Cheap Trick Dream Police	Cheap Trick All Shook Up

Here's an interesting observation for you. Take any band that has enjoyed an extraordinary amount of popularity in the days of the '70s and early '80s and let's say that they've slipped out of the limelight for a while. Upon slipping back into the rock arena, many of those bands enjoyed a resurgence of popularity, filling up large venues and, in general, raking in dough. All great. But you take a hardworking band like Cheap Trick, who has never exited the rock world at all, and they are largely relegated to clubs. I bring this up as an introduction to reviews of several new Legacy boosts to old classics largely because it highlights a hard-working band that has survived the grind of rock'n'roll, while still churning out albums. And while their present output may not match the sheer magic of their earlier classics, they have not lost the spirit of Rock. And Cheap Trick doesn't need any introduction to a large contingent of music fans except for perhaps the younger set, who should investigate the band for their contributions.

With a twist of persona, Cheap Trick employed an interesting tac on stage presence by being twoparts "pretty boy" and two parts "come as you are" average joes. Not only did this blend (not new, see Sparks for a similar type of fusion) work well, bringing them to the attention of, first, Chicago audiences, then to America, and finally the world, especially Japan, but their music of power pop tunes endeared a record buying public for quite some time. They began with the potent Cheap Trick debut from Epic, moving into the same year issue of In Color, and then stepping up to the plate again with the extremely popular, Heaven Tonight before Live at Budokan unleashed a powerhouse rock outfit into the annals of Rock. In 1979, Cheap Trick offered the Top 10 issue of Dream Police to their legion of fans.

Dream Police, which showed the band in conceptual mode on the cover, is an album of excellent tunes that begin with the title song, "Dream Police," a song that investigates the upcoming fears of a futuristic society that polices what we hear and/or see. It's followed by "Way of the World," a strong Beatles like tune; if you could imagine Beatles evolving, they'd likely be Cheap Trick. The rest of Dream Police showed the band at some of their best work, certainly an evolved one, one that showed a lot of calm and poise. An interesting piece on "Gonna Raise Hell," perhaps the best song on this album (all 9+ gracious minutes), is the John Lennon-like primal scream of 'mother', a shout no doubt used as a nod to JL. And how about "Voices", for a big push into Beatles territory .

On this version of Dream Police, the remastering does one thing quite good and that is to open up Neilsen's lead guitar and provide a more natural sounding recording studio effect to the overall album. Bonus to this album are two previously unreleased live recordings from the LA Forum, New Year's Eve circa 1979 of ""The House Is Rockin' (With Domestic Problems)" and "Way of The World" plus a live track from Daytona Beach 1988, also a B-side to "Don't Be Cruel". Also included is a No Strings Version of "Dream Police, an outtake from the Dream Police sessions, which comes across as a simpler, more harder-edged take which would have been a great B-side to the original. Its inclusion here shows some of the different ways that songs get recorded before deciding on the final cut.

The booklet from Dream Police provided a lot of album art in 12-pages as well as track by track analysis from the band, a complete set of lyrics to the album's tracks, complete credits and an Epic Records discography. listing.

For Cheap Trick's next album, the band divorced themselves from longtime producer, Tom Werman and went with an obvious choice, George Martin, who had produced the Beatles in the past. In 1980, they released what would be Tom Petersson's last album for some time before rejoining again later. All Shook Up offered a different Cheap Trick to the fans, but not so far removed so as to be unrecognized. In effect, the band was far stronger at this point, producing a mix of songs that showed them to be more versatile than originally thought but also brought a sense of change that fans could not love as much as Cheap Trick's priors. As a result, the album, although extremely interesting and good, didn't fare as well sales-wise, only drumming up Gold rather than their usual Platinum and charting under Top 20. Cheap Trick had a drought of Platinum sales until their Lap of Luxury album.

The album begins with a familiar ""Stop This Game" but then runs through a wide mix of songs that are quite varied. Neilsen's "Just Got Back", hinted at being about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, from the track-by-track discussion found in the booklet, is a straight out rocker with more percussive effects than you can shake a stick at, pun intended. Its 'don't look back' effect doesn't relent. The band slips back into more familiar territory on "Baby Loves To Rock" and "Can't Stop But I'm Gonna Try". They get a bit experimental with "World's Greatest Lover", the first Beatles-like track on the album, one called Lennon-ish by George Martin. It also lets Zander moves his vocal range around a bit. The album, as a whole, is certainly a different Cheap Trick than fans were accustomed to by then, having had 4 highly contagious works before it, However, it is unfairly maligned by critics, who allege that the band had run out of steam. It's quite clear that the change of producers had an impact on the 5th studio release but hindsight shows the band backpedaling to a more familiar setting not long after.

Special additions to the Legacy reissue of All Shook Up makes the album fare better in the bonus department than Dream Police largely because of the inclusion of Found All The Parts, the Gold-awarded EP of four tracks released prior to the album it is is now included on. Also bonus to the album is "Everything Works If You Let It", originally found on the soundtrack to the movie Roadie. It is as good as a track as they have done and it is perplexing that it didn't go on a studio issue, but that's rarities and its the way of rock 'n' roll. It is now corrected by being included here. The booklet for All Shook Up is more spare than Dream Police eliminating lyrics but otherwise providing the same track-by-track discussion, album photo art, with the front of the booklet the cover of All Shook Up and the back, the cover of Found All The Parts. Additionally, there is plenty of album credits to satisfy discophiles.

As with the recent reissues of Mott the Hoople discs, there are three expanded releases for Cheap Trick. The other album reissued is not available as a physically purchaseable album but rather, it is available as a digital download. The expanded edition of Next Postion Please contains tracks originally left off of the intended sequencing in favour of other tracks. It was also produced by star producer, Todd Rundgren. This digital release was scheduled for a February 21 release date but I have been unable to find it. All albums come to you at an affordable pricing.

Cheap Trick is still in the vortex of Rock 'n' Roll and I don't think they plan on quitting anytime soon..