Are You Ready? (2019)


 

 1. Hello There
 2. Clock Strikes Ten
 3. I'll Be With You Tonight
 4. Ain't That a Shame
 5. California Man
 6. Downed
 7. On Top of the World
 8. Gonna Raise Hell
 9. Heaven Tonight
 10.Stiff Competition
 11.Voices
 12.Way of the World
 13.Need Your Love
 14.I Know What I Want
 15.I Want You To Want Me
 16.Surrender
 17.Auld Lang Syne
 18.The House is Rockin'
 19.Dream Police

 

By the turn of the 1980s, Cheap Trick found themselves atop the musical summit, looking down from a peak few midwestern rock bands had ever reached. Their meteoric ascent, powered by the live At Budokan phenomenon, had sent them barreling into global consciousness. But as with many a rock 'n' roll fairy tale, the glittering apex was ephemeral. Dream Police offered a brief extension of the magic, but the oncoming ‘80s were far less generous. The arenas shrank, the radio cooled, and while a loyal fanbase remained, the world had begun to look elsewhere.

A few decades later, enter Are You Ready?, a rare and curious artifact from that pivotal moment when they were still coasting on the Budokan afterglow. Recorded live at the Los Angeles Forum on New Year’s Eve, 1980, this show was initially broadcast by Westwood One, meaning it likely crackled through AM radios as the ‘70s gasped their last. The performance, now released officially, offers a snapshot—not of decline—but of defiant vitality.

The sound quality is what one might kindly call archival. It lacks polish, but then, polish is hardly the point. What it does have, and in abundance, is everything a live rock album ought to have: unhinged crowd noise, sweat-drenched energy, and that delectable blend of onstage spontaneity and swaggering professionalism. There’s also the requisite banter—some playful, some perfunctory, all wonderfully humanizing. And yes, Auld Lang Syne appears, almost certainly uninvited but utterly inevitable.

In retrospect, Are You Ready? isn’t a vital release in the grand narrative of Cheap Trick, but it is a heartfelt one. It captures the band in a rare moment of unguarded exuberance, caught between superstardom and the slow descent into ‘cult favorite’ status. That it exists at all is a small triumph. That it’s this much fun is a minor miracle.

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