Music For Hangovers
At an age when most professionals are entertaining thoughts of early retirement, Cheap Trick continue to burnish their reputation as arguably the best live rock band on the planet. Recorded over a four-night stand at Chicago's Metro in 1998, this live collection can't escape comparison with the band's unlikely breakthrough, 1979'sCheap Trick at Budokan, (reissued in 1998 as the two-CDCheap Trick at Budokan: The Complete Concert). Save for the historical-snapshot quaintness of theBudokanrecording, this is the better record in every way. The material here, culled largely from the band's first three studio albums (Cheap Trick,In Color, andHeaven Tonight, themselves reissued in generous packages in 1998) dates mostly from their mid-'70s, pre-label club days, the exceptions being "Gonna Raise Hell" and the title track fromDream Police, "If You Want My Love" fromOne on One, and "I Can't Take It" fromNext Position Please. Despite their vintage, these are songs that any alt-rock wunderkind half Cheap Trick's age would be proud to call his own; in fact, the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan joins them onstage here to perform "Mandocello," a "lost" gem of a ballad from Cheap Trick's eponymous debut album. Deliciously loud and musically staggering, the band breathes fire into the ubiquitous ("Surrender," "I Want You to Want Me") and unfamiliar ("Hot Love," "So Good to See You," "Gonna Raise Hell") alike with indiscriminate glee. WithMusic for Hangovers, Cheap Trick finally have a live recording to equal their remarkable performing legacy.--Jerry McCulley