Cheap Trick at the Tropicana, May 7, 2011

[HaroldBlvd]

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150188622313401.312416.560743400&l=1219e73e0c

Despite my bad experience at the Tropicana
http://www.facebook.com/notes/harold-kramer/bad-situation-at-cheap-trick-show-at-the-tropicana-in-atlantic-city-what-would-y/10150172956363918
Cheap Trick played an awesome show in Atlantic City last night. I haven't seen this band since maybe 1978 and I was really looking forward to it. They did not disappoint. They started the show with Hello There from In Color, Hot Love from the first album, and Ello Kiddies, also from In Color. Amazing and it just got better, except when they did The Flame, a ballad that I can't stand. Otherwise the band was in fine form with Rick Nielsen switching out guitars with every song, sometime twice in one song.
Robin Zander voice was in top form, belting out the hits like it was 30 years ago and the band just started. Tom Petersson on bass filled out that amazing Cheap Trick sound.
They performed numbers from their latest album The Latest which I really like.
Daxx Nielsen did a fine job on drums taking Bun E. Carlos' place, who doesn't tour.
I had been a Cheap Trick fan from way back in the day. I remember sporting a satin baseball jacket around the Brooklyn College campus just like Rick Nielsen wore.
I even wrote a review in a Bklyn College paper, of their show at the Palladium when the Cars opened for them. I wrote something like I had seen the future of Rock and Roll and it was the Cheap Trick and the Cars. 30 years later, I think I was on to something

[Rick in Salt Lake]

Hey, say what you want about some of Cheap Trick's recorded output, they're a fantastic live act. I saw them play in a bar here in Salt Lake... something like ten years ago or so... and you"re right. Zander's voice hasn't aged a bit. This was all the more surprising considering how much that dude smoke on stage. Seriously. I mean we're talking smoking on a Kim Deal level...

I've had Cheap Trick on the brain for the last few weeks since I listened to their first album for the first time in a year or so... Man...

I should check out "The Latest"... Honestly I'm not sure why I haven't. Especially since I quite liked "Rockford"...

if you've never heard the single they did for Sub-Pop (a then-new song called "Baby Talk" and a great cover of "The Brontosaurus" by The Move. Both songs were produced by Steve Albini which you might find enticing, nauseating, or both) you should tack it down...