The Romeos? Never heard of them.

Digging through the 50 cent bins at Everyday Music in Portland, I found a variety of little gems this weekend.  By 'gems' I mean things I wouldn't have bought for much more than 50 cents.  In the mix, a Barry Manilow album with Copacabana on it, the first Captain and Tennille album (as a gift for a friend), and an album from 1980 called "Rock and Roll and Love and Death" by a pop/rock band called The Romeos.  I'd never heard of them, but I liked the cover, so I gave it a shot.  I'd love to share it with you here, only I haven't been able to find any of the songs on that album on youtube.  Crazy, right?  But here's a representative one of theirs, called "Crazy No More":  

Both the sound of this band and the title of their album remind me of an old Godfathers album I've enjoyed over the years called "Birth, School, Work, Death," as well as some Replacements tunes.  It's all in that '80s rock/alternative rock transition time, maybe.  Is "Rock" even a genre by itself any more?  I mean, it's a style of music, but it seems like the moment a band emerges in that style, they're immediately maneuvered into a narrower, more easily described genre or subgenre, like punk, pop, metal, prog, lofi, goth, etc.  When I think if "Rock" bands, I think of the Godfathers:

And the Replacements: