Pretty Rough - Got the Fire

I actually don't remember picking this up. I was sorting through the rather intimidating pile of albums waiting for a spin and this looked interesting in a nondescript and inoffensive way. The cover reminded me a little of Bruce Cockburn's '84 album Stealing Fire. I said reminded, if you're going to do an A/B comparison they aren't that similar at all.

Anyway, I was farting around in the basement cleaning records, and I figured I'd put it on. I didn't look at the credits on the back, I just plopped it on the platter and let it spin. Right off the bat the first track "Hold On" the band had my attention. This was the kind of polished rock and roll that still gets the little hairs on my arm to stand up.

As the first side played through I kept trying to figure out who the band sounded like. Vocally there's a little Stephen Pearcy from RATT, mixed with Kenny Shields from Streetheart, and musically this is pretty standard early '80s AOR, and sounds a bit like Headpins / Chilliwack with a little Aldo Nova thrown in for fun. The guitar work really sounded like Brian "Too Loud" MacLeod, which I found a bit disconcerting but cool too. In short, this was pretty awesome.

Of course after playing it through a couple of times I had to satisfy my curiosity and I didn't recognize any of the names of the guys in the band (who I will list because you can applaud a little when I mention their names).

• Vocals, Tim Peterson
• Guitar, Terry Reeves
• Guitar and vocals, Jack Murray
• Drums and vocals, Dave Hiebert
• Bass and vocals, Randy Lloyd

I know it's unlikely anyone will see this as my page is still google averse to being indexed. That what you get for using a google product to blog ... it can't figure out what to do with something it created. Still the guys really swung for the fences and it's a shame this didn't catch on.

Now the credit I did recognize and the one that made things make sense musically was the producer. Brian MacLeod. The songs have his fingerprints all over this thing from start to finish. Brian is thanked for providing keyboards, but man the guitar tone is pure MacLeod and I just can't see him dialing in his sound and then letting Terry and Jack try and copy his style. 

Who knows, but my goodness it is uncanny.

Regardless, the album works more than it doesn't. The rock tunes are where things stand out. The opening track "Hold On" is really good, and "Tearin' in Up" is pretty awesome. The second side just kept things burning along. One of my favourites was "Action" as well as the album's closer the mid tempo attempt at a radio friendly single that was never a single "You Got the Fire" that has the big vocals, and guitars. The only track that I didn't care for as much was "Trouble Boys" which for all that was still good fun ... it's just the voice over sort of stuck a stick in the bike spokes. Yeah, I'm shitting on a decision the band made forty years ago.

It's strange that this has been buried. I tried to find it to stream, and like so many albums on RCA (A&M is another great place to bury old albums by Canadian artists) hasn't bothered to put it up. 1984 was a great year for rock, but it was also right around the time rock and roll was transitioning from rock, to glam rock ... or hair metal, or whatever you want to call it and for whatever reason these guys were neither fish nor foul and got left behind.

The band made two albums, with Got the Fire being their second. I tried to find out more about the band, but there's not much out there which is a shame.

I really liked this