Updated May 6, 1999
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Published Thursday, May 6, 1999
The discs arrived last month and the first and second orders of 300 are sold. The third is going fast.
"I want to sell 1,000," said vocalist Joe Albanese of Hermitage. "To break 1,000 around here would be pretty cool."
"TargetEarth" is 10 songs and 35 minutes of riff rock.
"I like to have a lot of guitars in it, because I hate to buy an album and it's all done by a machine," said guitarist Bob Reaver of Sharpsville. "Nobody wants to play anymore."
Rick Simons' drums and Bill Daugherty's bass match Reaver power chord for power chord. Albanese tops it all with confident vocals that move from macho to melodramatic to boozy, depending on the song.
Songs range from the radio friendly pop rock of "What Would It Take" to the road-trip ready "Rattlesnake Hiss."
Weekend gigs have earned the band its following, forcing it to abandon some of the smaller clubs it used to play because of the growing crowds.
"People might think it's easy to stand up there and earn a couple hundred bucks a night but it's work," Albanese said "At the end of the night my voice is shot, his (Simons') arms are ready to fall off and his (Reaver's) fingers are bleeding. It's cool, it's fun, but it's hard work. You have to be determined."
The band mixes influences from early Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to Bush and Alice in Chains, without following any particular trend, Reaver said. "You do what you do, and maybe in time it will come around to what you do," he said of popular tastes.
But the band is willing to take into account what its fans want to hear.
"We're trying to get a feel of what people like on the disc and we'll go that way," Reaver said. "If people like the heavier stuff, we'll play that. It's all our style."
The band was started by Reaver and Simons, of Hartford, and was peopled by several bassists and vocalists before Daugherty and Albanese stuck.
"We were thinking who is the best for us ...'' Reaver said, with Daugherty, of Sharon, adding: "and who we could get along with."
The musicians are dedicated to Trash Poets and hope that their fortunes follow other bands that have managed to stay together.
"It seems whoever lasts the longest does the best," Reaver said.
"You only get out of a band the amount of work you put into it," Albanese added.