From the Archives: Starz - 1970s Hard Rock/ Power Pop

This article was first published in 2001 on Suite101.com.

The weathered newspaper clipping still sits in my file cabinet back home – a review of a rock show at the Aargon Ballroom in Chicago in 1977.  The featured bands  consisted of four relatively unknown acts. Angel, Starz, the Runaways and Piper. Piper was fronted by Billy Squire, (we all know what happened to him) , the Runaways were a training ground for Lita, Joan and Cherie, and Angel copied Kiss' costume shtick, except they dressed all in white. All of the acts provided their own brand of  sleazy ‘70s hard rock. It could be said that each had a gimmick. In the Runaways case they were teenage girls (female bands were considered a "gimmick" at the time), Angel had their costumes and fog machine, and Starz, well, they really didn’t have a gimmick unless you counted singer Michael Lee Smith’s lips and pouty demeanor. (A curious sidenote- Michael Lee was teenie bopper idol Rex’s brother) The controversy over their song “Pull The Plug”, a bluesy, sexy song about euthanasia,  got them a lot of mainstream press.

The band consisted of Smith, guitarist Richie Ranno, drummer Joe Dube, bassist Pete Swerval, and guitarist Brendan Harkin. (Swerval and Harkin were replaced by Orville Davis and Bobby Messano, respectively, on Starz’ last studio album.) Visually, Starz were not far removed from the hair bands that proliferated a few years after their demise.  

Their songs were likable in a '70s AOR kind of way – Detroit Girls, Live Wire, Night Crawler capitalized on the preening lead singer sex appeal in vogue at the time, a precursor to the hair band explosion to come. A band like Starz would have fit right in with any of the Poisons and Bon Jovis of the mid/late 1980s.The Starz albums produced by Jack Douglas did not deviate much from this formula. With the exception of their third album, Attention, Shoppers, which temporarily abandoned Kiss-like guitar machinations for a brighter, self-produced pop sound, all Starz’ albums were cut from the same “party all night” cloth. Coliseum Rock, the bands last shot at stardom, flopped, despite good, solid rock songs like So Young, So Bad and Take Me.

Although garnering little airplay and no kudos from critics, the band had a loyal underground following right up to their break-up in 1980. A great retrospective is Brightest Starz:Anthology, released by England’s Heavy Metal Records. The 1970s Starz albums have been rereleased on Metal Blade. Founder Brian Slagel is a Starz fan, as are Tom Kiefer of Cinderella and Jon Bon Jovi. The band still performs, in various permutations, across the U.S.

The band's self-titled debut and their second album, Violation, are included on Kerrang's list of the Top 100 Heavy Metal  Albums of All-Time.

Related links:

http://www.starzcentral.com/index2.html

The Front & Baker's Pink: Two Overlooked Bands from the '90s

Back in my New York rock critic days, I received a monthly shopping bag filled with review CDs and cassettes (yes, cassettes - it was a long time ago) from my editor. I’d listen to most of ‘em once and then sell them or give them away.  Occasionally, though, I’d find a gem that I’d keep and play over and over again.  One such cassette was by a  Kansas City quintet called The Front, who had signed to Columbia Records in 1989. I kept playing my freebie cassette over and over one night. At about one in the morning, my roommate admonished me. “What hell are you doing? You have to get up at six o clock to go to work!” Well, I was kinda sleepy in the office the next day, but it was worth it.

The Front’s self-titled album got lost in the avalanche of bands signed by the major labels at end of the hair metal craze.  The band’s sound alternated between Love- era cult, blues rock and paisley revival with a dark side. Singer Michael Franano looked like Michael Hutchence or Jim Morrison, depending on your preference. And the band dressed in a style that could best be described as “hippie glam”, a refreshing change from the spandex and black leather jackets of the time. Every song on the album was a winner-there was no fluff or filler on this baby. The tour de force Violent World, the 60s retro-pop Sunshine Girl, the brooding Sin and the sensual strutting of Le Motion deserved more airplay than they got back in the day.

The band did the whole hard rock concert circuit, opening for Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Lenny Kravitz, and shot a few videos. Still, the Front never achieved substantial success despite having Doc McGhee of Motley Crue fame as a manager. Even glowing press from music mags couldn’t stir up widespread interest. 

By 1993, the band had a new record company and a new name – Baker’s Pink. The songs on their second album had a harder, trippier edge to them, as though the sound had been fine-tuned to fit in better with the suddenly popular grunge and alt-rock movement. Still, songs like Watercolours and Burn On retained singer Franano’s signature swagger. Unfortunately, the timing was off once again, and Baker’s Pink faded into obscurity just like The Front. 

Franano went on to work on music for film and TV, including Woody Allen’s Celebrity, Melrose Place and Party of Five. In 1998, he reinvented himself as Michael Moon and released a solo album. In a 2010 interview in Sugarbuzz Magazine, Michael mentioned that he is working on a new website and hopes to include live recordings from Baker’s Pink and The Front, as well as some new material, on the site. 

Michaelfranano.com