Introduction

CHEAP TRICK (1997)
1) Anytime; 2) Hard To Tell; 3) Carnival Game; 4) Shelter; 5) You Let A Lotta People Down; 6) Baby No More; 7) Yeah Yeah; 8) Say Goodbye; 9) Wrong All Along; 10) Eight Miles Low; 11) It All Comes Back To You.
Yes, it's that time of the year — exactly twenty years after you had first appeared on the screen, go back, refresh, renew, and reboot yourself by trying to recapture that old vibe. It certainly took them longer than one could expect, what with the synth-pop and hair-metal trends effectively reversed around 1991 or so, but better late than never, and with a new producer and a new (small) record label, Cheap Trick '97 is able not only to capitalize on the faint promise made by Woke Up With A Monster, but, in fact, to finally take this band off life support.
Definitively objective fact: at the very least, this is the best-sounding Cheap Trick album since 1979. Each and every song builds upon the original, most efficient components of the band's sound — crisp and crunchy electric guitars from Nielsen; crackling, punchy, serviceable acoustic drums from Bun E. Carlos; sneering lionine roar from Zander; occasional piano and cello over­dubs to introduce an art-poppier texture — and new producer Ian Taylor (with whom they'd already worked briefly during the One To One sessions) is clearly such a big fan of the classic 1977-79 records that he does not lift a finger to make the sound more «modern», at the risk of making these guys lose momentum. In this particular respect, this is as strong a come­back as could ever be expected.
Whether the songwriting is up to par with the sound is a much more difficult question. Whatever we might feel or think, those guys did get older in twenty years, and furthermore, when you have been through a ten-year period of relentless yellow fever, you can hardly expect it to go away for good without leaving any lasting side effects whatsoever. These side effects are tricky, though: we cannot blame Cheap Trick '97 for any embarrassing power ballads (there are none!) or dis­gusting wear-your-cock-on-your-sleeve exercises in loud and tuneless salaciousness (instead, there are just a couple fast-paced old-style garage rockers with misogynistic overtones). We can only say that, perhaps, these new songs are not as immediately captivating or as brimming with youthful passion and snotty sarcasm as it used to be — yes, Cheap Trick's songwriting skills have been somewhat irrepairably impaired, but then, frankly speaking, twenty years of scooping ideas from your well of thoughts might do that to anyone, regardless of whether you have been to The Doctor in the interim or not.
Thus, the opening track ʽAnytimeʼ has a great sound: the guitars roar with just the right degree of menace, Zander goes from «evil clown» vocals in the verse to an all-out roar in the chorus with gusto, and the good old need-your-love-so-bad-it's-driving-me-crazy vibe is honored throughout with the highest honors. But as a respectable composition that should take its rightful place next to ʽHot Loveʼ or ʽBig Eyesʼ... well, it would at least need a great riff, or a more interesting chorus than "I need your love, I need your love". As it is, it is hard to get rid of the feeling that they are simply exerting their craft to the max in order to sound like they did in 1977... well, apparently, which is what they really do, but sometimes you can make it seem very natural (like you've really been visited by your muse again, first time in ages), and sometimes not, and this is one of the sometime nots. But if you love that overall sound — and I do — you'll pardon them anyway.
Plus, there are much better songs here than ʽAnytimeʼ: if not in terms of great guitar riffs, then at least in terms of singalong choruses. ʽHard To Tellʼ is a great example — the way "it's not that easy, baby, it's not that hard to tell..." resolves into "life is hell — but I do it well!" is a good setup for an ecstatic reaction, because few people can scream the word "hell" with such a good mixture of pain and anger as Robin does, and then he contrasts it masterfully with the optimistic swerve of "I do it well", and you get a good charge of frustration and hope in one package. It might all be a little more serious and introspective and «grounded» than the lighter, funnier stuff on the classic records, but hey, that's how human beings usually get as they grow older.
In terms of creativity, ʽCarnival Gameʼ combines Revolver-style vocal harmonies with a cool wah-wah solo; ʽYou Let A Lotta People Downʼ sounds like a trademark pissed-off solo Lennon number, with Zander borrowing quite a few of John's classic vocal moves (well, maybe that's not all that creative, but it's been so long...); and ʽEight Miles Lowʼ is the album's most experimental-psychedelic number, though certainly not in a Byrdsey way — its main point is the curious "dream the dream the scream the scream" chorus, a modest, but successful experiment of giving a falsetto voice to the darker undercurrents of your subconscious.
And then there are the ballads, all (both) of them tastefully arranged and pleasantly delivered — ʽShel­terʼ, an acoustic song adorned with some cello and steeped in self-misery and self-irony; and ʽIt All Comes Back To Youʼ, which is not about successfully recapturing the musical vibe that once used to inspire and support you, but rather about one last recollection of your meaningless life before kicking the bucket — sung with just a small pinch of pathos and plenty of humility, as Nielsen quietly picks the acoustic and tiny splashes of pianos and strings punctuate Zander's trembling vocals at the right intervals: a perfect finale for an album that seems so perfectly well aware of its limitations, yet still honestly tries to work them to best effect.
All in all, even though neither the LP nor its lead single (ʽSay Goodbyeʼ, another pretty, but not instantly memorable power pop single with a touch of nostalgia and a touch of Lennon) managed to properly chart, we don't need to pay much attention to that circumstance in 2016 — instead, I am just glad to give the record a well-deserved, if modest, thumbs up and heartily recommend it to anybody who loves the classic era of Cheap Trick so much that he/she'd gladly welcome a somewhat inferior, but fully effective imitation for the collection. Besides, who knows, you might even like it better than the old stuff as you grow older — there's all this nostalgic vibe here that don't work that well when you're twenty, but whose chances of hitting you right in the guts increase with each passing year. I'm not quite up to that stage yet, but let me revisit this in a decade or so and then we'll see clearer.
MUSIC FOR HANGOVERS (1999)
1) Oh Claire; 2) Surrender; 3) Hot Love; 4) I Can't Take It; 5) I Want You To Want Me; 6) Taxman, Mr. Thief; 7) Mandocello; 8) Oh Caroline; 9) How Are You?; 10) If You Want My Love; 11) Dream Police; 12) So Good To See You; 13) The Ballad Of T.V. Violence; 14) Gonna Raise Hell.
Nobody really needs more than one Cheap Trick live album in the collection, and I don't need to tell you what live album that should be — but it is also true that Cheap Trick hadn't released a follow-up to Budokan in twenty years (although they did release the previously unreleased second part of the concert separately in 1994 as Budokan II), and since we probably have to thank them for not doing this in the Eighties, it does make sense to give this one at least one spin to check how well they were faring in their «modest comeback» era.
Apparently, this is not a reflection of a fully typical show — these fourteen selections are culled from a special live extravaganza in Chicago, where they were giving themselves a huge 20th anniversary celebration, and marking the re-release of the early catalog on CD by playing each of the first four albums in its completeness on four consecutive nights. And since the prospect of putting together a huge 4-CD set seemed too terrifying at the time (although it is highly likely that at some time we might be getting a Music For Hangovers DeLuxe as a limited-time down­load offer, because we have so little music to listen to in our spare time), well, they just took a few selections from each show, shuffled them randomly, and released a «sampler» of sorts.
As a result, this is a highly nostalgic affair (the only two post-1979 songs are ʽIf You Want My Loveʼ and ʽI Can't Take Itʼ, which they probably played for their encores), and the only question worth asking is — does this kick any sort of ass that would be comparable to Budokan? Well, I have to admit that, agist bias aside, it does: on the whole, the band sounds every bit as invigorated and ready to blow the roof as it did twenty years ago. The biggest worry could probably be Zander, but no need to wonder, really — just throw on ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ and you will see that he is still not only capable of the rabid bull-roaring attack, but he is still capable to deliver it seemingly effortlessly. In fact, he does it so well that, as it seems to me, the engineers see to it that his voice is consis­tently driven a little bit higher in the mix than it was on Budokan — playing the old and the new live versions of ʽSurrenderʼ clearly shows the difference, and since Robin's pipes and enthusiasm show no signs of wearing down, this might be one small argument why at least some of the tracks here might even be more fun to listen to than the Budokan ones.
As for the musicians, there is no deterioration in quality in Nielsen's guitar pyrotechnics or Bun E. Carlos' steady drum support either (I guess Petersson is doing all right as well, but the bass in Cheap Trick was never anything special in the first place). There's only a tiny bit of guest support, with Billy Corgan playing extra guitar on ʽMandocelloʼ and then D'Arcy Wretzky singing backup vocals on ʽIf You Want My Loveʼ (I had no idea that Smashing Pumpkins were such big fans of the Trick, but apparently they are, as Corgan also wrote some gushing liner notes for the album), but perhaps the band sensed that they did need it, since their own fanbase had already dwindled, and they definitely needed some public support from the younger generation (the concept would be further advanced on Silver).
It is important to note that the band did consider the possibility that the album would be unfavo­rably compared to Budokan — and for that reason, there is as little overlap as possible, with worn-out hits and classics largely ignored (on record) in favor of less overplayed tunes: the only three tracks that do overlap are ʽSurrenderʼ (because what's a live Cheap Trick album without ʽSurrenderʼ?), ʽI Want You To Want Meʼ (repeat question with substituted object), and ʽOh Caro­lineʼ, the latter quite legit because they do it in a revised acoustic arrangement. The good news is that we get to hear the mad live jamming on ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ, and a guitar-based rather than synth-based version of ʽDream Policeʼ (but why didn't they include ʽThe House Is Rockingʼ? That was, like, the most stage-ready number on the Dream Police album!). The bad news is that, for some reason, each performance fades in and fades out, giving that nasty «greatest hits live» scent — I guess they were honestly letting us know that these were cut-and-paste performances, but it's no great fun to endure moments of absolute silence when sitting through a live album.
Aside from that, though, it makes no sense to have anything but very minor quibbles with the record (such as its title — I mean, is a decibel-heavy, guitar-crunch-choked power pop album really the appropriate kind of music to treat a hangover? Shouldn't they have at least gone all MTV Unplugged on us to validate that title?). It can even provide a minor companion piece to Budokan, due to that minimal overlap; but it certainly played a bigger role in 1999 (proving the world that the Trick «still got it») than it does now.
SILVER (2001)
1) Ain't That A Shame; 2) I Want You To Want Me; 3) Oh, Candy; 4) That 70's Song; 5) Voices; 6) If You Want My Love; 7) She's Tight; 8) Can't Stop Fallin' Into Love; 9) Gonna Raise Hell; 10) I Can't Take It; 11) Take Me To The Top; 12) It All Comes Back To You; 13) Tonight It's You; 14) Time Will Let You Know; 15) World's Greatest Lover; 16) The Flame; 17) Stop This Game; 18) Dream Police; 19) I Know What I Want; 20) Woke Up With A Monster; 21) Never Had A Lot To Lose; 22) You're All Talk; 23) I'm Losin' You; 24) Hard To Tell; 25) Oh, Claire; 26) Surrender; 27) Just Got Back; 28) Day Tripper; 29) Who D' King; 30*) Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School; 31*) On Top Of The World.
Two live albums in a row? The easiest thing is to interpret this as a sign of senility, but, in all fairness, post-Budokan Cheap Trick only really put out live albums for special occasions — thus, Music For Hangovers celebrated the re-release of the «classic four», and now, a year later, comes this posh, almost luxurious celebration of the band's 25th anniversary, staged by the band in style, as they return to their native town of Rockford, Illinois (probably the only place in the world where they can still sell out the largest venue without any problems) and, local royalty-style, not only surround themselves with a pack of illustrious (and not-so-illustrious) guests, but also insist on presenting a panoramic view of the band's entire 25-year old career.
Among other things, this means revisiting every single Cheap Trick album ever — yes, even in­cluding The Doctor and Busted. With thirteen studio albums behind their belt already, this is not an easy task, and even given the mammoth duration of the show (almost two and a half hours), they are unable to tackle all the highlights, especially since they are so obsessed with completism here, they even perform one song from Robin Zander's solo career (ʽTime Will Let You Knowʼ), as well as the theme song from That 70's Show (a reworking of Big Star's ʽIn The Streetʼ), and two Beatle-related tunes: ʽDay Tripperʼ, which they sometimes did in concert in the old days, and even Lennon's ʽI'm Losing Youʼ — a song on which they almost got to back John back in 1980, even though their version ultimately did not make it onto the final cut of Double Fantasy (but you can still hear it on Lennon's Anthology boxset: I like its hard-rocking crunch, but I can also see how the sound would be considered too harsh and too «retrograde» for John's New Wave-leaning tastes circa 1980).
The good news: this ensures that Silver is at least not completely expendable, coming right off the heels of Music For Hangovers — this is an entirely different concept, and although there is, inevitably, some overlap with the old numbers, there is a whole ton of live stuff here that you have never heard before unless you were an avid concert goer or bootleg collector. (Even in terms of the old Seventies' stuff, you still have performances of ʽVoicesʼ, ʽI Know What I Wantʼ, ʽYou're All Talkʼ, and, tacked on as bonus tracks on the 2004 re-release, ʽDaddy Should Have Stayed In High Schoolʼ and ʽOn Top Of The Worldʼ that were never previously available live). The bad news: do we really want to sit through an endless set of reminders of how subpar the band's 1980s — 1990s material was, compared to the classics? Even if they really go all the way to weed out the embarrassments and concentrate on the decent stuff, there's no way you could shove Silver into somebody's face as an introduction to Cheap Trick. It may be historically truth­ful and all, but it just isn't really that fun.
There does seem to be a certain ideological point here: it's as if with this release, Nielsen and the boys are trying to officially legitimize and redeem all of their past. Case in point: having carefully back-scrutinized The Doctor and extracted what is almost certainly the best-written song on there (ʽTake Me To The Topʼ), they perform an exuberant acoustic performance of the tune to a see­mingly enthusiastic audience, upon which a cockily satisfied Nielsen goes, "now who said The Doctor was a bad album? Only every critic in the United States, but what do they know?" Some rather crude revisionism out there, Mr. Nielsen — now go ahead and stun your listeners with a kick-ass version of ʽMan-U-Lip-U-Latorʼ, I dare you. But the illusion cannot be held forever even by the band members — at one point (right after the conclusion of ʽThe Flameʼ, a song that Rick himself never seemed to have much love for), Nielsen states that "okay, we've had enough of these ballads", and eventually the band gets back on track with some real good stuff.
The guest stars do not make that much of a difference: many are just relatives (like Robin's daughter, Holland, and Rick's son, Miles), some are old friends and colleagues (Petersson's for­mer replacement on the bass, Jon Brant, makes a guest appearance on two of the songs he origi­nally played on), and then there's the ever-present Billy Corgan (ʽJust Got Backʼ) and Art Alexa­kis of Everclear (ʽDay Tripperʼ). The biggest star of 'em all is Slash, who gives a dutifully ec­static solo turn on ʽYou're All Talkʼ, but I am not sure that Cheap Trick done Guns'n'Roses style is a particularly thrilling idea — serious generational gap out there. Now if only they could get Angus Young, we'd be talking! But it's a long way from Australia to Illinois.
Other than that, what is there to say? The band remains in very good form (ʽGonna Raise Hellʼ is especially diagnostic for all members of the band, from vocals and guitar to bass and drums, and here they pass the test with flying colors), Nielsen's sense of humor is intact, and, after all, it does make sense to give those subpar songs an extra chance when they are separated from crummy Eighties' production and transferred to a healthy live environment (also, despite the hoarse over­tones, Nielsen turns in an impressive vocal performance on ʽWorld's Greatest Loverʼ). There is also a DVD release of the concert, but I'm not sure if you should go for this — Nielsen was still in his ridiculous braided beard and dark glasses stage at the time, and it just don't work that well without the bowtie and baseball cap delivery body image. If it ain't broke, don't fix it — good title for a potential Cheap Trick hit, by the way.
SPECIAL ONE (2003)
1) Scent Of A Woman; 2) Too Much; 3) Special One; 4) Pop Drone; 5) My Obsession; 6) Words; 7) Sorry Boy; 8) Best Friend; 9) If I Could; 10) Low Life In High Heels; 11) Hummer.
So, having just summarized the first quarter-century of their career, Cheap Trick are left free to turn over the page, clean up that slate, and embark upon the difficult journey of proving their ongoing relevance to the 21st century — something that is hard enough to do even for Radiohead, never mind a band that had always preferred to look back to the past rather than forward into the future for inspiration. And how do they fare?
Judging by contemporary reviews, not too good: most critics viewed Special One as a serious disappointment, bombarding it with one bad rap after another, and as I am quickly browsing through the various assessments, I find myself a little stumped, because, as far as my ears tell me, the worst thing that can be deduced about Special One is that there is nothing particularly special about it — and that might be a good thing, too, since we don't really want Cheap Trick to be in­fluenced by Radiohead or the Beastie Boys or Godspeed You! Black Emperor; we just want them to turn out juicy, crunchy, reliable, old-fashioned power pop if they still can. And that is pre­cisely what they do here, for forty-six minutes.
Make just one little amendment: we want power-pop with just a few subtle deviations from a narrow formula every now and then, so that we can slap a «creativity» label on the record, and in that regard, Special One does deliver. There's electric pop and there's acoustic pop; there's faster and slower tunes (maybe with a little too much emphasis on slow); there are tinges of psychedelia, there are violations of the classic pop structure, there's some humor, and there are no power bal­lads whatsoever. Throw in decent production standards and the fact that all the band members are still in good shape (Zander's roar is as roar-ish as it ever roared), and what else do you want?
What I believe is that few reviewers ever really made it past the opening track. ʽScent Of A Womanʼ is not the worst Cheap Trick song ever written, but it takes its subject way too seriously, and it does make Zander sound a bit like Roger Daltrey, as suggested by some of the reviewers, only while singing lyrics that were sure as hell not written by Pete Townshend: "A man don't add up to much next to a woman / A man can't ever forget the taste of a woman" — silly and gross, especially when it is sung without the least bit of irony in the singer's voice. You'd think these words and that exuberance would fit in just all right on any of their pompous glam-Eighties albums, but now it is not clear what they are doing at all in the middle of a perfectly valid power pop track, other than prove that when Cheap Trick are committed to show themselves as old-fashioned, they go all the way, warts and all.
Really, though, Special One is much more than just ʽScent Of A Womanʼ. The acoustic-based tracks, for one thing, are quite lovely — and, for that matter, Cheap Trick are rarely ever remem­bered for the beauty of their acoustic melodies. But the title track has an excellent slide lick cut­ting across its gentle stomp, and the song has an aura of gallant delicacy, rather than blunt crude­ness of the past; and ʽWordsʼ is arguably the best imitation of Lennon's balladry style that they had managed to turn out at that point.
On the noisy rocking front, ʽPop Droneʼ, ʽSorry Boyʼ, and ʽBest Friendʼ all qualify, but pay special attention to ʽBest Friendʼ — foregoing the verse/chorus structure, this song gradually un­furls as a nasty egotistic paranoid crescendo, vocals and instruments going hand in hand, until, for the last two minutes, it simply becomes a hail of grinning "yeah yeah yeah"'s and Zander's hys­terical screams of "leave me alone, I'm my best friend!". If you let yourself caught up in this, it's one hell of a way to disperse frustration, and as for the lyrics, even if they give the impression of being largely improvised on the spot ("I can't slow down cuz down we'll go / Where I step you don't wanna know"), they do generate an atmosphere of mean, sickly craziness of a thoroughly confused and pissed-off mind, which seems so welcome in 2016. And although some probably find the slow, murky, distortion-drenched progression of ʽSorry Boyʼ a disappointing example of alt-rock influence on the boys, I hear echoes of genuine ruthless cruelty (of course, in a thorough­ly ironic presentation) in the song and think that it passes the basic quality test.
The funniest, if not necessarily the best, is saved for last: nobody ever pays any attention to ʽLow Life In High Heels / Hummerʼ, probably brushing it away as a 7-minute long musical joke that overstays its welcome to the point of aural cruelty, but I love it. It's one of those ʽWhy Don't We Do It In The Road?ʼ thing throwaways, where the success/failure of the joke crucially depends on the quality of its underlying groove, but this here groove is flawless — the band tightens itself up to AC/DC level and somehow makes the repetitiveness of Zander's ʽhmm-hmmʼ seem cool all the way. Along which way Nielsen hits upon quite a few extra cool riffs (the six-note pattern which he runs through four different octaves is priceless!), and Cheap Trick's rhythm section earns an extra star for making even a dead man tap his toes. It might be the silliest thing they ever did in their career up to that point — but it's actually surprising that it took them so long to get around to it, considering that the Beatles always were their main idols, and the Beatles were always game for some delightful silliness.
Probably a few of the songs still qualify as filler, and probably none of the good songs are on top level when it comes to sharpness, poignancy, relevancy, and depth for these guys; and maybe this is not quite up to the level of middle-age maturity that they displayed on the 1997 album. But it should, by all means, qualify as a solid, thoughtful entry into the catalog, and for what it's worth, I actually like it more than the somewhat overrated Rockford, so thumbs up it is.