfully with 2 eerie piano chords alternating. Charles's violin joins the piano after 2 measures with the melody often repeated throughout the song. The first violin note is particularly effective, as its screech (as if the instrument was just pulled out of the attic and dusted off) adds to the song's intensity. And, like the first note of the closing guitar solo of Floyd's Comfortably Numb, it's something that might not have been able to have been achieved quite the same way again in 100 takes. The lyrics, which pertain to the harsh reality of how life slips away and that we have to make things happen, are written very harshly and powerfully. Van told me they were inspired by some people that he and Gary knew who had given up on life and wasted much of their time on drugs. After the verses are sung over the piano and violin, the guitar bass and drum enter very dramatically, accompanied by Van's shouting of "stand up on your feet, your life is short as hell! You could be dead tomorrow, today may be your..." into the chorus, which bluntly emphasizes the title. Following the 2nd verse (enhanced even further by a very beautiful violin run right after the Gary shouts "No, no, no, you don't understand") and chorus, the song repeats the introduction in double time, which leads into a ferocious, progressive instrumental, culminating by 3 drum solos, the middle 1 by Gary on timpani and the 3rd by mega-underrates Steve Thomas being one of the most awesome moments in the history of the instrument. An extremely rare combination of power and precision. By the time that the song closes out (after nearly 7 minutes, making it, I'm pretty sure, the group's longest song ever), the listener is left thinking "Man, now that was a trip!" Sadly, the general public didn't quite catch on. But those of us who love the band have a real gem with this one! And fortunately, it was only the beginning! By the way, I have a fantasy about Kansas covering this one. I mean, has there ever been a line more written for Steve Walsh than "No, no, no, you don't understand?!"

B-side of the "You've Got What I Need" single -

Wild in the Streets - When a man goes so long without food, even stale pizza tastes good! Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way implying that this is a bad song. But when you go so long with no new SS material, anything that you haven't heard before sounds great! Back around 1992, Alan Rommelfanger, then of V & R Records told me about this, SS's most collectible song, released only on 45. I thought that I had virtually no hope of ever finding it. I labored for years in record store after record store and at numerous record conventions. My fingers suffered through the gross feeling of flipping through tens of thousands of old record sleeves. Finally, on January 3, 1998, my good pal Scott Johnson, who I was visiting for the weekend, took me to Hammer the Jammer's in Merrillville, Indiana. I looked, of course, in the miscellaneous S section. No luck. But then I noticed, much to my surprise, there was a 45 section for Shooting Star. I took a deep breath, picked up all of the singles there and SHAZAM! There it was! The Survivor song The Search is Over began playing in my head and tears came to my eyes. Just kidding about the Survivor song and the tears! But the rest of it is a true story and I was stunned! I got home and played it (yes, I actually still have a record player that works). At that point, it could have been the worst song of all time and it would have been fine with me, just to hear what was to me a new SS song. But actually, though not among their best, it's a pretty good song. Very fast paced, serious-minded party music. Hard rock with a chorus very similar to that of Stranger, but much faster. For a non-album B-Side, this is well above average, better than a lot of album fillers from most bands. In the band's words of wisdom to come, "Hold on to your Dreams" and Never Give Up!

HANG ON FOR YOUR LIFE (1981, #92) - Only a very few of most of my favorite artists have debut albums that I think are truly fantastic. I don't even quite rate Kansas's on that level. But I do with SS's, along with Boston's and Asia's. And I rate SS's 2nd album the way I rate those from Boston and Asia - albums that are great, but fall a bit short of their predecessors, which would be very difficult to match, especially in such a short period of time. The sound on this album doesn't change a lot. It's still energetic, melodic hard rock with lyrics divided between the philosophical and the aggressive, Produced by Dennis McKay (Pat Travers, Stanley Clarke), the least known of their major label album producers, "Hang on" was the closest that the group ever came to achieving stardom. It remained on the chart for 30 weeks, almost as many as all of their others combined (36). The album would do very well on AOR in some markets, particularly Kansas City. The lack of a top 40 single held it back. And there might have been one other factor. MTV started in August 1981, the month after the album's release. Because so few videos were made at the time, the station initially played almost anything that it could get its hands on. This meant surprising instant fame for several artists, most notably Duran Duran. Had the band made a video for any song on this album, it might have pushed the band over the hump. Despite the setbacks, though, Van told me that this album actually sold over 500,000 copies, enough to go Gold, but that it was never certified, which epitomizes the band's career.

1. Flesh and Blood - A very dark, philosophpical ballad, with a nice, melodic violin intro (repeated several times throughout the song), lots of acoustic guitar and a touching story of the everyday struggles of a common man - his drive to succees in his career and hardships with his love life. Once, when a then girlfriend of mine was spewing out a verbal tirade at me (which was common for her), the song was playing in my head at 1 line particularly came to mind - "He's a person, he's got feelings, he's not made of iron." And a friend of mine (in fact, the same one who I mention in the "Just Friends" analysis) told me that she relates this song to her divorce. Indeed, a very powerful song with a message that many can relate to. The dramatic violin playing over the fade out works very well, also.

2. Hang on for Your Life - One of the highway rock classics of all time! Though not a huge national hit, this one rates very highly among SS die-hards! In fact, I've heard that many radio stations have long made a tradition out of playing this one every Friday at 5 pm! Quite appropriate considering the lyrics ("Workin' hard to make a living, 'til the sun goes down without fail, work my fingers to the bone and get nothing but union scale. When the whistle blows I'm ready, thank God it's Friday night, on the weekends I let loose until the moring light. And I think you better hang on for your life tonight....). Running just over 3 minutes, this is just relentless fun from beginning to end - positive, energetic, fast paced rock and roll driven by grinding guitar and a quickly memorable hook! Naturally, it never fails to deliver in concert, always near the end of the set! Had the Doobie Brothers done this song, it probably would have been as big as China Grove!

3. Are You on My Side -


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