Starz

Here's a band I forgot about. They never really hit the big time that I know of. I only remember seeing a picture of their drummer with his '70s really big concert tom and lots of cymbals drum set, sorta like if Peter Criss' and Neil Peart's drums got married and had a kid. I really don't remember any of their songs. Which is too bad, because they recorded some pretty cool stuff. A neat mix of Thin Lizzy, Foghat, and Sweet, then throw in some British pop Badfingerish hooks. I was intrigued enough to buy their Brightest Starz anthology on iTunes. iTunes suggested it to me in the Just for You thingy.

I was there buying Peter Tosh's Wanted Dread & Alive album, which has a beautiful song called Fools Die. I originally recorded it off the record that I borrowed from that guy Mike (?) with dreadlocks that lived down the hall in Burge back in '82/'83. Wasn't he a DJ at KRUI? I digitized it off my tape about 5 years ago because iTunes didn't have it and I could never find the CD in the stores when I thought about looking. I've been living with the horrible tape hiss from the standard quality "low noise" tape it was on (again, somebody must've given me a pack for xmas), which is very noticeable in that song, because there's so much space. But now I have a pristine copy, and the rest of the album is great too.

Update: Holy crapparoni. Starz still sounded really good in 2004. And the soundman that mixed the feed for the video deserves not just a cookie, but a whole box of 'em. This is one of the best captures of a live mix I've heard for such a relatively small band without the big bucks.