I'm still feeling a little ragged around the edges because this morning I went to bed around 1:15 am, and then got up at 6 am to go to a court appearance (one of two today).
Why? Because last night I got to enjoy my wife's Valentine's day present -- two tix to the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip to see Cheap Trick. And we got a primo spot in the standing-room-only club -- three people back from the stage's edge.
You may recall that Cheap Trick is a band formed back in the early '70's that languished in obscurity in the U.S. (but flourished overseas) until a song from their live album recorded at the Budokan in Tokyo, "I Want You to Want Me," caught fire and became a hit. A very photogenic band, they took to the new marketing tool of MTV videos and had a string of hits through the mid-eighties.
Incredibly, the same band line-up -- as lead guitarist Rick Nielson put it last night, "Four great guys and three lousy chords" -- are still together, still touring, and still rocking. True, lead singer Robin Zander no longer looks like a teen idol (more like an aged burned-out surfer in a ragged cowboy hat and cheaters), and Nielson looks less like a weird older brother and more like a weird sixties-survivor uncle, but they still sound terrific. Nielson is one of those rock guitar players who manage to make the guitar sound like no other player can. And he still displays his clown-prince eccentricities: changing novelty guitars with every song (including the amazing five-necked guitar, and another that looks like him), and flinging guitar picks to a grateful crowd (I got one, and Amy got two).
I always admire rockers who can last for decades without becoming parodies of themselves. Cheap Trick has been a parody for decades; but not of themselves.
*****
Update:
As a visual aid for my description of the band, its web site has a photo of the band (posing with Roger Daltrey) taken the day before we saw them.
No comments:
Post a Comment