I feel like I should know at least one Donnie Iris hit, but I don't recognize anything I've heard of his that comes up on a google search.

I could swear I remember his name from back on the America's Top 40 radio show with Kasey Kasem because the late 70s/early 80s is the era that I listened to it the most, and also when he was most prolific.

Perhaps you're thinking of Love is like a Rock?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcbndNeCO-s

Love Is Like A Rock is indeed a rockin' track! Thank you! It does sound vaguely familiar.

Looking at Iris' Wikipedia page, his singles didn't reach too far up the Billboard 100, which is what the Top 40 show used.

So his music wouldn't have reached saturation levels where I would have heard it outside of Kasem's show.

And we didn't have specialized rock stations in Hong Kong at the time.

The mostly-British expatriate kids at my school were mostly into edgy "heavy metal" bands like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, that kind of thing, so a US mainstream rocker like Donnie Iris wouldn't have been on their music radar either.