Cheap Trick

Out to Get You (2020)

 

 1. Hello There
 2. Come On Come On
 3. Oh Candy
 4. Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
 5. ELO Kiddies
 6. Hot Love
 7. Southern Girls
 8. Cry, Cry
 9. Big Eyes
 10.High Roller
 11.He's a Whore
 12.Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School
 13.Can't Hold On
 14.Clock Strikes Ten
 15.Loser
 16.Taxman, Mr. Thief
 17.Ain't That a Shame
 18.Oh Caroline
 19.Oh Boy
 20.You're All Talk
 21.Auf Wiedersehen
 22.Goodnight


  

Recorded in 1977, before stadiums and screaming teenagers diluted the raw essence of Cheap Trick, Out to Get You captures the band in their elemental form—stripped of production gloss, ego, or expectation. This wasn’t the Budokan blitzkrieg that cemented their international fame, but rather the incendiary warmup: intimate, unfiltered, and—most crucially—hungry.

What makes this release remarkable is not just its provenance, a composite of several club performances early in their career, but the way it coheres like a singular fever dream. There's no sense of compilation here. Each track bolts into the next with barely a pause, a full-throttle reminder that the band weren’t merely prepping for greatness—they were already there.

Unlike later live recordings that bathed in audience adoration, this performance thrives on tension. The sound is lean but vicious, with Rick Nielsen’s guitar snapping like barbed wire, Bun E. Carlos hammering out military-tight patterns, and Robin Zander’s vocals riding the red line. It's not polished; it's urgent.

Of course, Cheap Trick would later find themselves in arenas, but here—in the dive bars and club pits—they were dangerous. Out to Get You isn’t just a historical artifact; it’s a statement. Before the lights and the applause, there was the fire.

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