During
my senior year of high school I participated in a talent show. Based
on the idea of the then popular Gong Show we had teachers as the
judging panel who would strike a gong for any act they didn't like. I
don't really think they actually gonged anyone. This was the second
year for this event. The previous year four friends and I had made
fairly elaborate KISS costumes and got up and lip-synched two or
three songs to a crowd of our fellow students who played the part of
crazed fans. This was to be the closest to being a Rock Star I would
ever come.
For my senior Gong Show my friend Richard and I memorized the entirety
of the Abbott and Costello Who's On First Routine. I'm pretty sure
there were lots of people who got very tired of hearing us rehearse.
We didn't win the contest, but we pulled the routine off without a
hitch.
 |
| Photo by Lisa Amos Gerhart |
The problem that night was that we didn't really have enough
acts signed up to fill the allotted time. At show time those of us
who were organizing the event were scrambling to figure something
out. Richard and I did a spur of the moment lip-synch to the Blues
Brothers version of Shout. With fedoras and sunglasses in
place I pretended to know the words while Rich did the Dan Ackroyd
gymnastic moves on stage.
We
closed the show by lip-synching a couple of Cheap Trick songs.
I
had only recently gotten into them thanks to my friend Howard (see my previous post). My only awareness of Cheap Trick prior to this was
from a magazine article that had lumped them into the Punk movement.
I was pretty resistant to this at the time, so when he played the
Heaven Tonight album I can't say I was looking forward to
hearing it. The album opens with the song Surrender and I was hooked
immediately. That song is the anthem of my senior year.
I
had only seen pictures of them at the time, so I'm sure our
“performance” at the Gong Show didn't really do their live act
justice. But Rich stood behind the mic as Robin Zander (he too was
short and blonde) and tried to hide the fact he didn't know the
words. I pulled my pants up to flood level, put on a sweater and a
baseball cap and did the best Rick Neilson impersonation I could at
the time. Like the previous year the crowd dutifully played their
part as fans, though with slightly less enthusiasm. Cheap Trick
weren't as well known as KISS.
We
did three songs. The show must have been running really short for
this to be tolerated, but the crowd did keep cheering for more. I'm
pretty sure we only planned two but got the go ahead from the panel.
We did Surrender, of course, followed by I Want You to Want
Me which was starting to get some radio play thanks to the At
Budokan album. The extra song that ended the evening was
California Man, which for some reason was one of my favorite
songs on the album at the time. Looking back this was kind strange
considering it would be another twenty years before I actually set
foot in California.
This
all came crashing back into my memory last week when I heard them do
California Man less than twenty-four hours after I returned
from a trip to California.
This
was the third time I saw Cheap Trick. Once a decade seems to be the
pattern. I first saw them on the All Shook Up tour on February
16, 1981 at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. UFO opened. This was when
they were still able to fill arenas. I drove into the city with my
friend Greg and we sat in the nosebleed section. If memory serves,
bass player Tom Peterson was not with them on this tour. The second
time was on July 27, 2000 at the I.C. Light Ampitheatre as part of
the Pittsburgh WingFest. I think it cost $5 to get in and eat hot
wings, and oh yeah, see Cheap Trick. Nash Cato of Urge Overkill
opened.
Last
Wednesday they played the slightly larger outdoor venue at Stage AE with Freddy Nelson as the opening act.
 |
| Photo by Camille Lurie |
I understand attendance was low
(http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/music-reviews/low-turnout-misses-high-volume-high-energy-of-cheap-trick-700368/).
Ain't that a shame, because they put on an amazing show. One of the
highlights came during Need Your Love when they were
accompanied by the perennial Pittsburgh fireworks display from Heinz
Field. The climax of the coincidental light show lined up perfectly
with the high energy final msuical break of the song. The amusement
of the band at this synchrony was plain on their faces.
They
dug really deep into their archives for a high energy Rock and Glam
Metal show. Part of their appeal is that they have always crossed the
boundaries of musical styles. I first heard of them in an article on
Punk, though they have never really been part of that scene (like The
Runaways, who they toured with a lot in the 70's, they were lumped
into that category simply because of the time period and the venues
they were playing in). They can play convincing hard rocking tracks
and then follow up with the unapologetically bubblegum of I Want
You To Want Me. They do it all with a nod and a wink and a sense
of humor that borders on the camp but never lets you forget they're a
rock band.
The
shared nostalgia I mentioned in my previous post was true here as
well. In 1979 I was the only real Cheap Trick fan at my small high
school. Richard didn't really know the songs when I talked him into
his Gong Show performance as Robin Zander. I Want You To Want Me
was getting some traction on the radio but most of my hard rock
friends thought it sounded silly and the disco fans had no time for
it at all. But Heaven Tonight is one of the seminal albums of
1979 for me. Then, Surrender was My song. Just hearing
the intro brings back a flood of memories and makes me feel like a
teen again (the same is true of the intros to Rebel Rebel and
School's Out). But thirty-four years later I find myself in a
crowd of screaming fans, all of us singing along, just seeming a
little weird. It wasn't just My song. It belonged to all of us
who loved it, and we all have the same kind of stories and memories
encoded in its sound.
Disparate
lives and experiences give way to harmony as we sing our song.
It's
all alright. It's all alright.
