Cheap Trick: Never Surrender

Sgt. Pepper Live is the latest chapter to Cheap Trick’s enduring legacy
By Chris Carney

There is a long held maxim in the music world that the truly great bands make their mark on the stage and not in the studio. Whether it was the operatic crescendo of The Who, the smoke and grime haze of the Grateful Dead or the present-day masters of mass musical hypnosis, My Morning Jacket, every truly great band killed it live.

Perhaps more than any other band, American rockers Cheap Trick owe their career to their raucous, humorous, adrenaline-pulsing live shows. Formed in Rockford, Ill., in 1975, Cheap Trick toured the numerous bowling alleys, dive bars and warehouses throughout the Midwest. These shows led Epic Records’ Jack Douglas to sign them, after the prolific producer had seen them perform in Wisconsin, perhaps between strikes of the bowling ball. In 1977, they released their critically lauded but commercial dud self-titled debut. Their next two albums, In Color and Heaven Tonight, also failed to earn them a huge American following, despite featuring future hits “Surrender” and “I Want You to Want Me.” Cheap Trick had taken its three swings at stardom and a return to the well-worn bench of the never-were seemed imminent.

Then something strange happened. Japan came calling. While Cheap Trick had failed to muster the legions of fans they would soon be able to lay claim to in the United States, the Japanese had made all three albums gold records. In reward Cheap Trick traversed the ring of fire and filmed two of their shows at the Nippon Budokan, the Madison Square Garden of Tokyo. The resultant double live album, At Budokan, became the breakthrough Cheap Trick had prayed for.

At Budokan was the essence of what the Japanese knew and the world was about to learn: Cheap Trick rocked. Their mishmash of humor, melodic vocals and hard rock riffs worked brilliantly onstage. Robin Zander’s vocals melded perfectly with Rick Nielsen’s guitar cavorting, especially when Nielsen attacked his peacock feather-inspired five-neck guitar.

Cheap Trick had hit it big on the backs of a one-time import-made-multiplatinum domestic release. From there they toured ceaselessly, released a further 14 studio albums, At Budokan II and contributed to numerous soundtrack albums.

Cheap Trick has endured the decades when other bands have faded like background radiation from a dying star. They continue to innovate, entertain and occasionally illuminate.
For Cheap Trick it ends where it all began, on the stage. They return to Las Vegas together with the Sgt. Pepper Symphony Orchestra for a series of shows at Paris Las Vegas, June 22-23 & 25-26, to perform a complete live rendition of The Beatles’ legendary album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

This full-length homage to this seminal 1967 record features a full orchestra, lights, sounds and video, plus some of the band’s very own hits. Cheap Trick is live once more. Rejoice.



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One Republic: Independent Spirit

By Chris Carney

One Republic cheerfully straddles the border between the sovereign musical genres of pretty boy pop crooners and hipster alterna-rockers so well that their live shows at first suggest some kind of first contact scenario. Few other bands could draw teens unwittingly imitating their grandmother’s emotional outbursts at Elvis and tight pants-wearing twenty-something lads forcibly sulking their way towards counterculture credibility, all in one venue.

But One Republic has never been just another band. Owing much of their success to social media pioneer MySpace, One Republic earned a monstrous fan base that eventually led to them being signed by Mosley Records in 2006.

2007 saw the release of their debut album Dreaming Out Loud and its single “Apologize,” which would top the charts in sixteen countries via Timberland’s remix.

Often slotted into the Fray/Coldplay genre by fans and critics alike, One Republic insists that they are “not trying to be a British band.” Good thing for these Colorado Springs (that’s in the U.S.A, folks) natives, and a good thing for fans, too. Nothing screams “we’re irrelevant” more than one band actively trying to be another. Thankfully, One Republic remains true to their individual musical identity.

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The Backstreet Boys: Smooth Moves

The Backstreet Boys still larger than life
By Chris Carney

Back in 1992, an unknown, overworked and likely underpaid worker at the Orlando Sentinel filed another entry in the crowded sea of classified ads. What couldn’t be known at the time was that this request for “Singers and Musicians” to audition would lead to one of the best-selling recording groups in history.
 

Thus, in the massive confines of a blimp hangar, was the boy band supergroup The Backstreet Boys spawned. Hundreds auditioned. Five were chosen. Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson, cousins from Lexington, Ken., joined Orlando, Fla., natives A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough and Nick Carter, and the second age of the boy band began.
 

Their success was by no means a guarantee. America was still gripped in the throes of the grunge movement. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were kings, selling millions of albums, playing arenas and massive festivals like the groundbreaking Lollapalooza Tour and defining a musical generation.
 

It seemed that the Backstreet Boy venture was doomed to fail, but then something odd happened. Their first single, “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” surged to the top of music charts across Europe. And the group did survive and begin to thrive, and then in 1997 their self-titled debut album hit the American music scene and would go on to sell 14 million copies in the U.S. alone. From then, their rise was nothing less than meteoric.
 

Few bands in American history can lay claim to the achievements of the Backstreet Boys. Starting from that newspaper ad, the Boys went on to sell 75 million albums worldwide, had 13 Billboard Top 40 hits and earned a staggering $533 million in concert receipts.
 

They singlehandedly brought the boy band back to the forefront of American pop music, a spot left dormant since their musical forefathers, The New Kids on the Block. And while the whims of the music buying, concert going public moved on, the Backstreet Boys eventually busied themselves with other ventures. Littrell has gone on to a successful Christian music career. Carter battled addiction, starred on a reality show and began to act in film. McLean and Dorough began a television career. Even the elder statesman Richardson has gone on to a modeling and composing career.
 

Throughout the ups and downs of their careers, legal wrangling with former manager Lou Pearlman and the departure of Richardson, the Backstreet Boys proved to be survivors. They surged to the top of the pop charts and held off would-be pretenders to the boy band crown, with the possible exception of brother band ‘N Sync.
 

They went on to survive the demise of teen pop in the early 2000s only to recently resurface with a new focus on live instruments, a more adult sensibility and a sixth album, Unbreakable, released in 2007. They began touring again, first internationally where they had scored their initial successes and now back home in the States.

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