Decided to skip around some instead of listening discographical 
order. Lots of good album cuts to be heard. Rick Nielson must have been quite a Chuck Berry fan. A lot of his riff and solos sound like they were pulled from the 50s, only heavier.
I also just recently started having a greater appreciation of Cheap Trick, because I realized that they were (among other things) trying to be the Move, a band I really like. “Surrender” is a total Move tribute… and of course they actually covered one Move song (“California Man”).
The only Cheap Trick tracks I ever owned were:
[ul] [li]Reach Out[/li][li] I Must Be Dreamin’[/li][/ul]From the Heavy Metal movie soundtrack!
Then still gets me wondering who the losers of the year might be.
MAJOR disappointment - have yet to find any current Bun E. photos with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Hopefully he quit. 
Great Lennon tune - “Losing You”, that had Cheap Trick members playing in it, but after JL’s death Yoko apparently put the kibosh on it because she thought they were grandstanding him, if I recall correctly.
His family owned a music store while Rick was growing up in Rockford, IL in the '50’s. So, yeah ;). I will briefly mention something most Cheap Trick-adjacent folks know, which is that Rick Nielsen is one of the most-respected guitar collectors around, with a massive museum-quality collection. He knew from his experience growing up with guitars, and was one of the first guys to really scout pawn shops for $50 Tele’s.
Yeah, Cheap Trick without Bun E is not worth seeing, in my opinion. He’s one of my favorite rock drummers. The “losers of the year” line is a bit ambiguous to me. I’m not sure if it just generally refers to people the singer finds uncool, his parents, or what. But the Kiss reference is a shout out to them.
They ARE a great show.
Saw them at the WMMR-BQ few years back & they (for me) were still pretty damn fun to see & listen to!
Did you see the video of him showing off some of it on Reverb? Right before he sold a bunch…I kept reaching for my wallet.
In college in the late 70s, one of my best buddies was a good friend of theirs. Saw/met them many times. CT is as good as it gets - not a bad cut on the album. IC and HT are also about as good as power pop gets. But I lost interest after there w/ Budokan (all that screaming!), Dream Police…
You think they sound fun? You shoulda seen them in a bar.
I haven’t seen that one, but I have seen stuff on his collection and flipped through a book that would put out on some of his high spots. Just incredible, one-off prototypes classic old Gibsons, Fenders, Gretsches, Ricky’s…swoon.
I was surprised and amused when RN made an appearance on American Pickers. From the looks of things, he never threw ANYTHING out. They were buying old t-shirts, showbills, etc. And - IIRC - a set of KISS records figured prominently!
Thanks guys (I mean it) I’ve got a crazy jumbled earworm of bits an pieces of their 1st 3 records going thru my brain. I know what I’ll be listening to tonite! My record player is in the basement, so I can give it the volume it deserves! 
It’s somewhat strange. Carlson (his real name) says he’s been kicked out of the band against his will. But the rest of the band says he’s still a member, albeit one who isn’t asked to participate in any activities related to the band.
Reading between the lines, I’m assuming there is some contractual point somewhere which explains why the band doesn’t want to officially say Carlson’s no longer in the band even though he clearly is.
Well, here’s my take on the lyrics and the meaning of the song. It starts out with (probably) a young teen talking to a girl, then getting advice from his parents, then realizing that they’re actually kind of hip & cool.
So, the last verse, “Whatever happened to all this season’s Losers of the Year? Ev’rytime I got to thinking, where’d they disappear?”
To me that means his attitude towards his parents is changing - they’re not losers anymore. Where’d those old folks that I hated go? These new hip parents ain’t so bad after all…in fact, they’re on the couch getting it on, smoking weed and having sex!
"Then I woke up - Mom & Dad were rollin’ on the couch!
Rollin’ numbers rocking rolling
Got my KISS records out!"
Historical perspective, central Wisconsin, 1977-1979:
At the time, KISS wasn’t cool. They had their fans and all, but in the mainstream opinion, liking KISS made you a bit of an outcast. Almost as bad as liking disco.
Despite the fact that they were “my KISS records”, I’m not entirely sure if the singer thought his parents were cool or pathetic for listening to them.
In the concert I was at, at that lyric Zander threw a KISS album into the crowd. Don’t know which one, if it had anything special, or even if the vinyl was still inside. And, despite being pretty close to the stage, I never got a pick!
Yeah, KISS was considered lame from the get-go, even by people who liked a bit of theatricality in their rock music, as in Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Queen. KISS was liked by adolescent boys and hardly anyone else, due to their simple songs and lack of musicianship. I realize Cheap Trick opened for them, and so did Rush, but I doubt these two bands thought much of KISS. Rush has never outright dissed KISS, but they have commented on how the KISS members never practiced on tour, while Rush was rehearsing and writing all of the time.
More typical KISS opening bands were Ted Nugent, ACDC, Motley Crue, Scorpions, Winger, Sammy Hagar, Loverboy, Iron Maiden, Night Ranger, Great White, Queensryche, Krokus, Dokken, White Lion, Trixter, Loverboy, Slaughter and Skid Row (copied from wikipedia).
As you can probably guess, I’m more of a Cheap Trick, Bowie, Alice Cooper and Queen fan than I am of the bands in the last sentence.
That sounds about right to me!
Also, given that Rick Nielsen co-produced and appeared on Gene Simmons’s solo album, I suspect they had a perfectly amicable relationship.
Came in to add the standard response about Budokan, but since that’s been done 20 times will note how cool it was to see Rick Neilsen on the Chicago episode of Sonic Highways. Grohl and the rest of the Foos clearly revered him, but he just wanted to show up and jam. And that crazy guitar…
I saw them live about ten years ago. Just a great show; Nielsen played a different guitar for each song, and he had some pretty wild ones.
He has quite a sweater collection too. 