Unsung Heroes of LA Rock & Roll: The Quick's 'Mondo Deco' is Reissued

The Quick, Mondo Deco (Radio Heartbeat Records; www.radioheartbeat.net)

The Quick

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In this nostalgia-mad music era, when seemingly everything worthwhile has already been rediscovered and fully explained a long time ago, it's more than a little ironic that a band called the Quick had to wait three decades for its debut (and only) album to get back in print, with a recent vinyl reissue on Radio Heartbeat. It's even more surprising because Mondo Deco, originally released by Mercury Records in 1976, is more than just a great lost rock album. It's a great rock album, period -- and certainly the most perversely intelligent power-pop record from the L.A. scene in the 1970s.

Despite the Quick's long, slow slide into semi-oblivion following their breakup in 1978, the quintet's initial rise to legitimate near-stardom was, indeed, quick. Not long after forming in late 1974, the San Fernando Valley teenagers made a demo and drew the attention of Runaways manager Kim Fowley. At the time, in the dead zone between the end of glitter and before the start of punk, there were only a few nightclubs -- mainly for cover bands like Van Halen -- so the Quick had to literally create their own scene from scratch.

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Their short, snappy name -- which seems so plain and ordinary now, especially compared to the flashier, bloodier names of the punk groups that would soon follow them -- was clearly an homage to such early influences as the Move and the Kinks. But not even Ray Davies had a worldview as wickedly sarcastic as Teutonic-obsessed Quick guitarist Steven Hufsteter, who was penning Randy Newman-type satires like "Master Race" and "Hi Lo," where the hero tries to seduce his girlfriend with pickup lines like "We can pretend that you're Miss Braun," cleverly conflating fascism and romance several years before Elvis Costello did much the same thing in "Two Little Hitlers."

The son of the legendary trumpeter Steve Huffsteter (whose last name is spelled slightly differently), Hufsteter was the Quick's answer to Pete Townshend, playing slashing guitar and writing most of the songs, while the angelic-voiced Danny Wilde (who'd go on to more fame with the Rembrandts, singing the theme to Friends) was the front man. Hufsteter was so prolific that most of his best songs didn't even end up on Mondo Deco. He had at least two albums' worth of brilliant unreleased demos and live originals by the time the Quick broke up, only about half of which were released in 2003 on the similarly essential collection Untold Rock Stories (on the British label Rev-Ola).

In fact, the Quick's most famous song, "Pretty Please," was never officially released during the band's existence. Available only on a 1978 fan-club single -- and, much later, on Untold Rock Stories and the early-'90s Rhino Records compilation D.I.Y.: We're Desperate: The L.A. Scene (1976-79) -- the relentlessly compelling "Pretty Please" received heavy airplay on Rodney on the Roq and was later covered by Redd Kross and the Dickies (the latter of whom started out as the Quick's roadies, took some of their songs, sped them up to hardcore tempos and became much more popular).

The Dickies weren't the only ones who noticed that the Quick were up to something unusual and potentially profitable. In the liner notes to Untold Rock Stories, Quick drummer Danny Benair (who played in the '80s with the Three O'Clock) points out that Cheap Trick's Bun E. Carlos used to bring a tape recorder to Quick sets, which isn't that wild of an accusation when one compares Hufsteter's solos and chord changes on certain mid-'70s live Quick recordings to suspiciously similar Cheap Trick tracks that came out later. Of course, Cheap Trick were notorious plagiarists ("Taxman, Mr. Thief"), but usually their borrowing worked as tributes to their acknowledged heroes the Beatles and the Move. What hasn't been acknowledged, however, is how much the Quick may have directly inspired some of Cheap Trick's famous arrangements.

With Fowley's help, the Quick were signed to Mercury by A&R man Denny Rosencrantz, who'd previously signed the Runaways. Mondo Deco was recorded at the Beach Boys' Brother Studios by producer Earle Mankey (Concrete Blonde, the Runaways, Possum Dixon), the founding guitarist of Sparks, one of the Quick's chief influences. According to Benair's new liner notes, none other than Carl Wilson was impressed by the Quick's harmonies. Fowley was given co-production credit, although he reportedly spent little time in the recording studio since he was apparently preoccupied with chasing the Runaways around.

Perhaps out of sheer chutzpah, Mondo Deco starts with an astonishing, super-sugary and super-glittery remake of the Beatles' "It Won't Be Long," where Wilde's insanely high vocals make Lennon & McCartney come off like Barry White. Some of his high-flying acrobatics were doubtless the result of studio trickery, such as speeding up the track, but there's no denying that Wilde was a powerful singer onstage and in the studio, with a soaring, seemingly limitless upper end.