Starz - Live In Action (1989)

During the Seventies when disco and punk were the rage, only a handful of bands were daring enough to play hard rock and heavy metal music. "You could almost count those bands on one hand," said Starz lead guitarist Richie Ranno. "They were Aerosmith, KISS, Queen, Ted Nugent, Starz and Angel. We kept the flame alive between the original hard rock groups and heavy metal today."

All together Starz recorded four studio albums, Starz, Violation, Attention Shoppers, and Colesium Rock and gathered critical acclaim with their ability to mesh the smooth with the hard. "We loved pop melodies," admitted Ranno in retrospect, "and we also loved heavy guitars. We liked to combine hooks with a harder edge. Our singer Michael Lee Smith had a great sense of melody. In the course of four albums, we only used orchestrations or keyboards once, preferring to mix heavy rock productions with melodic overtones."

Their success has been documented in the historical chapters of hard rock and heavy metal. In Kerrang's critical listing of the 100 greatest heavy metal albums of all time, Starz was listed at ..94, with Violation at ..84. In a similar poll in Hit Parader magazine, Violation was listed at ..82. Starz's greatest asset was their live performance and until a chance meeting between Metal Blade's founder and Starz guitarist Richie Ranno, one of rock's greatest secrets was buried in the archives. At the height of their career, Starz released a special "radio only" live record intended for broadcast, bot not liscenced for sale. It was called Live In Louisville and only a scant 2,000 copies were pressed. It was heralded by Kerrang as the greatest live record never released!

This Disc Is Live Material Recorded @ That Loiusville Show, & From The Cleveland Agora

1(She's Just A) Fallen Angel
2Tear It Down
3Live Wire
4Monkey Business
5Detroit Girls
6She
7Rock Six Times
8Subway Terror
9Cool One
10X Ray Specs
11Cherry Baby
12Waiting on You/Greatest Riffs of All Time/Coliseum Rock
13Pull the Plug
14Boys in Action

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