The reissue of Dream Police is a definite improvement over previous CD versions available in the USA. The new mastering job puts every instrument in its place, from the steely multioctave thronk of Tom Petersson's 12-string bass to the keening strings that overlay the title track. The bonus tracks too add value: live versions of "The House is Rockin' (With Domestic Problems)", "Way of the World", and "I Know What I Want" revisit the band's classic hard-hitting Live At Budokan sound, and a stringless version of "Dream Police" reveals just what a slight creation that song is.
And I think that's the key to Cheap Trick. When Bob Dylan writes a song, he builds you a 12-cylinder Duesenberg - a juggernaut clad in steel and burlwood that purrs and roars and can top 200 miles per hour. When Cheap Trick write a song, it has two pedals and a little propeller on top, and if you pump your legs fast enough and pray, you might get airborne and not die. Songs like that rely completely on the strength of the personalities behind them, and dedication to minimalism is Cheap Trick's greatest strength. No matter how you slice it, "Dream Police" is a ludicrous song, practically sub-Spinal Tap in its lyrical complexities and burdened with a hook that labors a little more than it should. But it all works in spite of that. Minimalism means not burdening songs down with more than they can carry, and there is an underappreciated art to that. I defy you to listen to "Dream Police" all the way through and not be gripped with an inescapable urge to keen out "Police, Police!" with Robin Zander during the rideout chorus. The band have enough charisma, enough goofy-pretty conviction, that the primary colors they work with end up seeming as subtle in their way as Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
The album itself is enough of a hooky ride to make it worth having, with the unsubtle thrills of the grinding "Gonna Raise Hell" (about raising hell), the barely restrained throbbing of "Need Your Love" (about needing love), and the Beatles-meet- Alice-Cooper rocker "I'll Be With You Tonight" (which is about how tonight he's gonna be with her, tonight). But the bonus tracks do act as welcome reminders of the greatness that was Cheap Trick on stage, and the track-by-track commentary by the band in the liner notes are more informative than most. While I will probably wait a lifetime to read liner notes as brutally honest as the ones Elvis Costello wrote for the Rykodisc reissue of Goodbye Cruel World, which began "Congratulations! You've just purchased our worst album," it is still fun to read Bun E. Carlos' thoughts on Cheap Trick's songwriting, or to discover that the band in general agree that the album would have been better if they'd have laid off touring so much during recording.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Vern Halen
But it was real good late 70's power pop over three or four albums, as opposed to a one hit/one album wonder (i.e., the Knack).
And I saw them on tour recently. Bun E. is the most underrated rock drummer - his deep groove drives the band as well as Bonham's drove Led Zeppelin.
2 - John Owen
Heck yes on all counts! They had a great four album run. Which is more than I can say for any four consecutive Beatles records, 'cuz I always keep running into Magical Mystery Tour.
(Did he just say Cheap Trick were better than the Beatles??)
(Yup. But he didn't mean it, so it's okay.)
3 - Rodney Welch
You nailed it, John. I was a huge Cheap Trick fan in college (late 1970s, when they first hit it big) and in retrospect Dream Police does seem like their jump-the-shark moment. Interesting to read that it was recorded pre-Budokan; nonetheless, the cover itself was a bad sign. It indicated the band had become a cliche, and were way too self-conscious about their image as quirky or offbeat or strange. The songs followed suit, unfortunately. I agree with you about Bun, though; in fact, his short little solo on "Clock Strikes Twelve" on Budokan remains for me a prime rock fantasy -- far more so than anything John Bonham did.
4 - Mark Saleski
mostly...yea..though i would argue that Southside Johnny is the quintessential bar band.
5 - Joanie
A bar band? Oh man. Perhaps it's your age that causes you to say such a thing.
Cheap Trick IS and Cheap Trick will always BE. There is no dissecting them.
Oddly enough, this past weekend was Cheap Trick Weekend here.
"Surrender", John. Give in to the power of CT.
6 - Al Barger
I'm with Joanie. Dream Police is a classic album, and it doesn't need to be defended as any kind of camp. The title song has a fine melody, and a perfectly good, clever lyric.
And disrespecting All Shook Up- them's fightin' words around these parts.
7 - Christopher Rose
This is one of those cute Americana things, isn't it? Much like this Springsteen fellow many of you seem to revere, on this side of the pond Cheap Trick only serve to provoke much baffled head scratching and faint cries of "huh?".
*hides*
8 - Mark Saleski
...much like all of the "next big things" that are supposed to come rocketing across the pond, only to drown along the way.
9 - John Owen
Aw, c'mon Joanie and Al... there is no slight implied in calling Cheap Trick a bar band. Okay, it does say something about the scale of their music, but the fundamental difference between "bar band" and other bands is that bar bands succeed only as long as they can keep the attention of an intrinsically disinterested crowd. A band like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Radiohead, who cut their teeth in music scenes that have many clubs who cater directly to patrons who are looking for novelty, and not necessarily catchy songs to drink to, would probably crash and burn playing Rockford, Illinois.
Canadian bands are the kings of bar band music right now. Barenaked Ladies, Moxy Fruvous, and even the great Tragically Hip had to play everywhere from Ottawa to Yellowknife in venues filled with patrons looking for FUN, rather than total originality. And when I say Cheap Trick are the best bar band in the world (South Side Johnny, Joe Gruscheky, The Clarks, or Aerosmith circa 1977 notwithstanding), I mean they can get a drunk and surly crowd on their side faster than Tara Reid lunging for a bottle of Bacardi 151.
And Rodney is right on something I should have pointed out - the Dream Police album cover is totally, purely self-conscious in a way the band hadn't quite gotten to before. Granted, all their prior album covers made hay out of the sartorial and tonsorial differences between Neilsen/Carlos and Zander/Petersson, but dressing them in white leather cop costumes with gold badges? That smacks of 70's Rock Decadance! Smell The Glove, anyone?
Although I would contend that it wasn't till Shark Sandwich, I mean, All Shook Up, Al, that the music really started to suffer.
(An aside to Mr. Rose... you got us on that one, but I'd strongly recommend you hide the Roxette and Take That! records you bought when you were in school before you say that too loudly. (ArcticMonkeys))
Christopher,
10 - John Owen
Hmm... Seems I left a comma hanging like a mad lib at the end of my comment.
I'll go first.
Christopher, I didn't want to say anything, but your flies are open.
Christopher, a canteloup won't fit up there!
11 - Christopher Rose
Hi John, I had actually left school a while before either Roxette or Take That! formed. Er, I can't quite imagine why you'd want to but I think a fairly good slice through the inside of my head is provided by my Pandora favourites list or, if you're really a glutton for punishment, you can listen to my own personal soundtrack here. I listen to Pandora a lot and she never fails to amaze, inform and delight me! Sorry if that sounds like an ad but it is true.
12 - John Owen
Yes, I see.... keep your filty cut-rate English imports off our soil! Those puffed-up and overhyped celebrity nothings like Joy Division and Rory Gallagher!
Um... er... I actually quite like your taste in music so I'm going to STFU now. Though, anyone who digs Christina Aguilera must surely also agree that Cheap Trick's "Surrender" is one helluva song.
But your country has a lot of apologizing to do for Oasis.
13 - Christopher Rose
John, I couldn't agree more about Oasis. I loathe that band to the max. In fact, I've never seen a band so terribly uncreative become so popular before. I'd rather listen to The Carpenters or Barry Manilow than that dreck - and I'm from Manchester!
14 - Vern Halen
I would've said classic Southside Johnny is more than just a bar band. Hearts of Stone is one of the best albums of its era.
Go back to Cheap Trick's first self titled album to hear a band walking the fine lines between pop sensibility, rock 'n' roll backbeat and (almost) inappropriate lyrical weirdness. Too bad they couldn't sustain that past four albums.
15 - zingzing
hey--what's wrong with joy division? i am a viking.
16 - El Bicho
Good write-up and overview of the band, but I disagree on a couple of points
You're looking to hard because there is no trick in what they do. Their music is very simple and straight forward.
You also lost me with the "bar band" comment. Bar bands don't have top ten hits and platinum albums. Your age gives you away because in 1978 Cheap Trick and KISS were the two biggest bands.
Besides, people don't go to see bar bands unless their friend is playing. Instead, they go to the bar for drinks and the band just happens to be there.
17 - Al Barger
No, I wouldn't take "bar band" as an insult at all, but stuff like comparing their work to "a badly malformed cow fetus floating in formaldehyde" does sound like less than high praise.
I can see I'm going to have to carve out time to do a proper right up on the glory of All Shook Up.
And I wouldn't trade the entire screamingly pretentious Radiohead catalogue for "Can't Stop It But I'm Gonna Try," much less "Surrender" or "Auf Wiedershen."
18 - Connie Phillips
Editor's note: This article has been placed at the Advance.net Web sites, a site affiliated with about 12 newspapers.
One such site is here.
19 - Vern Halen
Right now I'm thinking I'm going to spin "I Dig Go-Go Girls," an outtake from the first Cheap Trick album. Bar band? How about Art Rock? This is as weird as Eno's "Baby's On Fire," and rocks as hard too; maybe harder.
20 - John Owen
Bicho:
"Bar bands don't have top ten hits and platinum albums." Barenaked Ladies much?
I swear I didn't mean any slight by calling Cheap Trick a bar band... your point that "people don't go to see bar bands unless their friend is playing. Instead, they go to the bar for drinks and the band just happens to be there" is exactly what I'm saying. If you're going to be a totally great bar band, then you need to be able to win over everyone in the place, no matter how indifferent they are to your presence at first. And I know from experience just how incredibly difficult that hill can be to climb. Moreover, it's a hill that a lot of platinum bands never really have to climb once, much less probably the thousand times that the Trick did it.
But anyway, I guess I'll just leave it at "no offense intended."
Al, I do have to admit that I was really just looking for an excuse to use the wonderfully evocative "cow fetus" analogy. Cheap Trick really are a beautiful unicorn. As are you. ;)
21 - Eric Olsen
sweet as always John O - power-pop is among the handful of apexes of rock 'n' roll: done well it has it all and has it now. Cheap Trick did it extremely well for several albums in the '70s and a number of singles since - ROCK!
22 - Vern Halen
You know, the great lost Cheap Trick album is the self titled release that came out in 1997 on the Red Ant label. Too bad the company went under - it was a great comeback album. The lead off song, "Anytime" was as tough as nails, and the rest of the album was full of classic Cheap Trick moments. "Baby No More" would've destroyed all other songs on the radio.
23 - Mark Saleski
vern, i think i've got that record....haveta go check it out tonight. i remember seeing them live during that time and Zander saying something about how they had some new tunes but couldn't play them due to some legal hocum going on.
24 - JP
I love these guys, they're camp and they know it. Don't you miss those early 80s hits "She's Tight" and "If you want my love.."? I need to get this CD, as all I have is the GH. I enjoy the Don't Be Cruel cover though, nicely adept bass line. They didnt' even write "The Flame," you know.. just instapop cheese they recorded to get a hit.
Love the bigger than life image they project, and I find their careerlong interest in Roy Wood and The Move from England very interesting indeed!
25 - Mark James Meli
There isn't a band around that can't learn something from Cheap Trick! If I could conceptualize a band of my own and how songs should be played, I'd come up with Cheap Trick over and over again. DREAM POLICE is just as much "serious fun" now as it was when I first bought it in 1979! I'm 15 all over again when this album comes on.