Cheap Trick Cheap Trick on LP

When Cheap Trick burst onto the music scene in the 1970s, they broke new ground with a punkish, hard-edged brand of literate garage rock that was the perfect antidote to what ailed weary FM radio listeners worldwide. Their uniquely midwestern sensibilities have been deftly recorded in over 25 albums and laid bare in thousands upon thousands of performances worldwide. With walls of gold and platinum records to their credit, Cheap Trick and its pick-flinging, checkerboard-bedecked dynamo, melody machine Rick Nielsen, are without a doubt a musical institution and long running progenitor of the power pop genre.

Cheap Trick proved that a band in the late-70s could stay in the limelight over many years without having to reinvent rock 'n' roll. Any band that wanted to survive as an opening act for such top bands as Queen, The Kinks, Kiss and Boston simply had to be either courageous, naive or put on a really good show. That Cheap Trick brought their audiences to a boiling point in a suspiciously similar fashion as such groups as the Beatles, Hollies and Bee Gees, can now be relived by listening to their auspicious 1997 self-titled debut. 

The boys from Illinois realized that a special magic lay in their early numbers and perform the very best titles from their nascent live act here with aplomb. They really get down to business with hooks and attitude aplenty and playfully perverse lyrics, which deal with everything from delicate to precarious issues. "Cheap Trick is not important for their great innovative qualities but for their considerable entertainment value," wrote Melody Maker and this explosive first outing still lives up to that statement and then some nearly 40 years later!