Cheap Trick/Silver(2001)

 

Hip Hip Hooray! Cheap Trick back in 2001 were celebrating there 25th year in the Music Biz and what better way to acknowledge that feat than to release a 31 song Double Bubble(double album) recorded live in there hometown of Rockford Illinois!

A few month’s back I tossed Tricks Lap Of Luxury under the Bus but when it comes to live Trick this is where they excel!

Silver is the title of the album(geddit!) and the Cheap Tricks as in Robin Zander,Tom Petersson,Rick Nielsen & Bun E Carlos leave no musical stone unturned in there vast catalogue of Awesome Rock! 

Trick pulls out tracks from every single album! You want Hits Yep they are all here!

Check Out This Track List…..

Disc one
“Ain’t That A Shame”
“I Want You To Want Me”
“Oh, Candy”
“That 70’s Song”
“Voices”
“If You Want My Love”
“She’s Tight”
“Can’t Stop Fallin’ Into Love”
“Gonna Raise Hell”
“I Can’t Take It” (Acoustic)
“Take Me to the Top” (Acoustic)
“It All Comes Back to You” (Acoustic)
“Tonight It’s You” (Acoustic)
“Time Will Let You Know”
“World’s Greatest Lover”

Disc two
“The Flame”
“Stop This Game”
“Dream Police”
“I Know What I Want”
“Woke Up with a Monster”
“Never Had a Lot to Lose”
“You’re All Talk”
“I’m Losin’ You”
“Hard to Tell”
“Oh, Claire”
“Surrender”
“Just Got Back”
“Day Tripper”
“Who D’King”

 

Kinda cool as some guest players drop in like former band member (bassist) Jon Brandt takes over on bass for the two tracks that are featured from the great One On One album(If You Want My Love and She’s Tight)

Slash riffs n rolls on Your All Talk! Billy Corgan jams Just Got Back while various members of the bands family show up and help out on various tracks.

Some of my faves are She’s Tight,Gonna Raise Hell (with Tom’s 12 string Hamer Bass distortin and locked in with Bun E on the drums). A boozed up late late night run in with the Dream Police, Hard To Tell is a great written piece of power pop from the classic self titled 1997 release Cheap Trick. Actually I could go on it’s all good even the two songs from the Lap Of Luxury album The Flame and Never Had A lot To Lose are a little more amped up (especially NHALTL).

What can you say about Robin Zander’s voice! Whether it’s 1976,1986,1996,2006 or 2016 Zander’s voice is still in top form and  he is easily one of my fav vocalists out there  no dip in quality whatsoever.

Tom Petersson and his 4,6 &12 string Hamer Basses holds down the fort sonically.

Bun E Carlos is a great rock drummer for this band and plays with a almost like Jazz Rock Swing kinda like Bill Ward on those 1970s Sabbath albums.

Rick Nielsen  wrote a ton of Cheap Trick songs and is a great rhythm guitar player who dabbles in leads. He’s one of the few dudes who write tunes to feature the singer(Zander) than to feature himself guitar wanking off during solo’s….

Check out Silver…..

3/4’s Filler….Cheap Trick/The Doctor

I’m starting to realize that 1986 produced some real musical duds!(it only took me 29 years to realize this…!! Ha!)

Case in point…Ted Nugent rolls out Little Miss Dangerous/Quiet Riots Kevin Dubrow buys a wig with QR3/Triumph writes and performs the Trainwreck Masterpiece titled Sport Of Kings/Krokus with the ultimate Filler with Change Of Address and Y&T with (Ahem) Down With The Count!

All of these albums listed above I paid $$$ for so i will throw em all under the bus! Come to think of it I never bought Y&Ts Down For The Count. Tbone has the honor of that one!

If you haven’t already, you can click on the main page(right-hand side) look under Categories and right at the top is my 3/4s Filler section and you can read about all my musical mishaps and hell even T-bones closet band of homeboys  Bad English are featured!

Carrying on with the theme of 1986 duds …Cheap Trick issues The Doctor album and for God sakes, this thing crashed real fast after I spun it a few times…..basically, a Do Not Resuscitate is ordered by Deke to put down The Doctor…

I’ll tell Ya why…..

Cheap Trick man I love these guys and from about 1980 or so when I got my mitts on the Budokan release I bought all things Trick! The 1980s weren’t too kind to the Tricksters after they released the real good 1982 album One On One. 4 years later in 86 man I got Cheap Tricked and it ain’t funny…

Who the hell is responsible for all the programmed keyboards, Synthy sounds, sterile production?

Bun E Carlos/Rick Nielsen/Robin Zander and Jon Brandt what happened man?

It’s UP TO YOU- boom a wall of keyboards erupts and considering this song is dripping with a wall of keys, programmed drums at least Nielsens guitar is somewhat cranked but I’ll be damned the chorus is really good and for an opening track this is really good considering with what’s to follow…..

REARVIEW MIRROR ROMANCE- umm nope next……

THE DOCTOR-this is the title track its 1986 man like a Top Gun soundtrack throwaway tune.

ARE YOU LONELY TONIGHT/NAME OF THE GAME/KISS ME RED/TAKE ME TO THE TOP and GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN(BAD GIRLS GO EVERYWHERE)- these 5 songs I have no recollection of and well I will explain later ….next…..

MAN-U-LIP-LATOR- Ummm ok The Trick perk me up somewhat out of my Musical coma somewhat with this tune it has a great chorus so yeah there’s life somewhat left in this album…..

ITS ONLY LOVE-holy heck this song is the deal ..PURE GENIUS! I’m not joshing ya’s! This song is one of the best Trick songs ever! It’s Only Love is a well written back to basics power-pop Trick tune and its buried at the back of the album! This song is why I love Cheap Trick! The song is great some cool acoustic by Robin and Rick while Bun E and Jon lay down some cool drums and bass plus some chicks do some impressive background singing. Zander is easily in my top 5 fav lead vocal guys! Watch the video and speaking of the video they included the girl in the bottom right corner doing actual sign language to Robins lyrics! What a great move and the story is even better as Trick used to play this basement club in Chicago and there were deaf people living above them and they could feel the beat of the Tricksters playing!

Watch the vid its a classic still to this day…..crank it! The ending of the vid is classic Goofy Cheap Trick Atta Boy Rick!

IN CONCLUSION- yeah I was duped totally by the Trick on The Doctor those 5 tracks I have not listened to since 1986 except for the last track which is a wickedly good track as I could have easily done it as a Cool Lil Number easily! So I give them total props for that! Yep if your keeping score I have It’s Up To You, Man-U-Lip-Lator, and Its Only Love on my iPod. Those are the only 3 tracks I bought from The Doctor!

2 years later they hit paydirt with The Flame. That song made me wanna puke but I was happy that the Cheap Trickers were back on people’s radars!