Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (1977, Reissue 1998)

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Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (1977, Reissue 1998)

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Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick
APE+CUE+LOG+Covers or MP3 CBR 320 | 57:13 min | 383 or 135 MB
Genre: Rock / Power Pop

Once largely written off by critics as arena-rock dinosaurs, Rockford, Illinois's favorite musical sons have become darlings of an influential cadre of alternative and modern-rock superstars and the subjects of an overdue catalog upgrade–and for a slew of good reasons. The first of those would be Cheap Trick, the blistering 1977 debut that confounded reviewers nearly as well as it captured the band's edgy song sensibility and musical chops honed by their 200-plus-gig-a-year work ethic. The band's later bubble-gum rep is viciously and hilariously undercut here by songs about youth-culture cynicism ("ELO Kiddies"), pedophilia ("Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School"), mass murder ("The Ballad of TV Violence"), and gigolos ("He's a Whore"), not to mention a tasty cover of Terry Reid's "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace". Guitarist Rick Nielsen's loud, trashy fretwork presaged "grunge" by a good 15 years, and Robin Zander's vocals show why he's since been tagged the Man of a Thousand Voices. And the rhythm section of drummer Bun E. Carlos and Tom Petersson was (and is) one of rock's most underrated. This Sony Legacy "Expanded Edition" restores the album's original running order (the previous version flipped the vinyl's A and B sides) and five bonus cuts. One of rock's greatest albums, unsung or otherwise. (–Jerry McCulley, Amazon.com)

Cheap Trick's self-titled debut is a '70s rock masterpiece. Although it doesn't contain many renowned songs, it does have superbly underrated compositions and electric performances, and a dark undercurrent is encountered throughout. The melodic hard rock has pop leanings at times, but the album was wisely recorded raw (by Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas), and such disturbing topics as pedophilia, serial murderers, suicide and prostitution are touched upon. "ELO Kiddies" starts the album off on an anthemic note (the track would be used steadily in concert to get the crowd going), while "Hot Love" and "He's A Whore" showed that the band could easily hold their own with the punk rock crowd. "Mandocello" is an absolutely gorgeous acoustic ballad that had hit single written all over it, while "Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School", "The Ballad of TV Violence" and "Speak Now" are all hard-rocking highlights. Many rightly consider CHEAP TRICK to be the band's finest album (Cheap Trick released a totally different self-titled album in 1997, which should not be confused with this 1977 debut of the same name).