Cheap Trick (1977)
1.ELO Kiddies
2.Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School
3.Taxman, Mr. Thief
4.Cry, Cry
5.Oh Candy
6.Hot Love
7.Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece
8.Mandocello
9.He's a Whore
10.The Ballad of T.V. Violence
--Bonus Tracks--
11.Lovin' Money
12.I Want You To Want Me (early version)
13.Lookout
14.You're All Talk (early version)
15.I Dig Go-Go Girls
One of the best debut albums by any
band, anywhere, any time in rock and roll history. The sad thing is
that no one really knew it at the time. It would take years before this
band received the credit they deserved for this masterpiece, and many
still feel that the band still hasn't yet been given their full due. The
somewhat off-beat members of this band had been together since 1973,
playing in the mid-western Illinois-Wisconsin circuit and slowly developing
a name for themselves. In many ways, they were rebelling against the
state of music in the early seventies when pomp and glam was overtaking
the simple hard driven riffs of what was so loved by everyone a decade
or so before. They had a back-to-the-basics sound in their music, but
they had a hard bite to their tunes that gave the definition "power pop"
a distinct meaning. Yes, they were pop oriented. Their music was
catchy - full of hooks and memorable melodies, yet they had a hard
crunchy sound that was pretty revolutionary for its time. In many ways,
their music had more in common with the punk sound of The Sex Pistols
and/or The Ramones than anything else that was mainstream at that time. Their overall sound,
however, was much more accessible to the mainstream audience and had the
tendency to bring in curious audiences rather than turn them away.
Their lyrics (on this album, anyway) had some strong themes with many
taboo subjects for the mid 1970's. There are all sorts of curious
yarns here - serial killers (The Ballad of T.V. Violence),
middle-age perversion (Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School),
male whores (He's a Whore) and suicide (Oh Candy).
Perhaps this is why the album wasn't strongly received when it was
initially released. The irony is that all of the above
mentioned songs (along with everything else) never felt angry and
bitter. No, all of this was very easy to bop your head, sing along to and dance. This was never really a band for hostile rebels wanting to
destroy everything.
Not to mention that this band was also interesting to look at.
If there was ever such a thing as an image band, well, Cheap Trick fit
the bill. Other than bassist Tom Petersson, none of the members really
even looked like they belonged in a Rock-and-Roll band. Guitarest (and
main song writer) Rick Neilsen looked like Huntz Hall from the Bowery
Boys with his trademark beanie, cardigan sweaters and bow tie, and
Drummer Bun E. Carlos looked exactly like a stereo-typical insurance salesman/tax accountant.
Lead Singer Robin Zander had the
traditional rock and roll long-haired blonde locks and handsome face,
yet in the early days he was usually garbed in suits and ties that,
again, made him look slightly out of place. Speaking of Robin Zander,
it must be said that his golden voice and wide variety of singing sounds
is probably more important to this band's success than just about
anything else. He proves that here on the only slow song
Madocello.
So it would still be several albums before most people had heard of
this band, and to be honest, there was only a brief period in their history
where they were extremely popular, but this album truly sounds just as
fresh thirty-five years after it was recorded. The compact disc was
re-released in the 1990's with five bonus tracks that are just as good
as anything else on the album. The highlight is an early version of
I Want You To Want Me that would later appear, first as an
inferior studio version on the band's second album In Color, and later as their biggest hit single
at the time on the live release At Budokan.
The version of the song here is arguably the best of the bunch.
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