The first local band I ever saw was House of Large Sizes — that is, if you count Cedar Falls as local.

It was the summer before my senior year of high school and a couple of friends and I decided to head over to the Iowa Cubs stadium to check out what was being dubbed the People’s Choice Concert.

The headliner was a little-known band at the time, that had just begun to break into radio with the catchy pop tune “Breathe.”

Opening for Collective Soul was a host of Iowa bands, from Larry Myer to Tripmaster Monkey to House (the cool abbreviated name for House of Large Sizes).

I had actually heard a little bit about House before the People’s Choice Concert and I remember thinking their name was pretty cool. But it was after seeing the band live that its name would be forever instilled in my mind.

House’s set was in the middle of the afternoon and was the first to get the few people in attendance dancing.

I remember thinking how incredibly tight the band sounded and how intense everyone looked on stage.

I took particular interest in bass player Barb Schilf, who I swear to this day was staring at me the entire set. (I didn’t realize she was married to the lead singer.)

Maybe it was the girl bass player, or frontman Dave Deibler’s voice, but I couldn’t help compare House to one of my favorite bands at the time — Smashing Pumpkins.

By the time House’s set was over, I was completely in awe. There’s no way people this cool live in Iowa, I remember thinking. It’s amazing these guys are not nationally known.

What I didn’t know at the time was that House had just signed with a division of Columbia Records, a giant among record labels.

Three years have since passed by and Iowa’s original punk band has yet to become the next Smashing Pumpkins.

House was dropped by Columbia a year and a half later and is just now releasing the follow-up to 1994’s “My Ass Kicking Life.”

But despite all of this, House remains heroes of the Iowa music scene.

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with Deibler about House and the many adventures the band has had in its 11 years of playing.

Deibler, who was born and raised in Cedar Falls, spoke very highly of his home state, which could be why there are a number of Iowa references on the band’s latest record “Glass Cockpit.”

“When I write,” Deibler said, “it tends to be about the cities I’ve seen. It makes sense to write about Iowa.”

Deibler added that he likes bands such as ZZ Top that “mention where they’re from.”

One of the most obvious examples of Iowa’s influence on “Glass Cockpit” is the use of WOI radio.

Deibler supposedly had the radio on in the background while recording a four-track demo of “Two-tone Moon.”

Although it was a complete accident, Deibler liked the sound and decided to implement it into the studio recording of the song.

That is the way Deibler is — always going for the best sound, willing to take a risk for the sake of holding on to every bit of creativity his mind throws at him.

That is the way it has always been for Deibler, dating back to the first time he saw the Replacements and told himself, “I can do that.”

“Up until then, I didn’t even think these people [punk musicians] really existed,” Deibler said. “Seeing real people do it was amazing to me.”

Deibler, who was living in Minneapolis at the time, moved back to Cedar Falls to fulfill his dreams. “No one thought the kind of music we were playing would be huge,” Deibler said. “But when Nirvana broke, we had a chance.”

But the band’s chance was cut short when it was axed by Columbia before they even heard the band’s current material.

“It didn’t make any sense,” Deibler said. “We were naive. I probably didn’t negotiate that well. I know it now.”

Despite being used and abused by the head honchos of corporate America, Deibler never lost site of his dream. If anything, he now has a clearer vision of where he would like House of Large Sizes to go.

“We have a mailing list of 5,000 that I would like see grow upwards to 20,000,” Deibler said. “That way we wouldn’t have to worry about radio. It would be kind of like a club.”

The House of Large Sizes club — I like that.

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Corey Moss is a junior in journalism and mass communication.