Exhibit I
GMS has been up in this blog ‘ish for four months without posting on Cheap Trick. Questions were starting to be asked. Luckily, Nargo The Bort’s Deviant Subculture – an excellent but soon to be de-commissioned purveyor of live bootlegs – has allowed that wrong to be righted.
In 1997 the Trick went into the studio with super-recorder and Shellac stand-up-comedian-in-residence Steve Albini. The eponymous record that resulted from those sessions was leaner, harder and better than anything they’d done since 1979’s Dream Police. It spelled a critical revival, though not a commercial one (the Trick change record labels with the same frequency and discretion that Rick Nielsen changes cardigans).
During the 1997 sessions, the Trick also decided to re-record their 1977 album In Color, stripping it of the original’s radio-friendly gloss, and adding some of Albini’s hardcore bite, bringing the sound nearer to that of their eponymous debut. GMS makes room for hard-rocking Trick, glossy power-ballad Trick, and most of the goofy nonsense in between. But for our money, the re-make edges it, as Nielsen and Zander’s songwriting on In Color hadn’t reached the pop heights of Heaven Tonight and Dream Police, and was better suited to their earlier garage-rock incarnation. Do folks agree?
Cheap Trick – ‘Clock Strikes Ten’
Cheap Trick – ‘Southern Girls’
Cheap Trick – ‘I Want You To Want Me’ (jazz version)
1 comment:
Word up A-hat. I've only got the glossy version of "in color", gotta say from what I've heard of the rerecording here, it kicks a bucketload more ass than the old one - I was always a bit pissed of with the album version of "i want you to want me" in particular, like it was totally lame compared to their live versions (budokan etc)
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