Disco de Starship: “Knee Deep In The Hoopla”

Starship caught a bad rap, even my own father, when I was about 9, asked "what the hell happened to Grace Slick to sing this crap" but it's a good album.

Grace WAS the oldest FEMALE vocalist with a #1 hit. When "We Built This City hit #1-she was 46 years and 17 days old. The previous record was Tina Turner from the year before (she was 45 years 10 months when "What's Love Got To Do With It" topped the charts). Then Grace broke HER OWN record in '87 with "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" at almost 48 years old!

To Cher's credit, she DID break the record in 1999.

If you, like me, find humor in extremely hideous 80's music, this is a perfect cd for you. I honestly cannot listen to ten seconds of "We Built this City" without a smile gushing from my face. In all practical musical senses, I'd give this cd a resounding 1, but for entertainment purposes, a 5. Average them, and you get 3 stars, just what I rated it.

Here's my advice for anyone who buys it on its humor merit: play it in your car as loud as possible while driving through a city. You'll definately turn some heads and get some weird looks. I guess they're just jealous that you're the coolest person in the galaxy!

Another great buy is Asia's "Then and Now." Between these two cds, you'll have enough over-produced, cheesy 80's music to last you a life time. And you'll never get sick of annoying people with it. Trust me, if you're like me, its well worth it.

The strange thing about the songs on this album, which I am sure that most people who are Generation X can relate to, are that this is an album that you may have hated when it came out, but love today, due to the fact that the 80's were the last definitive decade of music in the 20th Century.

When I first heard "We Built This City" on the radio, and found that Jefferson Starship had changed its name to Starship, I lamented the death of the 70's sound of this group, and thought that this song was obnoxious, repetitive and just plain stupid. With that said, about 5 years later, I saw a used copy of this CD, and bought it. I'm sure that a lot of people in their 30's today came of age when this album came out, and hearing "We Built This City" and "Sara" really took me back to that period in my life. I only wish I could go back to 1985 again . . .

The quality of the songs on this album are passable, and one can easily tell that there are a group of songwriters writing for the group at this period of this group's long history. However, there are some songs that are very likeable -- Before I Go, Hearts Of The World Will Understand, Sara, and just maybe "We Built This City" -- not for it's songwriting merit, but simply because it is such an 80's song.

I have been meaning to review this album for a long time, and what finally reminded me was hearing an awesome rendition of "We Built This City" in the new Rock of Ages movie (excellent movie might I add).

First off, I am a 26 year old who LOVES most music from the 80s (Journey and Toto are 2 of my all time favorite bands). So naturally most music from that era is awesome in my opinion. What makes this album worthy of 5 stars is not only the songs, but also the production values of the album itself.

Mickey Thomas does an amazing job singing the tunes, and it is also very refreshing to hear Grace Slick as well.

Every song on the album is filled with great singing, catchy hooks, and synth keyboards. The best songs are the first three ("We Built This City," "Sara," and "Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight."

So, if you are a long time fan of 80s music, plus love hearing anything from Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship, then definitely give this one a whirl.

As far as albums that represent the 80s pop/rock scene go, you'd be hard-pressed to find one that tops this album. Starship, which began as Jefferson Airplane way back in the 60s took a lot of flak from old fans for this but I think those fans failed to see the bigger picture. I mean it's not as if they kept their old name and identity; remember Duran Duran and Power Station? Grace Slick and the gang were giving their old fans a big hint in changing their name from Jefferson Airplane, to Jefferson Starship to Starship that they were not to expect the same output at each different incarnation. You have to allow bands to experiment and expecting Starship to sound like Jefferson Airplane is naive at best. Musicians can get bored sometimes and so you have to allow them the leeway to indulge in other pleasures as Starship as done here as Power Station was for Duran Duran.

You could argue that originality songwriting-wise is lacking though as only 1 track was written by any of the band members and that track just happens to be one of the poorer ones here i.e. "Private Room". However, an all-time songwriting great, Bernie Taupin who wrote the lyrics to most of Elton John's best songs had a hand in the big hit "We Built This City" and "Love Rusts". Peter Wolf from the J. Geils Band fame had a hand in the former track as well as on the monster hit "Sara" which happens to be my favourite track here as well.

This mini-lp replica sleeve version isn't the best quality cardboard used and certainly not the best assembled one that I've ever seen. The inner sleeve though faithfully represents the original lp and also included is a booklet of 24 pages which contain all the lyrics in both English and Japanese. Most importantly, the sound quality is very good; too bad the mlps isn't as good quality though which is the big letdown here.

Content-wise, commercial pop/rock never sounded so good! This was one of my favourite albums of my teenage days and now listening to it again after all these years, I'm amazed that I still like it very, very much. "We Built This City", "Sara", "Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight", "Desperate Heart", "Before I Go", "Hearts of the World" and "Love Rusts" still sound very good today.

If only all "sell-outs" could sound this good!