Iron City Houserockers
The Iron City Houserockers were an American rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that existed from the late 1970s until 1985.
They were, for a period of a couple of years in the early eighties, one of the great "Shoulda-beens" in the history of rock and roll.
Led by singer/guitarist Joe Grushecky, the Houserockers were lumped into the same heartland rock genre as the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bob Seger and John Mellencamp.
Started in the late seventies as the Brick Alley Band by Grushecky, a high school special education teacher in Pittsburgh, the band was a fairly typical bar band, distinguished by Grushecky's taut, focused songs about life in the open hearth and a distinctive, harmonica-and-guitar driven sound owing much to the Rolling Stones, but which seemed to borrow a lot of the thrashy fury of punk rock.
Released in 1979, their debut album Love's So Tough was a rough, cheap-sounded production - but it hinted at great things to come. Standout cuts included "Dance With Me" and "I Can't Take It".
The band's follow-up album Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive) is recognized by many as a classic [1]: raw and impassioned, it is not a perfect album, but its flaws are both fascinating and much less than the sum of the high points. Production was credited to Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson, although much of the album was produced by an uncredited Steven Van Zandt.
The Houserockers' third album, Blood On The Bricks, is a bit more restrained, but a lot richer and more consistent; for the first time, Grushecky's ballads measure up to his faster anthems. Produced by American soul-rock legend Steve Cropper, the album crackles with restrained intensity.
The band then changed its name to simply The Houserockers to avoid the geographic ghetto that the "Iron City" moniker had put them in. It also shed harmonica player Marc Reisman, and saw Gil Snyder adding synthesizers to his trademark piano and organ. The subsequent album, Cracking Under Pressure, like all the band's previous efforts, drew critical raves - but didn't sell much. The band was dropped from MCA Records shortly after the album's release, and broke up a few months later.
Lineup
- Joe Grushecky - Rhythm Guitar
- Gary Scalese - Lead Guitar (first album)
- Eddie Britt - Lead Guitar (subsequent albums)
- Art Nardini - Bass
- Gil Snyder - Keyboards, Accordion
- Ned Rankin - Drums
- Marc Reisman - Harmonica (first three albums)
Discography
Albums
- 1979 Love's So Tough
- 1980 Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive) [re-released on CD]
- 1981 Blood on the Bricks
- 1983 Cracking Under Pressure