Cheap Trick

All Shook Up (1980)

 

  1.Stop This Game
  2.Just Got Back
  3.Baby Loves To Rock
  4.Can't Stop It But I'm Gonna Try
  5.World's Greatest Lover
  6.High Priest of Rhythmic Noise
  7.Love Comes a-Tumblin'
  8.I Love You Honey But I Hate Your Friends
  9.Go For the Throat (Use Your Own 
    Imagination)
 10.Who D'King
 --Bonus Tracks--
 11.Everything Works if You Let It
 12.Can't Hold On
 13.Day Tripper
 14.Such a Good Girl
 15.Take Me I'm Yours
 
  

For the most part, the decade of the 1980s was not a kind one to Cheap Trick. After listening to this, their first album of the decade, it's hard to blame anyone but the band themselves. What in the hell exactly happened here? To further compound the irony, the band was frequently being compared to The Beatles and when it was announced that Beatle producer George Martin would be producing this one, it would seem like a match made in heaven. Perhaps they were just tired. They had done a lot in the first three years since their debut album and it could be that success had finally "caught up" with them.

Also, tensions were running high between bassist Tom Petersson and the rest of the band. He's featured on the album, but left the band before they began touring to support the record. The music sounds heavy, thick and unexciting. It sounds like they may have been trying to replicate many elements of their first album with the darkness of most of the songs. Unlike their first album though, this one has almost nothing memorable on it. Some songs like Baby Loves to Rock and I Love You Honey But I Hate Your Friends almost sound like they could have been interesting had the production had not been so stiff. Other songs such as Love Comes a-Tumbling and Just Got Back sound like the band is trying to go punk/new wave on us. This makes the songs slightly interesting, but not necessarily listenable. Then, in the really awful department is World's Greatest Lover, which to be fair does sound a lot like the Beatles, but it's too long and too monotonous to be of any valuable. Then there's Who D'King which is nothing but a loud obnoxious tribal chant complete with hundreds of tom-tom drums.

The album never made the top 40 and failed to produce any singles either. Unfortunately, their slump would last almost a decade and their career never really fully recovered.

NOTE: The band released a four song EP on vinyl around this time called Found All the Parts. The transition was never made to compact disc, but the four songs are featured on the expanded release of this cd as bonus selections. One was a made up live song (Day Tripper) and the other was a leftover from the Budokan concert (Can't Hold On). There's also the bonus song Everything Works if You Let It which was a minor inconsequential single from a cheesy "rock" movie called Roadie.

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