Ric’s Quick Picks (replacing my original title – Ricki’s Quickies – which I deemed needlessly provocative and double entrendre-esque) will run as midweek fillers in Pencil Storm throughout April as I shake off my winter torpor. (Jesus Christ! Was it just me or did March last for SIX MONTHS this year?)
The idea of RQP will be specific topics with a lot of videos and VERY little of my normal over-the-top, verbose, what-is-this-guy-ON-about? verbal overload.
Closing out April - In 1975 I read an article in Bomp! magazine about a band called The Hollywood Stars. I never actually HEARD that band until the 21st century on YouTube. Presented here are DEMO versions of two of their tunes later recorded by Alice Cooper and KISS in full-blown million-dollar studio versions produced by Bob Ezrin. I’ll leave it to you to decide which versions are better. (By the way, I saw Alice Cooper - with Ted Nugent opening - at Vet’s Memorial in Columbus in 1971, and KISS in 1977 at St. John’s Arena on the O.S.U. campus, where they made me start taking drugs.)
THE HOLLYWOOD STARS / ESCAPE / 1974
ALICE COOPER / ESCAPE / 1975
THE HOLLYWOOD STARS / KING OF THE NIGHT TIME WORLD / 1974
KISS / KING OF THE NIGHT TIME WORLD / 1976
Sidebar to the 1975 Bomp! article referred to above, written by Lisa Fancher; then a 15-year old L.A. girl who liked bands, now the owner of Frontier Records.
(Readers will note the opening act at this show was Journey. What I wouldn’t give if The Hollywood Stars had made it huge rather than those stiffs.)
Ricki C. is 72 years old. He was 33 in the summer of 1975 when he bought the copy of BOMP! magazine this Hollywood Stars article was in at a Schoolkids record store in Ann Arbor, MI. during a little Midwest vacation jaunt. BOMP! was his Gateway Drug to New York Rocker and the Back Door Man fanzine and kinda to the Universe of Punk-Rock in general. He treasures that magazine (and the issues that followed) to this day. Thank you Greg Shaw. RIP.