Cheap Trick |
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Thu. April 30.1998 9:16 AM EDT |
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Budokan Re-Creation Is No Cheap TrickRick Nielsen and the band play the legendary show note for note and word for word at San Francisco's Fillmore. by Senior Writer Gil Kaufman |
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Show marked third official performance of this rock nostalgia tour celebrating the show that spawned the album Live At Budokan. ( ) |
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Cheap Trick know Budokan, and this was no
Budokan. It was the Fillmore auditorium -- and on Tuesday night, it was the next best thing. The music was the same, if a little grittier and bluesier. The show
Guitarist/bandleader Rick Nielsen still showered the crowd with a flood of guitar picks and eye-popping guitar histrionics. Singer Robin Zander flipped his golden-boy blond hair and wailed his power-pop delights as if 20 years had barely crawled by while fleshy drummer Bun E. Carlos hid behind his white gloves and bashed out his indelible licks during "Surrender" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Need Your Love." And then there was spiky-haired, calm, cool bassist Tom Petersson who stuck to the basics and grinned his way through the show with nary a peep. "Entertaining" is how fellow bassist and Primus leader Les Claypool -- who said he'd never seen Cheap Trick live before (except on the '70s show "Don Kirschner's Rock Concert") -- described the performance. "Rick Nielsen was flinging guitar picks between his legs at me during the show." Rockford, Ill., power-pop legends Cheap Trick celebrated the 20th anniversary of their career-making 1978 show at Tokyo, Japan's enormo-dome Budokan by playing the entire show, in order. It was the third official performance of this nostalgia tour spawned by the popular live LP Live At Budakon (1979). The private party (sponsored by new media company RealNetworks and co- sponsored by SonicNet) took place -- not coincidentally -- on the same day that the band released the two-CD set Cheap Trick at Budokan: The Complete Concert. The 19-track album presents the landmark concert in its entirety for the first time ever on CD, so, in this age of Quadrophenia stagings and Tommy on Broadway (both performances of the Who's classic albums), what better way to celebrate than by re-creating the show for an audience of several hundred Silicon Valley suits noshing on gourmet treats? It hardly mattered who was there, though. Zander, impeccably dressed in a royal purple, crushed velvet suit, his blond mane loosely tied back, strutted to center stage, grabbed the mic and ripped his way through the hour-and-a-half show as if he were playing to 50,000 rabid Japanese kids. As usual, each one of the members played to form, with "naughty uncle" Nielsen -- dressed in a red suit, baseball cap and sporting his now de rigeur long, braided goatee, complete with a pre-sold-out price tag hanging from the end -- encouraging the audience by gesturing with his arms and handling all the between-song banter, much of which mimicked the live album. "On drums Mr. Bun E. Carlos!" he shouted before the evening's obligatory drum solo. Petersson, meanwhile, sported a red velvet waist coat and an oversized red stained-glass crucifix, kept to himself, as did Carlos, the steady-beat rhythmic heart of the band. "I think they pulled it off like consummate professionals," said 42-year-old Mark Christmas of Washington, D.C., an audio engineer for the National Geographic Society, who, despite being familiar with only one or two songs, danced at the back of the auditorium well into the night. Before the show, Claypool, dressed in a black fishing hat and wearing a scruffy beard, was huddled with Petersson discussing their mutual admiration for Morphine. A bass player talking to bass player about a band known for, what else, their bass player? Opening the show, apropos of nothing, was one-time David Letterman sidekick Larry "Bud" Melman, who asked the audience, "Is everybody tripping yet?" before launching into some jokes more fitting for a Rotary Club convention. But all that was forgotten once Cheap Trick took the stage. Up until about the fifth song, "Big Eyes," you'd be hard-pressed to suss the difference between the old live Budokan album and the new, in-the-flesh one. It was on that song, as well as on later versions of "Lookout" and "Can't Hold On," that the band, best known for its soaring, speedy power-pop melodies, revealed a slightly grungier, bluesier sound that one might well assume was borne out of Cheap Trick's recent years of tumultuous career ups and downs. The already walking-blues stroll of "Can't Hold On," which slithers along on the album, felt ever sadder and lonelier on the Fillmore stage, which Nielsen later acknowledged that the band had never graced before, adding jokingly, "since our first incarnation as the Beatles." As expected, the crowd went ballistic for a rousing rendition of "Surrender," the band's biggest hit, with Nielsen busting out his signature five-necked guitar for as fierce and youthful a celebration as the band's ever had. It made you wonder about the words spray-painted on the side of a backstage equipment case. "Morpheus," read the inscription, a nod to the mythological god of dreams, as if Cheap Trick were preparing for anything weird that came their way. |
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