The enduring, hard-touring, and self-caricaturing rock group Cheap Trick
worked its way up to platinum sales with an explosive fusion of Beatlesque
melodic hooks, Who-styled crunching power chords, and a flair for the absurd.
Cheap Trick is one of the best live bands of its era. For all of the gimmickry
(best epitomized by Rick Nielson's pick showers and trademark outlandish
guitars, such as the quintuple-neck checkered monster he breaks out on
"Surrender"), Cheap Trick live is uniformly tight, as blistering and raw as it
is cunningly melodic.
