Retro Spins: Starship - Knee Deep In The Hoopla



This album was on my want list for quite some time before I finally took the plunge on it. I'm not sure why it took me so long to get around to it. I know part of it was I didn't want to pay more than five bucks for it, but other than that, I really don't have an excuse for the delay.

Starship gets a lot of flack for their song, We Built This City. Some sites claim it to be one of the worst 80's songs ever made. I don't know why. I think it's pretty rockin'. The band had one plan in mind when they began working on the record - create hits, make money. I don't hate them for this. At the time of its release, the members were already in their mid-forty's. They'd spent a lifetime on the road living the sex, drugs and rock n' roll life. Now they wanted to make the cash to retire on.

Between the aforementioned song and Sarah, I think they pulled this off.

Knee Deep In The Hoopla is a solid album. It's got slick guitars, strong drums, a decent bass riff and sporadically, but well used synths. It's definitely an 80's album thru and thru, which only adds all the more to its appeal. Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick's vocals work well on their solo tracks, and all the more when working in duet form.

I won't go as far to call every song fantastic. However, I also didn't hear anything that I cringed sitting through. Like I said above, it's solid.

About the only disappointing aspect about this album is that it eventually led to the Jefferson Airplane reunion, which gave birth to their 1989 self titled record. It's here that we got to see the legendary greats sing about how they, "Love planes, experimental aircraft!" Yeah...It's as bad as it sounds, and the video only serves to be all the more worse. This is a perfect example of why the phrase, "Quit while you're ahead," exists.

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2 comments:

  1. I didn't like "We Built this City" at first because they played it so much. Now, it is one of my favorites. Have not listened to the rest of the album though, except for Sarah.

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