You all know about The Runaways. The Runaways were Kim Fowley’s gift to the world of rock. It was his jail-bait and rock exploit, and it worked well, quite well, in fact. Made up of Cherie Currie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Jackie Fox (to start out with), The Runaways created some explosive albums, especially the first two.
The man behind the girls, Kim Fowley, is a character of LA, most notably the legendary Sunset Strip of the ’70s. His influence in Rock and Roll then was somewhat elevated, and his assembly of The Runaways lent more credibility to him than might have been attributed otherwise.
Mercury Records enjoyed Fowley’s all-girl creation because of the excitable album sales. They were also more than willing to let him try the same kind of magic with an all-boy band, a kind of counterpart to The Runaways.
Arriving in 1976, a mere year later than the girls, The Quick, also on Mercury Records released Mondo Deco. But, unlike The Runaways, The Quick failed to gain the attention and was pretty much dead on arrival. But what does that say about Mondo Deco, the band’s one album? If you ask me, the album was overlooked…sadly overlooked.
The band’s five members (Danny Wilde, Steve Hufsteter, Billy Bizeau, Ian Ainsworth,and Danny Benair) were solid musicians. They produced a New Wave sound of power pop that simply played well. Of them all, Steve Hufsteter, gained the most footing in Rock with his addition to The Cruzados. The other members of the band went on to varying levels of success within the industry for that time.
I still wonder how this album didn’t gain too much ground. With songs like the amazing “punked up” version of Lennon/McCartney’s “It Won’t Be Long” (viewable below in a lip-synced TV promo clip ), and the album’s other similar songs, “Anybody”, “Hillary”, “Playtime”, “Ragdoll”, and any of the remaining five gems, there was ten songs to love.
Mondo Deco was likely off your radar. And thus the reason for this article. The Quick had excellent promise as a power pop band, but were greatly overshadowed partially because of their counterparts (The Runaways), but also because they never toured outside California, and then again, never too far away from their native LA.
Mondo Deco is not an easy album to find in either its original LP form or any of the several reissue CDs. Not impossible, just not easy. A quick search on YouTube will at least take you to several studio versions from Mondo Deco.
I hope you’re interested if you hadn’t know about The Quick. Then I’ve done my job for the day.