Cheap Trick Live at Budokan
Maybe it was just me or maybe it was just Podunkville, but Cheap Trick came out of nowhere and captured an entire generation with this album. I mean, it goes from a point where literally* no one is talking about them, hearing them on the radio, or saying that they are their favorite band ("other than Zeppelin" being unnecessarily unspoken, of course) until one magical day that 97 Rock starts blasting "Surrender" on near constant rotation and everyone is wearing this t-shirt to school:
And by everyone, I mean everyone from Rick the legendary and mysterious pot dealer who should have been in 12th grade instead of 8th, to my friend Monica,** the cute daughter of the math teacher for the smart kids.
What did Not Bob learn from this? That popular rock music could be fun and could cross lines of taste and generations (my older sibling and cousins also liked the album - Not Nick had it on 8-track for his car and my cousin Robby used his cassette deck to record my copy of album). And that, like many good things in life, the phenomenon ended quickly. Within a year or so, the t-shirts disappeared and "Surrender" was only occasionally heard on the radio. And although many of us liked "The Dream Police," it just wasn't the same.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
*Yes, I really do mean "literally" and not "figuratively." Obviously. Sheesh.
**Monica, I am very sorry that I used to call you "Mono." I thought it was funny, but it really wasn't, was it? You were very cute and we were friends, but I wanted to be clever and it made the idiots in class laugh, so ...
