I caught Shooting Star live a few times and at some point I got my LP autographed by the whole band.

There is obvious stand-out 'single' material, but this is a consistently strong album from beginning to end. I used to open the sunroof of my car, put this cassette in and just drive - and lose myself in these songs. This is simply one of the best albums from the 1980s.

Now I understand how tragic it was for such a great band to be relegated as such. At the time I was just glad to get spare copies of such a great record for a great price. This should have been Shooting Star's breakthrough album.So was the story for their sophmore release 'Hang On For Your Life'and/or 'Burnin'' (which was produced by Journey producer Kevin Elson who was responsible for'Escape' &'Frontiers') Having finished working with Heart on their successful comeback debut on Capitol Records,Ron Nevison was given the job of producing 'Silent Scream'(He also was the engineer on Zeppelin's opus 'Physical Grafitti' along with Bad Company's 'Straight Shooter' as well as producing for rock heavyweights UFO &The Babys).Nevison sets the mid to late Eighties standards of production with the catchy first single'Summer Sun'.the pop friendly synth dominated 'Heat of the Night',the rocking 'When You're Young'.Other enjoyable rockers include'I'm Getting Out','Time'.'Don't Stop Me Now','Get Ready Boy' (from the 1984 movie soundtrack 'Up the Creek')&'Take It'.Best of the ballads include 'Don't Walk Away','In Her Eyes'& maybe 'Somewhere In Your Heart'.But the problem lies with record company executives who didn't know how or didn't even give a rat's ass about getting the exposure that they got cheated out of.But at the moment the album was released and hopes were high about a possible breakthrough ,David Geffen fired all of the music promoters at Geffen causing lead vocalist Gary West to quit because of his frustration over the way the music business operated at the time.So was the same reason why original bassist Ron Verlain left after the previous album 'Burnin''which went nowhere.This is a band who should have had the same level of success as Journey,Foreigner,Styx ,Kansas but these record company executive pricks got in the way or were they just plain stupid or blind?Which begs the question why are talented groups like Shooitng Star passed over for untalented poseurs like Motley Crap,Blond Joki,Poson et al? The answer is image over substance,talent and class.īack in the 80s I got a copy of this LP and later got two cassette copies from the 'cutout' bin.

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