#643: C is for Cheap Trick

In yet another unfortunate
case of an alphabetizing mishap,
Chicano and Childish inadvertently
show up in the stacks before Cheap
and before Cars.
I may need to hire a new
alphabetizer, as this one keeps
making these unforgivable mistakes.
I’ll cut my guy a little slack
for neglecting The Cars altogether,
filed as they are, in a box set
on the bookshelf with Bowie
rather than with the rest of the
vinyl crowd. Even before I catch
my neglect of The Cars, I’ve already
moved on. Don’t worry, I’ll go back.

Eric Carmen with Sweet was the first
concert I ever saw. In a close second
was Kiss, touring with an opening band
I had never heard of, one Cheap Trick.
Pyrotechnics aside, my little prepubescent
assessment, accurate, I might add,
was that Cheap Trick was an infinitely
better band than Kiss. No contest.
There was something magical about
their convergence of the nerdy with
the sexy, goofy looking Bun E. Carlos
and Rick Nielsen paired with the cool,
almost super model handsomeness
of Robin Zander and Tom Petersson.
Visually, I’d never seen anything like
it, and sonically, they provided the
smoothest sounding hard rock I’d ever
heard–Sweet without the misogynistic
lyrics, The Beatles with heavy guitars.
I argue to this day that Robin Zander
might be the best ROCK singer ever,
he can croon sweetly or scream like
nobody’s business, and the great
Tom Petersson was likely the first
rock bass player in my awareness
to play a 12 string bass.

One of few bands from my childhood
that I am still gaga for, I have most of
their catalog on CD, and a handful of
albums on vinyl, the first of which,
their fourth studio album, Dream Police.
This record comes out, I remember,
hot on the heals of the Budokan album,
the record that turns them into
superstars, the rare live record that
produces mega hits and breaks out
a new band. That live record came out
a few years after that fateful Kiss show,
so I was already a fan. In the memory
of my bones, I can almost feel the
excitement I had for the release of this
new studio record. I was fifteen.
I remember that it fulfilled all of my
expectations and then some.
Experimental for them, it was the first
Cheap Trick record to feature strings,
the first to include a near 10 minute tune,
the band’s first “romantic” ballad,
and Tom Petersson’s first lead vocal.
Listening now, the thing rocks as much
as it ever did. Every song is great,
and Bun E., hands-down my favorite
“meat and potatoes” drummer, does his
best work on this record–the drumming
on the title track alone worth the price
of admission. And if I could say one
more thing about Bun E.’s drumming:
I always marveled and loved the way
his bass drum eighth notes almost
always follow the snare, not the other
more traditional way around. Obviously,
he was not the first drummer to do it,
but maybe the first to call my attention
to this particular propulsive move.

After the album, All Shook Up, which I
determined was a masterpiece, Tom
Petersson left the band for several
years, and I don’t know
if it was a factor or not, but I stopped
listening to Cheap Trick and wouldn’t
return to the fold until the eponymous
and absolutely brilliant 1997 album.
In a used bin somewhere, I picked up
the album One On One for one dollar.
I read that Rick Neilson performs all
the bass on this album, but oddly enough,
there’s a guy on the cover of this record
posing as the bass player whose name
appears hidden in the credits. What a
choice. I’m sure the guy eventually played
bass in the band or on tour, but I imagine
there must have been insistence by
the label that a bass player must appear
on the album cover whether he played
on the record or not. And he’s got to be
cute, if not cuter, than Tom.
Gotta keep up appearances.
This is not surprising.
Beyond some interesting Beatle moves
on “If You Want My Love,” the weirdness
of the background vocals and the female
groaning on “She’s Tight,” the flirtation
with new wave on “Saturday at Midnight”
and the especially dumb “I Want Be Man”
(no, that’s not a typo), this is
a pretty pedestrian outing for
Cheap Trick, but it’s a noisy listen, not just
because of the guitar wall, but the mix is bad,
and the drums don’t sound right–as if
some 1982 electronics snuck in there
somewhere. It’s a sloppy sounding record,
to be sure, but totally worth a dollar.
I wouldn’t trade it
for another dollar.

Atypical for the week immediately after
Christmas when holiday music becomes
pretty much verboten in the household,
and leaping forward to 2017 in the band’s
epic history, I am compelled to spin Christmas
Christmas, Cheap Trick’s most rocking contribution
to the music of the season. It’s not the album
I reach for when I’m in the mood for
holiday music, mostly just because it rocks
so hard, or at least, most of it does.
For me anyway Christmas isn’t really
supposed to rock, is it?
Drawing from a wide range of mostly
pop classics and some traditional holiday fare,
the Tricksters rock their way through 12
bombastic Christmas songs. It sounds terrific
and the performances, especially Zander’s
singing, are top-notch. But sadly, it’s the first
record in the vinyl collection that doesn’t
have Bun E. Carlos on the drums. He quit the band
in 2010 after some legal dispute with some
or all of his bandmates. That was a very unmerry
Christmas.

Here we are in the 21st century, and I have
been loyal to Cheap Trick all the way through.
Finally, I’m spinning Another World from 2021,
a tuneful, great sounding, high energy,
sometimes Beatle-esque collection, appropriately
enough, including a cover of John Lennon’s
“Gimme Some Truth” which absofuckinglutely

rocks.

And wonders of wonders, on this very afternoon,
I took my Christmas gift card to Daily Records
and I bought the new 2025 Cheap Trick album,
All Washed Up, an objectively funny title for a record
made by old guys, the back cover to which is
a photo of every single one of Cheap Trick’s
albums inside of a plastic laundry basket.
I love that these guys have a sense of humor.
And I love that these guys continue to rock
into their 70’s. I’ve only listened to the first few
songs so far, but these old guys are kicking ass
as if they were still in their twenties.
And therein, perhaps, lies my only complaint
against these brilliant senior rockers:
at 70 plus years old, you really want to be singing
“Go ahead and touch me (I know you wanna)”?
That’s a dumb question, actually, and kind of
agist on my part, isn’t it, even though I’m only
about a decade and change behind these guys.
Of course a 70 year old wants to be touched, and
wants the toucher to want to touch.
I want you to want me, forever and ever,
until the day that I die.

---

Notes on the vinyl editions: all my original Cheap Trick records were lost in the great vinyl purge of 1988 until I retained CD copies of them some years later, but I found Dream Police (Epic Records, 1979) in a used bin somewhere and felt I had to have it again on vinyl, and at some other time, before or after I can’t remember, I found this copy of One On One (Epic Records, 1982) and decided that the one dollar entrance fee would be a fair price to hear a Cheap Trick record I’d never listened to before. Christmas Christmas, Big Machine Records, 2017, black vinyl. This record has the distinction of having a really tight spindle hole (is that what you call them?) Every time I play this record, I have to wrestle with it to get it off the turntable. That sucks. There’s a tool for that, isn’t there? Another World, BMG Records, 2021, blue and white splatter vinyl. Man, I tell you, modern recording technology does wonders for Cheap Trick’s sonic palette, especially for Tom’s bass playing. All Washed Up, BMG Records, 2025, clear with blue and orange marble.

If you are just joining me for the first time, I am attempting to listen to all of my records in sometimes inaccurate alphabetical order and then to write a poem-like-thing for each artist represented there.