At Budokan (1978)
1.Hello There
2.Come On, Come On
3.Lookout
4.Big Eyes
5.Need Your Love
6.Ain't That a Shame
7.I Want You To Want Me
8.Surrender
9.Goodnight Now
10.Clock Strikes Ten
 
One of the most famous live albums ever,
and it almost never even saw the light of day. The history of this release is
as follows: The band, never having quite made it in the U.S. is
extrememly popular in Japan. They play a series of concerts at the
famed shrine for their screaming Japanese admirers. A decision is made
to release a live recording in Japan only, probably since, well,
the thought is that no one else anywhere else would probably want
the thing. Upon release, everyone else in the world finally realizes
what they have been missing and the import version of the album sells
better than anything else the band has ever released. It's then released
worldwide to staggering results.
The three most well known "classic" tracks by the band lead off (what
was then) side 2 - Ain't That a Shame, I Want You To Want
Me and Surrender. Those three alone are worth the price of
the package by itself, yet the whole album is very powerful. Oddly
enough, the songs that were picked for this record were the "tamer"
songs in the band's catalog, since this is what their Japanese audience
seemed to favor. There's nothing at all from the Cheap Trick album and there's only one song
(Surrender) from Heaven Tonight which
Robin Zander introduces as "off our new album". Of the rest of the
songs, half of In Color is featured here, which was
definitely the band's softer side.
Live albums, especially single albums, haven't particulary
aged well. It's hard to get into a 40 minute concert since many bands
now release entire shows on multiple discs. This one is no exception.
When you figure that Goodnight Now is essentially a carbon copy
of Hello There and that Need Your Love is one of the
band's slower (i.e. usually not as good) pieces that clocks in at almost
nine minutes, it's very easy to dismiss the album as far from perfect.
To the band's credit, they released the complete concert on 2 discs many
years later, At Budokan - The Complete
Concert,that remedies the above mentioned issue. Several years
before that, in 1994, they released Budokan
II which featured all the other songs, along with 3 other songs from a different show one year
later. This original release may not even be available anymore since
At Budokan - The Complete Concert is now
available. Anyway, the main
thing was that now everyone finally knew what all the fuss was about from Rockford,
Illinois.
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