POP-A-LOOZA: Cheap Trick

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is my recollection of how I first heard about Cheap Trick.

Over the course of decades writing about pop music, it's a little weird how little I've written about Cheap Trick. I've always liked them, but I haven't moved to speak on their behalf. Here's what I had to say about Cheap Trick in "The Kids Are Alright!," the extensive history of power pop I wrote for John M. Borack's 2005 book Shake Some Action:

Though hardly a “bubbling under” artist, at least some passing mention should be made of Cheap Trick. The Cheap Trick story is too large and sprawling to be fully contained within the confines of power pop, but certainly here was--and is--a group well capable of both melodic hooks and paint-peeling volume. “Surrender” is an absolutely perfect power pop record, and power pop enthusiasts generally adore Cheap Trick’s first four albums, Cheap Trick (1977), In Color (1977), Heaven Tonight (1978) and Dream Police (1979), plus the breakout live album Cheap Trick At Budokan; some will also speak out on behalf of some of Cheap Trick’s ‘80s work, and I’ll happily chime in for the 1997 Cheap Trick album, a record far better than its current budget-bin ubiquity would indicate. The group’s big-ballad success in the ‘80s with “The Flame” doesn’t obscure the fact that, at one time, Cheap Trick was simply one of the coolest bands on the planet. On a good day, they still are.

"Surrender" remains my favorite Cheap Trick song, and it will merit a chapter in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). That chapter is not written yet, but here's how it opens in its current draft:

Generation gap? Yes. And here's to it.

They were, for a brief, loud, harmonious moment, the one band that everybody liked. Loved.

Sometimes we pride ourselves on how we stand out from the crowd. We proclaim our unique taste, our distinctive likes and dislikes, our willful determination to not be like everybody else....

Yeah, it's a work in progress. As a final tangent for today, here's a specific memory of a local band covering the song to close its set at the 2016 BRIGHT LIGHTS! Syracuse New Wave Rock 'n' Roll Reunion show:

The Richards' set ended with a victory lap through Cheap Trick's "Surrender," as the audience responded with raised fists, raised spirits, and raised, raspy voices: We're all all right!  We're all all right!  We're all all right!  We're all all right! Maura Kennedy suddenly found herself on stage, a de facto member of The Richards, singing along and beaming with the sheer, cathartic giddiness of this rock 'n' roll exorcism.  We're all all right, all right!

The Richards and company: Mark Doyle, Ronnie Dark, Maura Kennedy, and Paul Armstrong sing Cheap Trick's "Surrender." Photo by Karen Munze

"The sheer, cathartic giddiness of this rock 'n' roll exorcism." Yeah, that sounds about right. And the giddiness of discovering Cheap Trick provides our latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.



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THE EVERLASTING FIRST: Cheap Trick

Continuing a look back at my first exposure to a number of rock 'n' roll acts and superheroes (or other denizens of print or periodical publication), some of which were passing fancies, and some of which I went on to kinda like. They say you never forget your first time; that may be true, but it's the subsequent visits--the second time, the fourth time, the twentieth time, the hundredth time--that define our relationships with the things we cherish. Ultimately, the first meeting is less important than what comes after that. But every love story still needs to begin with that first kiss.



This was originally posted as part of a longer piece covering both pop music and comic book characters. It's separated here for convenience.

A tabloid called Phonograph Record Magazine was a starting-point for a lot of my rock 'n' roll revelations in the '70s, and it's where I first heard of Cheap Trick. Flo & Eddie (aka Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, formerly of The Turtles) had a regular PRM column called "Blind Date," which featured our happy-together heroes reviewing new releases without being told upfront what the hell they were reviewing. For one 1977 "Blind Date," they were given the eponymous debut album from Cheap Trick, and offered the clue that the band's name was like an inexpensive subterfuge. That was my introduction to Cheap Trick.

It seems likely that I must have heard Cheap Trick on WOUR-FM a time or several in '77, but I have no recollection of that. As was the case with many other new rockin' pop discoveries for me in 1977, my first conscious memory of hearing Cheap Trick came in the fall of '77, when I was a freshman at the State University College at Brockport. Most of the new music I heard then was courtesy of the campus station WBSU--"The station where we BS you!"--but Cheap Trick first filled my ears on a commercial station in nearby Rochester, either WCMF-FM, or maybe even the usually-lame Magic 92. 

The song was "So Good To See You," a track from the second Cheap Trick album, In Color. I think the cut got a little bit of subsequent radio play as well, though it wasn't really a hit. In my mind, I hear it alongside "See Forever Eyes," a then-contemporary prog-pop song by a group called Prism. I liked both "So Good To See You" and "See Forever Eyes," though neither was specifically at the toppermost of my poppermost.



So I can't claim to have been ahead of the curve in adoring Cheap Trick. I caught on to the irresistible appeal of Rockford's Phenomenal Pop Combo about the same time everyone else did: with the track "Surrender" on their third album, Heaven Tonight, in 1978, and full-tilt Cheap Trick mania with Cheap Trick At Budokan, released as an import in late '78 and--by overwhelming popular demand--domestically in 1979. There was a brief period there were everyone seemed to like Cheap Trick. For once, I was in the mainstream!

The "everyone" in this example included my lovely girlfriend (and now lovely wife) Brenda. We each bought our own copy of Cheap Trick At Budokan--me, to play with my Ramones and Jam records, and her to play with her Santana and Earth, Wind & Fire (plus the Buddy Holly, Rolling Stones, and Who LPs she'd "liberated" from my collection; she also bought a copy of The Kinks' Greatest Hits at the flea market, so her horizons were already expanding). Harmonic convergence!



I eventually acquired all of Cheap Trick's early catalog--Cheap Trick, In Color, Heaven Tonight, Budokan, and Dream Police--and loved 'em all. When The Ramones' fab flick Rock 'n' Roll High School played on campus in 1980 (the second time I'd seen the film), it was accompanied by a cool video promo for Dream Police; fitting, since Cheap Trick had been an early choice to star in that film (some time after director Allan Arkush convinced producer Roger Corman that the film shouldn't be called Disco High, but before Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Marky were cast).

I have to confess I lost interest in Cheap Trick after Dream Police. I didn't care for the George Martin-produced All Shook Up in 1980, and it would be a while before I was interested in any new Cheap Trick albums. Turns out I missed some pretty cool stuff in that period. But I got back on board the Cheap Trick bandwagon with 1997's underrated Cheap Trick album on the Red Ant label. I had a chance to finally catch the Trick live on that club tour.



In the summer of  2016, our daughter Meghan accompanied Brenda and me to see Cheap Trick at an outdoor concert in Syracuse, and that was an even rarer harmonic convergence right there. Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, we just seem a little weird. An inexpensive subterfuge? Cheap f***ing Trick!

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Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here. 

BOPPIN' Comes Alive!

Live albums can carry a special fascination for rockin' pop fans. Though I generally prefer the finished pop product of a studio track (and my younger, purist rock 'n' roll self would likely strike me for thinking that), there's something exciting about a document of rock 'n' roll played live. Sure, many--maybe most--of our cherished live albums have benefited from a little studio sweetening, but the live feel is there, and that's what counts.

The first live album I remember at all was my sister's copy of The Live Kinks, the only Kinks record in the household collection when I was a teenager. I didn't pay much attention to it--the only Kinks song I knew was "Lola," and The Live Kinks certainly predates that--but I did occasionally try to play The Kinks' live version of "The Batman Theme," because, y'know...Batman! That track was part of an in-concert medley on The Live Kinks, so it was tricky to isolate the track and ignore "Milk Cow Blues" and "Tired Of Waiting For You," neither of which interested me at the time. (And yes, my contemporary self would surely strike pissant li'l young me for not recognizing the brilliance of "Tired Of Waiting For You" a bit earlier in the timeline.)



My sister also owned a copy of the second Woodstock collection, and a live Procol Harum record. I've been trying to remember the first live record that was specifically mine, and I think I have to go all the way up to senior year in high school, spring of '77, and the release of The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl. That album was the first time I ever rushed to the record store to buy an album on its release, and I loved that record. The Beatles live? Yeah. Yeah, I'm in. I haven't yet heard the new CD reissue (re-titled Live At The Hollywood Bowl), though I've read the complaints that it's just a straightforward, unvarnished reissue, not the remixed, re-vitalized concert document we were promised. I'll get it soon anyway. Live Beatles!



My second live album was probably Got Live If You Want It! by The Rolling Stones, or perhaps The Cowsills' In Concert, both purchased used in that same spring of '77 for fifty cents each at Mike's Sound Center in North Syracuse. Later that year, I succumbed to (imaginary) peer pressure and joined the bazillions of people who owned a copy of Frampton Comes Alive! Even just typing that sentence bores me. I received KISS's Alive II as a Christmas gift that year (and my main interest was one of the studio tracks, a cover of "Any Way You Want It" by The Dave Clark Five). I subsequently picked up a used copy of its predecessor, Alive!, on a trip to Cleveland somewhere in there, too.







And my acquisition of live records is just a blur after that. My friend Tom turned me on to The Runaways' Live In Japan; the others that meant the most to me were The Ramones' It's Alive!, The Heartbreakers' Live At Max's Kansas City '79, Cheap Trick At Budokan, and a bootleg cassette of The Flashcubes live in '78. I had some bootlegs of live stuff by The Sex Pistols, The New York Dolls, and Elvis Costello & the Attractions, and two separate sets of neighbors in the '80s turned me on to James Brown's Live At The Apollo and Otis Redding's Live In Europe.

The live album I wished for most was a live Monkees album; resurgent Monkeemania granted that wish in 1987, with the release of Live 1967, which I adored in all its rough 'n' ragged glory (and which I later upgraded to a 3-CD Rhino Handmade edition). Later in 1987, I attended a Monkees concert and discovered a new Monkees live album, 20th Anniversary Tour Live, recorded the previous year and sold only at concessions on the '87 tour. In those days before social media, most people didn't even know the album existed. In fact, when I reviewed the album for Goldmine, I had to prove its existence to editor Jeff Tamarkin before he would run the review! That's the only time in twenty years as a Goldmine freelancer I ever had to do that.



My few remaining Holy Grail albums include one live record, a 2-LP set of The Bay City Rollers's mid-'80s reunion tour of Japan. I'd still love to hear that one, but I do already have a Rollers live album (also from a Japanese concert, but from the '70s rather than the '80s). That makes it a lot easier to live without the rare--and presumably pricey--'80s set.



I still get the occasional live CD--cool, relatively recent releases from The Grip Weeds and Lannie Flowers come to mind--and I'm sure there are many, many more to come. And I recently listened to Alive! and Alive II, the first two KISS live albums, for the first time in years. And they kick. I still love it live.