Next Position Please (1983)


 

  1.I Can't Take It
  2.Borderline
  3.I Don't Love Here Anymore
  4.Next Position Please
  5.Younger Girls
  6.Dancing the Night Away
  7.You Talk Too Much *
  8.3-D
  9.You Say Jump
 10.Y.O.Y.O.Y.
 11.Won't Take No For An Answer
 12.Heaven's Falling
 13.Invaders of the Heart
 14.Don't Make our Love a Crime *
 15.Twisted Heart  #
 16.Don't Hit Me with Love #

* Not on the original LP album
# Only available for download

 

By 1983, Cheap Trick were no longer the darlings of power pop nor the saviors of Midwestern hard rock. Sales had dipped. Critics were unsure. Their fans, meanwhile, were trying to discern which version of the band would show up next. Following the thunderous crunch of One on One, Next Position Please offered a whiplash-inducing turn: a soft, melodic shimmer in place of blunt-force riffing. It was a conscious pivot, and not without precedent. The band had always toyed with genre and form—but rarely with such obvious fingerprints of desperation.

At the console was Todd Rundgren, polymath of ‘70s studio trickery and pop eccentricity. His presence is felt everywhere. Rundgren’s aesthetic—clean lines, crisp harmonies, the occasional wink—saturates the record. One could be forgiven for mistaking this as a Utopia outtake collection, with Cheap Trick providing the guest vocals. That’s not a slight. Rundgren brought discipline, if not direction, and the band—battered by the marketplace—seemed eager to comply.

The lead single, I Can’t Take It, is a shimmering nugget of pure pop melancholia, and ranks among Robin Zander’s most elegant vocals. That it failed to chart says more about the era’s radio landscape than the song’s merits. Heaven’s Falling, penned by Rundgren himself, is another standout—ironic, perhaps, that one of the best tracks doesn’t feature a writing credit from the band. Y.O.Y.O.Y. flirts with sweetness without slipping into saccharine, while You Talk Too Much and Don’t Make Our Love a Crime (cassette-only inclusions at the time) hint at a deeper, weirder album just beneath the surface.

Then there’s Dancing the Night Away, a cover forced on the band by an increasingly anxious label. The original, by The Motors, was a brisk slice of British pub-pop. Cheap Trick’s version is heavy-handed, sluggish, and unloved—by fans, band, and even producer. Rundgren, to his credit, refused to produce it. The result is jarringly out of place, the sonic equivalent of a corporate memo stapled to a love letter.

The album’s release history borders on the absurd. Depending on your medium—vinyl, cassette, CD, or digital download—you might receive twelve, fourteen, or sixteen tracks. Label meddling saw certain songs swapped out or buried altogether. In its expanded form, Next Position Please is a curious, frustrating, intermittently brilliant record. A jigsaw puzzle with a few forced pieces and missing corners.

In hindsight, this was a band at a crossroads, still chasing the ghosts of past glories, but increasingly unsure which road to take next. Next Position Please may not be a classic, but it’s a document: of reinvention, resignation, and the relentless grind of a band trying to matter again. Sometimes, pop history is written not with a bang, but with a compromise.


Go back to the main page
Go To Next Review