Sound City

The history of rock & roll is filled with stories of bands who should have been successful but never quite made it into the spotlight. By all rights, the Hollywood Stars should have hit the big time in the mid-'70s if a series of blunders committed by their management and record companies hadn't hobbled them before they could take off. The Hollywood Stars' 1977 album on Arista was an over-produced miscalculation, but when a rough mix of an early attempt at cutting an LP that was shelved got a belated release in 2013 as Shine Like a Radio: The Great Lost 1974 Album, it was embraced by fans of classic power pop who dug their clever, hooky tunes, no-nonsense guitar attack, and playful sense of swagger. A second "lost" Hollywood Stars LP surfaced in 2019, and if Sound City isn't as impressive as Shine Like a Radio, it sounds even more like the work of a band who had star quality to spare if they were simply allowed to do what they did best. Roughly half of the songs on Sound City also appeared on the 1977 Arista album, but they appear here in simpler, less-cluttered form, with the arrangements direct and to the point, and the production lean and more closely reflecting the group's live sound. These sessions suggest the Hollywood Stars had been listening to more hard rock, with more gingerbread in the guitar solos, and the mildly punky side of their approach had been smoothed out, with a friendlier, more arena-ready tone to the music. Where Shine Like a Radio captured the sound of a band who could have been Cheap Trick's distant cousins, Sound City is the work of a group who had more in common with the Raspberries, the Scruffs, and Blue Ash. But two years of steady live work had also made the Hollywood Stars a tighter band with more showmanship, and if these takes of "All the Kids on the Street," "I Can't Help It," and "Escape" had made it to radio in 1976, this group's story could have had a very different ending -- they're top-notch power pop while still boasting mainstream appeal. Sound City isn't as much of a revelation as Shine Like a Radio, but it shows that the good, raucous fun of the 1974 sessions wasn't a fluke, and it's another reminder of just how badly Arista dropped the ball when they put too much polish on this band. ~ Mark Deming