Richie Ranno from Starz comes on the show and we take an in-depth look at their 1978 album Attention Shoppers!
Review from Allmusic.com:
Arguably, pop-metal is a form of power pop, or, at the very least, the two have some things in common. Like the Raspberries, the Go-Go's, or Blondie, a pop-metal act will typically blend rockin', guitar-powered aggression with pop sensibilities. Cheap Trick and Sweet,in fact, are perfect examples of bands that are relevant to both pop-metal and power pop. So it seemed logical when Starz provided a bigndose of outright power pop on its third album, Attention Shoppers!. The band didn't eliminate the pop-metal factor on this 1978 LP; "X-RaynSpex" and "Good Ale We Seek," for example, are the type of pop-mindednhard rock items that one expected from Starz. But tunes like "I'll BenThere," "She" (not to be confused with the Kiss favorite), and "Hold on to the Night" are power pop ditties that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Raspberries session; this isn't to say that Attention Shoppers! is in a class with the Raspberries'nbest work. Starz's third album isn't a masterpiece, but it's competentnand enjoyable. Further, Starz deserves credit for trying somethingndifferent and not turning this LP into a carbon copy of Starz or Violation.
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3 thoughts on “Classic Albums Revisited – Starz Attention Shoppers w/Richie Ranno – RnR Geek Show 381”
Your not alone on this release Mike!
ATTENTION SHOPPERS is one of my faves as well!!!
I bought VIOLATION a few days ago and love it. I can’t wait to hear this album and their other two!
Great piece of rock journalism. I had all the Starz albums back in the day. Actually I think I had Shoppers on cassette. I remember the production as sub-par compared to the first two but your copy sounded great. I guess that’s either because of the remaster or my crappy cassette deck. I’ll still stick with the harder-hitting Violation as my favorite Starz record. Thanks to Richie for sharing his memories about a classic record!
Interesting point about debut albums versus later albums. I generally prefer second, third and fourth records – i think because the songs were written together over a shorter amount of time they work together better as a whole. Tough to find any bands still making great records after their fourth or fifth release.