Shooting Star Create Another Masterpiece - SILENT SCREAM was yet another masterpiece for Shooting Star. Basically bridging the styles of Journey and Foghat, the band came up with their strongest album since HANG ON FOR YOUR LIFE. Many of the songs here have a strong inspirational message, including two from the otherwise forgettable movie UP THE CREEK. Gary West s vocals are a bit like those of Steve Perry, but maintain enough of their own identity so that you know it s still West singing. The fact that the band s members, past and present, advocate sanctions against Indonesia in retaliation for that country s trumped-up 2005 drug-smuggling conviction of a young Australian tourist, life without parole or the death penalty for kidnappers, and increased funding for law enforcement makes SILENT SCREAM an essential purchase for both your ears AND your conscience.
One of the best albums of the time ... - Back in the 80s I got a copy of this LP and later got two cassette copies from the cutout bin. At the time I was just glad to get spare copies of such a great record for a great price. Now I understand how tragic it was for such a great band to be relegated as such.This is simply one of the best albums from the 1980s. I used to open the sunroof of my car, put this cassette in and just drive -- and lose myself in these songs ... all of them. There is obvious stand-out single material, but this is a consistently strong album from beginning to end. I caught Shooting Star live a few times and at some point I got my LP autographed by the whole band. This I still guard and cherish.Some of us who were lucky enough to have been hipped to this album before it was out of print have long wondered: what the hell happened? This is one of the best albums of its time, and even the other Shooting Star fans I knew hadn t heard these songs! It s even on a major label, but it doesn t seem to have ever been marketed properly. Did it get displaced by the hair metal bands flooding the radio waves at the time?All I know is my poor cassettes have long since worn out, and I m afraid to play my LP, so now I m as happy as any boy who grew up in the 70s & 80s to be able to get a CD copy of this gem.
Shooting Star s poofy hair phase - This cd starts off strong with Summer Sun, Somewhere In Your Heart and Heat Of The Night, but soon lapses into tired sounding filler. Summer Sun was one of the great shouldabeen songs of the summer of 1985, but despite occasional airplay, it never really caught on. Too bad. Maybe with a hit Gary West would have chosen to stay with the band. Now all we have is Shooting Star part II, a pale and poor substitute. This one is worth it if you find it cheap because the first three songs make a great addition to a career retrospective, plus there is the addition of the previously unreleased songs from the Up The Creek soundtrack. Get Ready Boy isn t great, but it was a pretty decent soundtrack song.(Oh yeah, and for a laugh, check out the band picture on the back cover. Can any of you honestly say that this was a good look?)
One Awesome Band - They have to be the greatest band that never had a top 40 hit. How that is possible I don t know. They are one of my all time favorite bands ever. This is their best album but all of the albums are awesome. I listen to this one all the time. Summer Sun , Heat Of The Night , Somewhere In Your Heart and When You re Young are all awesome songs. I have all their albums and also have found them on cds. There s not a bad song on it.
The Most Underrated Album By the Most Underrated Band - As many have said, Shooting Star was a band that never came close to getting the recognition they deserved. Completing the travesty is the fact that, after some low-level radio hits, they released this, their apex, and it received no airplay at all outside their native midwestern enclave. So what sets Shooting Star apart from the slew of 80s arena rock/AOR groups. The answer that comes to most minds is the violin. True, Shooting Star makes the most effective use of a classical instrument in a rock band this side of Kansas, but the answer is much more than that. There is a very pure, middle American authenticity in their music, a purity of purpose that the formulaic appeal to the mindless masses of Survivor or the saccharine sickliness of Journey could never even approach. Finally, while no single musician stands out as a dominant virtuoso, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The opener, Summer Sun is a well-crafted tune that serves as a preparation for the real genius that is to follow. Somewhere in Your Heart turns it up a notch both in scope and intensity. Heat of the Night leads you even further down this path and then they give it to you full on with both barrels with and epic anthem of American youth, the unparalleled When You re Young. I defy you to listen to that one without turning it up way loud and recalling your teens/early twenties, especially if you hit that stage in the eighties. Then there s a little relief with the ballad In Her Eyes, but not much because, while the pace slows, the intensity remains high. Then we get the angst ridden I m Getting Out which speaks universally our human frustrations. A beautifully plaintive song follows with Don t Walk Away. Back between the eyes with Time, alternately semi-soft with Little by Little, and the final cut from the original album, Don t Stop Me Now, which will have you so fired up, you ll be ready to conquer the world. The CD throws in a ocuple bonus tracks, which are weak by comparison, but if they were on a Survivor or REO Speedwagon album, they would rule it. Thanks for throwing them in. True, this is not their last album, but it is the last album with lead vocalist Gary West, whose voice and emotional range was the perfect match for this group. Later efforts had lost the magic. In short, this album is the pinnacle of AOR, more than just rock and roll, it s meaningful and speaks to us in a way other AOR groups rarely even attempted and certainly never succeeded. GET IT and you will have a new lease on your youth as well as one more injustice to rail against--that these guys never got their due.