VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Hollywood Stars, a group originally assembled in 1973 by rock impresario Kim Fowley, will have their long-lost Sound City album issued on vinyl for the first time May 20. Recorded in 1976, the album was shelved for 43 years, finally reappearing for its CD debut in 2019. The LP will be released by Liberation Hall.
Fowley secured a deal for the Stars with Columbia Records at the height of the glam rock era, but due to A&R shuffles their debut album went unreleased. It wasn’t until 2013 that it resurfaced as Shine Like a Radio: The Great Lost 1974 Album. Upon its arrival, Record Collector magazine bestowed the LP five stars and called it “one of the most vital reissues of the year.”
Shine Like a Radio remains an evocative encapsulation of the glitter rock scene, crackling with the power pop drive of the Sweet and the Move, and the glam swagger of Cockney Rebel and Hunky Dory-era David Bowie. After the band’s first lineup split in 1974, two of the Stars’ compositions found major success with other artists of the era: “Escape” surfaced on Alice Cooper’s platinum-selling Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) while “King of the Night Time World” appeared on a pair of multiplatinum-selling albums by Kiss, Destroyer (1976) and Kiss Alive II (1977).
After a year-long hiatus, the Stars returned in their second version in 1976. Mark Anthony—the songwriter alongside Fowley of “Escape” and “King of the Night Time World”—rose in the ranks to become the group’s lead vocalist, as well as continue in his prior roles of rhythm guitarist and primary songwriter.
Other members of the Stars at the time were Ruben De Fuentes (guitar), Michael Rummans (bass), and Terry Rae and Bobby Drier (both drums). Fowley introduced the band to Canadian musician/producer Neil Merryweather and time was booked at the famed Sound City Recording Studios in Van Nuys, CA to cut new material. The resulting sessions yielded ten tracks, including the power pop anthem “All the Kids on the Street” and the AOR-targeted “Sunrise on Sunset.” These ten tracks comprise Sound City.
Upon its CD release in 2019, Shindig! magazine wrote “There are raunchy rockers and crowd-pleasing anthems aplenty with ‘All the Kids on the Street’ as fine an example of power pop perfection as one is likely to encounter,” while Goldmine magazine proclaimed” Sound City is everything you could want it to be, a bruising barrage of ten songs in little more than half an hour… the Stars certainly had a better grasp of what made glam rock glitter than the majority of their peers.”
The Hollywood Stars are currently still active in southern California and released a new digital single, “The Bottom,” in February.
