Cheap Trick and Cheap Eats

--taken from: Rolling Spoon

by Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

Something happened to me on Wednesday night and my life changed. I saw Cheap Trick play live for the first time. From this point on, all live rock bands are ruined for me. I haven’t stopped thinking about it all week.

My husband and I were very kindly given tickets for something called the Stampede Roundup, a big concert held every year here in Calgary during Stampede week (though it’s not part of the official Stampede). It’s a corporate party: though I think there technically are some tickets available to the public, virtually everyone there has to be invited by one of the corporate sponsors. There are different levels of tickets, so some people are stuck in the general crowd, others get to live it up in corporate tents, many of which serve free food and/or beer. We were in one of the fancy tents, which is a world I’m far from used to. Generally I’m not into this kind of thing at all, but with a line up made up of Sloan, Cheap Trick, and Def Leppard, how could I not jump on it?

I have to say, there was some kind of magic on that stage. Sloan are always great and they certainly didn’t disappoint, but when Cheap Trick took the stage it was like time stopped and nothing else in the world mattered. Robin Zander, Rick Nielsen, and Tom Pettersen are not young men (Bun. E. Carlos was not there — Daxx Nielsen is currently playing drums for the band) but they rock harder than any band I’ve ever seen, all while wearing outfits that must have been killing them in the 30 degree heat. From the opening notes of “Hello There” right through to their biggest hits, it was pure rock ‘n’ roll bliss.

I could see the Sloan fellas on the side of the stage basically living out their preteen dreams (anyone who’s heard their records could make the educated guess that they’re huge fans). Sloan’s bass player Chris Murphy revealed during his set that he’d brought a picture he drew of Cheap Trick singer Robin Zander as a kid to show to his hero, and I can only imagine how he was feeling when he was called out to sing backups on “Surrender.” Seriously, the only thing that would have made for a more perfect line-up would have been if Cheap Trick were headlining in place of Def Leppard and Redd Kross were added to the top of the bill. Though, my head would have probably exploded and wouldn’t be here to write this now.

--taken from: Rolling Spoon