Live review: Cheap Trick at Shellharbour Workers Club on Friday, August 17 1990
By STEVE MASCORD
CHEAP TRICK’s latest world tour has begun too early. Not a month too early, not a week too early, not a continent too early. Just one hour too early.
Here at Shellies, everyone expects their headlining act to come on at 11pm, so when Robin Zander ambles onstage at 10pm and Cheap Trick strike up ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Tonight” from new opus Busted, there’s perhaps only 300 people in the joint.
They look haggard, subdued and rather rusty (the band, not the crowd). “If You Want My Love” couldn’t sound tardy if it tried, and Cheap Trick introduce it quite intelligently into the set early to put things on an even keel. Rick Neilsen has lost weight – a lot of it – and is bouncing around the stage with those silly sunglasses on and doing all the talking. Drummer Bun E Carlos looks unintentionally zany and is slowly starting to enjoy himself, while bassist Tom Petersson has just discovered the number of blonde nymphettes that inhabit these parts. Zander’s poise is slowly returning, and before long he’s punctuating his slow motion movements with the old screwed-up face we’ve come to expect.
“Dream Police” is about the sixth song in, and when I turn to get another drink, I can t get out! The crowd has doubled, at least, within 20 minutes, and ‘Trick’s irresistible penchant for singalong pop ditties is sweeping everyone along with a euphoric snowball effect.
“You Drive, I’ll Steer”, my fave off the single-laden Busted LP, cranks up, and by now the new material is being handled with aplomb. “Can’t Help Falling Into Love” is transformed into a rock song – natch – by some hyperactive Nielsen fretboard activities which, for all intents and purposes, should be on the record.
By the time “I Want You To Want Me” comes, most of the people in this virgin crowd (CT have never played here before) are well into what’s going on. The simple, some would say formularised, hook-rock is sinking in, the sixties songwriting sensibility daring you not to tap yer feet and sing along.
For dessert we have the “The Flame” with THAT six-armed guitar and as we move into a couple of one-song encores, Cheap Trick encourage an exceptional level of communal enthusiasm.
No, it wasn’t unbridled mayhem, but this was the first show of the tour and few bands could have managed what Cheap Trick did tonight in that situation. No matter what you think of their LPs, I defy you to go to a Cheap Trick show and be bored.
This review first appeared in Kerrang! on September 1, 1990
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