I've got a promo copy of this record. I would bet just about everyone outside of Pittsburgh has only ever seen a promo copy of this. I actually ran across it in a Half Price Books recently and they wanted $8.00 for it. No way! It's a decent enough late 70's blast of midwestern Rawk, it's not super collectible or anything. You can find them at record shows for two or three bucks all the time. I must have liked mine at the time, because it's a little noisy here and there, but I'm gonna stick with it.The Houserocker with the biggest claim to fame is Joe Grushecky. He's still out there plugging away in Pittsburgh and I know a guy that still goes to see him. The drummer was Art Nardini, and I'm sure his brother was Norman, he of the Tigers. When push comes to shove, my being a Clevelander probably means I should like my local guys better than these guys, but that's just silly. I have more Iron City Houserockers albums than I do Michael Stanley Band albums, for good reason.
That good reason is that while these guys can be a little heavy handed and plodding, when they're good, they're a lean and tight Rock N' Roll band. The band was managed by Cleveland International, so that means Steve Popovich, and I have to say that I'm surprised how dense this record sounds. It's not like these guys were studio pro's, but Popovich always seemed to know what he was doing. So my bitch about this album is pretty much related to sound. These guys were obviously a bar band, and this record quite solidly reinforces that. The production has no subtlety whatsoever, and the piano and harmonica could have used a little more air around them so they could shine a little more.
But that may have been part of the style of that midwestern sound back then. If there's anything that's similar I'd think it's the Pub Rock scene of which I'm so fond of. The bands in both scenes are singing about things that really happen to real people and the biggest difference seems to be that the midwestern scene had this huge specter of Bruce Springsteen hanging over them. Fortunately, The Iron City Houserockers played up their guitars more than Springsteen did. If you like guitars, there's plenty of them on this album, and the production favors them over all else.
The songs hold up pretty well, even after all these years. Maybe it's because they weren't shooting for that arena sound (except maybe on Hideaway, which is still pretty good), and they generally kept the arrangements the same as they probably sounded at the bars around Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Youngstown four nights a week. I've really got to hand it to them on Turn It Up. It's a quintessential midwestern blues rocker, carrying all the heavy lyrical weight of turning up the rock n' roll and forgetting about your boss for awhile. It's also the best recorded song on the record.
I think it's funny that these days it's like this music never happened (sometimes). But it was there, and it was fun. A lot of people that listened to this kind of stuff liked Punk, but might just as easily be found at a blues festival the next weekend. It was a funny music scene around here then, and people seemed to pride themselves in being eclectic (though how eclectic are you really when you listen to guitar based rock n' roll?). It's too bad more people never got a chance to hear these guys, because their next album was terrific.
