Customer Reviews

Cheap Trick

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Just about any Cheap Trick fan, obsessive or not, would be quick to agree that for better or worse, their prime came right during their first releases in the late '70s. The general consesus, of course, is that "at Budokan" is the best live album and "Heaven Tonight" is the best studio album. However, I'm going to be frank and admit that although "In Color," "Heaven Tonight," and "Dream Police" are classic power pop, I really don't listen to them all that much these days. I heared "Heaven Tonight" and "Dream Police" first, but once I heared "In Color," that became my favorite. Then I heared the first album, and I knew my mind was made up. No offense to the band, but the first album proves that subsequent studio albums didn't really need all that polished production. Some bands just sound better with all their raw,rough edges intact and Cheap Trick proved they were one of those bands with "at Budokan." No offense intended to those who disagree, but the next time any Trick fanatic finds the sugar-coated gloss of the other early albums hindering the enjoyment of the songs, they should return to the debut, which will always be the studio album that rocked the hardest. The standout tracks for me are "Elo Kiddies," "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School," "Taxman, Mr. Thief," and "He's a Whore." The other tracks are great too and have grown on me with time. The only track I have a minor qualm with is "Mondecello," which, while a decent song by itself, breaks up the flow of the album and doesn't really fit in with the rest of the rockers. So pick it up; surely it's one of the more underrated debuts of '77.

This is a great, Great, GREAT CD!!! The music can stack up against ANY album. It is the "Abbey Road" of Cheap Trick. It starts with the powerful "ELO Kiddies" and the alarm clock ringing at the beginning of the song lets you know that this is a band you should wake up and pay attention to. It then changes gears with Tom's bass into the sickly twisted "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School." It then transitions smoothly with the sound of kids playing (shades of the Beatles) into "Taxman, Mr. Thief," where they directly tip their hats off to the Beatles by using the name Mr. Heath. "Cry Cry" changes up the pace with a slip-sliding slow chunker, then "Oh Candy" spotlights the band's ability to create hard hitting up beat rock songs. Another change up into the slamming steamroller "Hot Love." This song rips is like a sports car at full throttle. Robin's beautiful voice is show cased in the haunting ballad "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace." Another smooth transition with Bun E's sharp drum beat: "He's a Whore" kicks in, with Rick soloing like a deranged punk rocker. The soothing "Mandocello," named after the instrument it is played on (double strings tuned like a cello), can make you float away on a cloud of dreams. The last song from the original album, "Ballad or TV Violence," ends the original recording with a portrait of a mental murderer. When Cheap Trick played this song live, Rick used to open up his sweater to reveal a picture of the real life killer the song is about, crazy! This is a CD of a recording of when albums were albums, not just a collection of hit tunes. The songs move and support each other. This CD is made to be listened to in one sitting. Like Abbey Road by the Beatles, there is a cast of characters in the songs, some songs stand in isolation while others link into the next track, and a variety of instruments, tones, and textures keeps the selections fresh. The bonus material is good and interesting (like the early style of "I Want You To Want Me" they used to play live), but it is the high quality remix of the original recording that makes this CD a "must have" for any music lover. This is truly a masterpiece of music; the best Cheap Trick album ever (and that is saying a lot when you think about the fine albums that followed). This album had no flaws, and the only way to improve it was to remaster the tracks to let the brilliance of Cheap Trick shine through.

Boy, whatever happened to Jack Douglas? Within the space of one year in the mid-70s he coaxed career performances out of *two* hard rock legends -- Aerosmith (their never-equaled 4th album, *Rocks*), and Cheap Trick, whose debut is also their finest hour. The Tricksters had enough left in the tank to make their subsequent trajectory through *In Color* and *Heaven Tonight* (to say nothing of the essential, revelatory live album, *At Budokan*) look like a steady rise, but (apparent) goofball guitarist/songwriter Rick Nielsen really shot his wad here: sad, but spectacular to witness. This has no filler, just endless smarts, a masterful sense of dynamics, deep hooks, and a gritty, hot-wired guitar sound. (It also has the *sui generis* ballad "Mandocello," five powerful, intoxicating minutes that resemble nothing that this band or any other ever comitted to tape, before or after.) Would that there had been more where this came from. At least this edition rescues some rarities, principally "Lovin' Money," which is so fine one wonders how it got left off the original album. All the tuneless New Metal kids flooding the market these days could do much worse than spend some quality time with "The Ballad of TV Violence (I'm Not the Only Boy)" -- it's a truly frightening, ferocious document, and its power is virtually independent of the band's tremendous performance, the feeling being all there in Nielsen's ominous guitar figure. That kind of writing can't be taught, faked, or bludgeoned into being; the early Cheap Trick had it in spades, never more so than here.

I've always rejected the term "fan" as it's derived from that creepy word fanatic so what do you call someone who's entire perception of music was changed by one band and one album and will never be the same, crazy? Then commit me. Cheap Trick's debute album flew in the face of everything that was wrong with rock music in the late seventies (and frequently still is), pompous, arrogant and overblown. In one fell swoop the boys from Rockford changed all the rules and like Sherman to the sea set about a scorched earth policy that would make the General proud. What can be said about Robin Zanders vocals on this disc, on The Ballad of TV Violence he's a caged banshee relentlessly tearing at our ear drums and making us beg for mercy and more, while on Mandocello he takes us to some dark melodic place and shows us how to feel his pain. Rick Nielsen's master strokes of song craft and bone jarring riffs gave all of us junior high geeks a reason to beleive that maybe, if we ate our vegetables and said our prayers, we could grow up to be a guitar hero just like Rick. Ah, Bun E., coolest cat behind a drum kit with the uncanny knack of impersonating the sound of a jack hammer on concrete, nuff said! And oh the sweet growning and moaning of Tom Petersson's twelve string bass, while the rest of the world was having trouble with only four strings, Tom single-handedly informed wanna be bass players everywhere that maybe it was time to put the damn thing away and get a real job. Cheap Trick is everything that was right about the Sex Pistols, E.L.O., Sweet and the Move and at the same time made it painfully clear what they lacked, it made us realize what we were missing with everything else we listened to. It's the greatest non-live, live performance ever captured on tape. The tunes are irreverent, mind numbing, singable, screamable and perfect from start to finish. Dare yourself not to sing along with He's A Whore or Oh, Candy and it will be just another resolution you can't keep. If NASA were to have a mind to shoot one CD into space as a representation of everything that is right and good about American music this would be the one, and who could resist a higher intelligence belting out Hot Love?! The truth is out there and it is Cheap Trick. For over twenty years Cheap Trick has reminded us that it's time to get over ourselves a little and with this, there very first album, they've shown us that throwing caution to wind can be a little scary sometimes but it's always one hell of a ride!

Like most teenagers in 1979, I bought Live a Budokan and liked it alot, but it was when I went back and bought their first album, that I really fell in love with Cheap Trick.

From the first track to the last, this album is very nearly perfect, and captures the wild, infectious energy that Cheap Trick lets loose every night in their stage shows, better than any other album they've ever made has been able to. This album can be at any given moment: hard, frenetic, insane, wild, edgy, chaotic, sexy, and outrageous. It will leave you begging for more the second the last track is over.

The only improvement I've ever heard to any of the tracks on this album, can be found on The Essential Cheap Trick in the form of a live version of the track Mandocello. Although the version of it found on this album is very nice, it's the only song on the album that sounds slightly dated by the era it was recorded in. The live version however, will leave you spellbound, and is definately worth checking out.

Although this album contains a half a dozen or more songs that sound like they should be standard FM Classic rock fare, I don't remember hardly ever hearing any of these songs played on the radio over the last 20+ years, except maybe by a cool DJ here and there, and that fact is sad indeed. However, I often wondered what might have happened commercially with this album if it had been released, say 15 years later, during the Grunge era? If it had, Cheap Trick might be as much a houshold name today as Nirvanna.

Conventional critical wisdom suggests that Cheap Trick's first 3 1/2 records (that's "Cheap Trick", "In Color", "Heaven Tonight", and half of "Dream Police") were the good ones. I would add that I think each album was slightly less successful than its predecessor, which puts their debut album at the top of the heap. This album is raw, catchy, and utterly unprecedented. Two pretty boy rock stars, one cartoon character, and one fat throwback from the 50's. It's too delicious to ignore! Highlights from the original album include "Taxman, Mr Thief" and "Elo Kiddies", but this reissue adds previously unreleased material (much of which is top notch). "Lovin' Money" and "Lookout" are brilliant!

I was introduced to Cheap Trick through Kiss in 1976. At the time, they were just the opening band for my make-up clad heroes (okay...I was just 10 years old), but Cheap Trick have truly stood up to the test of time better than almost any other rock band of the 70's (especially Kiss...ha!). This CD is a beauty. If you could only own 30 rock CDs, this would need to be one of them.

I've always rejected the term "fan" as it's derived from that creepy word fanatic so what do you call someone who's entire perception of music was changed by one band and one album and will never be the same, crazy? Then commit me. Cheap Trick's debute album flew in the face of everything that was wrong with rock music in the late seventies (and frequently still is), pompous, arrogant and overblown. In one fell swoop the boys from Rockford changed all the rules and like Sherman to the sea set about a scorched earth policy that would make the General proud. What can be said about Robin Zanders vocals on this disc, on The Ballad of TV Violence he's a caged banshee relentlessly tearing at our ear drums and making us beg for mercy and more, while on Mandocello he takes us to some dark melodic place and shows us how to feel his pain. Rick Nielsen's master strokes of song craft and bone jarring riffs gave all of us junior high geeks a reason to beleive that maybe, if we ate our vegetables and said our prayers, we could grow up to be a guitar hero just like Rick. Ah, Bun E., coolest cat behind a drum kit with the uncanny knack of impersonating the sound of a jack hammer on concrete, nuff said! And oh the sweet growning and moaning of Tom Petersson's twelve string bass, while the rest of the world was having trouble with only four strings, Tom single-handedly informed wanna be bass players everywhere that maybe it was time to put the damn thing away and get a real job. Cheap Trick is everything that was right about the Sex Pistols, E.L.O., Sweet and the Move and at the same time made it painfully clear what they lacked, it made us realize what we were missing with everything else we listened to. It's the greatest non-live, live performance ever captured on tape. The tunes are irreverent, mind numbing, singable, screamable and perfect from start to finish. Dare yourself not to sing along with He's A Whore or Oh, Candy and it will be just another resolution you can't keep. If NASA were to have a mind to shoot one CD into space as a representation of everything that is right and good about American music this would be the one, and who could resist a higher intelligence belting out Hot Love. The truth is out there and it is Cheap Trick. For over twenty years Cheap Trick has reminded us that it's time to get over ourselves a little and with this, there very first album, they've shown us that throwing caution to wind can be a little scary sometimes but it's always one hell of a ride!

It amazes me that only three other reviews are on this page.

CHEAP TRICK is not only one of the best debut albums of all time, it's one of top 10 albums of the 70s, and one of the best in all of rock history.

This album is nothing but nonstop jams, and I'm tired of reading articles about 70s rock that don't even pay lip service to Cheap Trick. WHY IS THAT? WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN IT TO ME? The Clash, the Ramones, New York Dolls, early Elvis Costello -- Cheap Trick was every bit their equal and then some.

They defied every label but one: Rock n' Roll. This is a must for your collection.

Cheap Trick's debut LP is pure genius; raw, aggresive, and beautifully melodic. I've never heard a better marriage of animalistic rock n' roll aggression & wonderful Beatlesque melodies. Producer Jack Douglas teamed up with a lean, young Cheap Trick at their creative zenith & crafted an LP thats truly a work of art. After 22 years of listening to it I still get chills everytime I turn it on. "He's A Whore" is the most viscious 3 minutes of rock music you'll ever tackle. "Mandocello" is a beautiful, haunting, utterly original masterpiece that ranks with Lennon/McCartney. You must buy this album!

Cheap Trick's self-titled debut album is exceptional and is by far the rawest of their catalog. Tom Petersson's 12-string bass is way up in the mix and only adds to the album's rough edge. As for the songs, all of them are very good, even if most of them are only known by their hardcore fans. "Oh, Candy" and "Mandocello" are strong ballads that never get sappy while mid-tempo tracks like "Cry, Cry", "The Ballad of TV Violence", "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School", and the cover of "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace" are performed with passion and swagger. "Hot Love" and "He's a Whore" are as heavy as Cheap Trick got, bearing no resemblance to the pop/rock of later years. The remaining tracks, "Elo Kiddies" and "Taxman, Mr. Thief" are also very good, featuring Rick Nielsen's majestic sounding riffs. The bonus tracks are also very good, particularly early versions of "I Want You to Want Me" and "You're All Talk." All told, an excellent debut, second only to In Color as their best album, only because that disc has a lot more classic tracks.