Videodrone #4: Dream Police

Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Dream Police (1979)

There was a lot going on in 1979. Disco was big on the charts, with Donna Summer and Earth, Wind and Fire doing well, but the backlash was growing. New wave was gaining momentum, with acts like the Cars, the Police, the B-52s, Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson getting radio airplay, and punk acts like the Clash and the Jam were transcending the genre. 

It was also a breakthrough year for Cheap Trick, a power pop act out of Rockford, Illinois, that released its debut album in '77 to little fanfare. Two more excellent but under-the-radar albums came out before the band went to Japan in the spring of 1978 to play a few shows. The reaction was over the top and Cheap Trick recorded the shows for a live album called Cheap Trick at Budokan, which was released in early '79. The album was a monster hit, with "I Want You to Want Me" becoming a top 10 single. 

The band had a visual gimmick, contrasting the handsomeness of singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson with the dorky, goofball looks of guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos. 

The band didn't waste the momentum, releasing their fourth studio album, Dream Police, on my 12th birthday (Sept. 21). The title track served as the lead single and video, with its lyrics describing a Big Brother situation where the government polices your dreams. 

The video opens with the four band members in a police lineup, pleading their cases for why they shouldn't be prosecuted.

Zander: "I didn't do it. Five years ago, I had no idea I'd be here. Who are you anyway? What do you take me for? I must be dreaming."

Carlos (after fumbling through his pockets for a piece of paper): "Pardon me. Listen, I'll never eat a double cheeseburger before bed again, really."

Petersson: "I'm telling you, I didn't do it. But if I did do it, it was an accident." (A direct quote of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious' comments to the police after his girlfriend Nancy Spungen was found dead in their hotel room in the fall of 1978.)

Nielsen: "In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial sentimentalities, amicable, philosophical, and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosities. Are we really the Dream Police?"

The foursome then walks offscreen and dresses in the all-white garb of the Dream Police before the video switches to a band performance, complete with Carlos with a lung dart hanging from his lips as he nonchalantly pounds the skins. The song is a pulsing rocker that's abetted by a string section as a paranoid-sounding Zander sings: "The dream police/They live inside of my head/The dream police/They come to me in my bed/The dream police/They're coming to arrest me/Oh no."

The added ELO-style instrumentation expands the group's sound, elevating the paranoia as the song builds up to a feverish crescendo. "'Cause they're waiting for me/They're looking for me/Every single night/They're driving me insane/Those men inside my brain."

Nielsen takes the mid-song spoken word part: "I try to sleep/They're wide awake/They won't let me alone/They don't get paid to take vacations/Or let me alone/They spy on me/I try to hide/They won't let me alone/They persecute me/They're the judge and jury all in one."

As the band plays an instrumental section before the final chorus, the video shows each member's mug shot alongside them in their Dream Police gear.

This was one of those songs I couldn't get enough of as a 12-year-old rock fan. I bought the 45 and played it constantly. 

Cheap Trick parlayed the success of the Dream Police into headlining arenas and their next album, 1980's All Shook Up, was produced by none other than George Martin. The '80s and '90s proved a bumpy ride for the band, however. The early '80s saw their popularity dwindle (I saw them headline a festival show in Kingston, NH, in July 1984; after second-billed Ratt played their set, a good chunk of the packed audience went home), only to bounce back in 1988 with a #1 hit ("The Flame") and a #4 in their cover of "Don't Be Cruel." 

Zander, Nielsen and Petersson are still recording and touring as Cheap Trick, with Nielsen's son Daxx on drums. Cheap Trick parlayed their visual flair into a memorable image long before MTV became a thing and have continued on (in a less prominent but still rocking) way long after videos were essential for band success.

Day After Day #316: I Like to Rock

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

I Like to Rock (1979)

Growing up as a youngster in Pickering, Ontario, I was obviously exposed to a lot of Canadian music thanks to the Canadian Content rules, which required that radio stations play at least 25% of their music by Canadian artists (that was the rule in the '70s, it has since gone up to 35%). Even before I was listening to rock, I have a distinct memory of being in bed and hearing a neighboring house having a party with April Wine's "You Could Have Been a Lady" rattling my windows. It was pretty cool, wondering what was going over there. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm guessing there was plenty of beer and weed and that all the attendees are in their 60s now.

Back to the CanCon: In the late '70s, I would hear plenty of April Wine on the radio, along with Rush, Triumph, the Guess Who, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Max Webster, Saga, etc. In early 1981, I watched a CBC concert featuring April Wine playing in London and it totally rocked. I had liked them before, but this cinched it. They had just released their album The Nature of the Beast, which was their biggest album in the U.S. thanks to hits like "Just Between You and Me" and "Sign of the Gypsy Queen." 

But it was a song from the band's previous album, 1979's Harder...Faster, that grabbed my attention thanks to that concert special I saw. The lead track, "I Like to Rock," was an epic rocker that paid tribute to some of the band's main influences while also reflecting the current hard rock scene. 

April Wine was formed in 1969 in Halifax by singer-guitarist Myles Goodwyn and brothers David and Richie Henman (guitar and drums, respectively) and their cousin Jim Henman (bass). They relocated to Montreal after mistakenly thinking a rejection letter from Aquarius Records was an invitation and talked the label into signing them. They scored a top 40 hit in Canada with "Fast Train" off their 1971 debut album and opened for Ike & Tina Turner, Jethro Tull, Badfinger and Stevie Wonder.

The band's had a hit with their 1972 cover of Hot Chocolate's "You Could Have Been a Lady," which hit #2 in Canada and #32 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jim Henman had already left the band and was replaced by Jim Clench, and then the Henman brothers quit and were replaced by Jerry Mercer on drums and Gary Moffet on guitar. The band released albums that did well in Canada and continued to tour regularly; Clench left to join Bachman-Turner Overdrive and was replaced by Steve Lang. 

April Wine was successful in Canada, adding Brian Greenway as a third guitarist. The band was booked to play a gig at the El Mocambo club in Toronto in March 1977; the co-headliner was a band called the Cockroaches, which turned out to be the Rolling Stones. The performance was released as a live album and the band toured in the U.S. opening for the Stones, Styx and Rush.

In 1979, the band released Harder...Faster, which included the hits "Say Hello" and "I Like to Rock." The latter song was a tribute to Goodwyn's love of the genre.

"Well, alright, something's got you going tonight/Doin' all she can, it's alright/Come on, can't you see?/That when we all let go/We get high on rock and roll/Journey to the stars/Rock n' roll guitars/I like to rock/Some like hot, baby/I like it, you like it/I like to rock/I like to rock."

Harder...Faster ended up staying on the Billboard 200 chart for 40 weeks, with April Wine opening for Rush, Toto, Styx, Boston, Squeeze and Blue Oyster Cult. 

"I can sing, that's the kind of life for me/Want it loose and fancy free/Come on, then let's go/And it'll be alright/We can rock and roll all night/Journey to the stars/Rock and roll guitars/I like to rock/Some like it hot baby/I like it, you like it/I like to rock/I like to rock."

The song also includes tributes to the band's influences with the riffs from the Beatles' "Day Tripper" and the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in the final verse.

The song went to #86 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #75 on the Canadian RPM top singles chart, while reaching #41 on the U.K. Singles Chart.

April Wine hit platinum with The Nature of the Beast, and then had success with 1982's Power Play thanks to the videos of "Enough is Enough," "If You See Kay" and "Anything You Want, You Got It." But in-band tensions led to Goodwyn moving to the Bahamas before the recording of 1984's Animal Grace. The album was less successful than its predecessors. Another album followed in 1986, with less success.

The band released four more albums over the next 20 years, with various lineup configurations. Goodwyn finally retired from the band in 2022 and died the following year at the age of 75.

 

Day After Day #315: I Thank You

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

I Thank You (1979)

After yesterday's foray into offensive content warnings (which I believe was caused by an apparently risque lyric that I later deleted), I'm going to keep things brief and relatively family friendly today. It's Thanksgiving, and I've watched exactly zero minutes of football and spent no time on my couch...because we're up in Canada for the second year in a row. We drove up to Toronto to visit my youngest daughter, who's in her junior year of college. We brought Thanksgiving to her, going to Whole Foods and getting the fixings for a low-key dinner, substituting a rotisserie chicken for a turkey. It was great to have the four of us together for Thanksgiving for the first time in five years.

In the spirit of the holiday, I'm going with ZZ Top's 1979 cover of "I Thank You," which was originally done by Sam and Dave in 1968. The original, written by David Porter and Isaac Hayes, is excellent, but I'm more familiar with the ZZ Top version that came out when I was 12. 

Billy Gibbons provides the gruff yet soulful vocals while also delivering the goods with some gutbucket blues guitar, while Dusty Hill on bass and Frank Beard on drums keep things tight on the bottom end. 

"You didn't have to love me like you did/But you did, but you did/And I thank you/You didn't have to love me like you did/But you did, but you did/And I thank you/But you took your love to someone else/I wouldn't know what it meant to be loved to death/You made me feel like I never felt/Kisses so good I had to holler for help."

The song was the first single on ZZ Top's album Deguello and it hit #34 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was still a few years before the band blew up with the 1983 album Eliminator.

"Every day was something new/You put on your bag and your fine to-do/You got me trying new things too/Just so I can keep up with you/You didn't have to shake it but you did/But you did, but you did/And I thank you/You didn't have to make it like you did/But you did, but you did/And I thank you."

The Sam and Dave version was a big hit, going to #9 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and #4 on the R&B chart. The song has also been covered by numerous artists over the years, including Bonnie Raitt, the Casanovas, Bon Jovi, Paul Rodgers, Robert Randolph and Tom Jones.

I wrote about another ZZ Top song from the same album a few months back. They kicked a whole lot of ass back in the day. That's it! Hope you had a great Turkey Day.

Day After Day #274: Girls Talk

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Girls Talk (1979)

Many artists have had vanity labels over the years, usually to release their own material. When Led Zeppelin was at the height of its powers in 1974, its contract with Atlantic Records expired and the band decided to start its own label, Swan Song Records. The Rolling Stones and Beatles had done similar moves a few years earlier; the idea was to release future Zeppelin albums as well as music by other artists the band liked. 

The first Swan Song releases weren't Zep-related, but the debut album by Bad Company and a new record from the Pretty Things. The label was active for a decade, ending in 1983 after Zep broke up and manager Peter Grant fell into ill health (although Swan Song is still used for re-releases of its albums). One of the artists who signed to the label in the early days was Welsh guitarist Dave Edmunds, who had been playing in bands since he was a teenager in the late '50s.

Although Edmunds was primarily known as a rockabilly artist, he also was a producer and had a big hit in 1970 with a cover of "I Hear You Knocking." He produced early '70s British pub rock acts like Brinsley Schwarz (featuring a young Nick Lowe) and Flamin' Groovies as well as blues-rockers Foghat. Edmunds released a 1972 album called Rockpile and for the tour, called his band Dave Edmunds and Rockpile; after the tour, the band split up.

In 1976, Edmunds and Lowe formed a new version of Rockpile along with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams (who had played drums in the original Rockpile); by this point, Rockpile's sound had evolved into power pop, although it also got lumped in as new wave by the late '70s. But because Edmunds had his deal with Swan Song and Lowe had his with Stiff Records (where he was in-house producer), things got a little complicated. Essentially, the band would record albums and then release them as either Lowe or Edmunds solo albums. 

One of those albums was 1979's Repeat When Necessary, which was billed to Edmunds. The album featured mostly covers, although Bremner contributed three originals, including Graham Parker's "Crawling from the Wreckage" and Hank DeVito's "Queen of Hearts" (which later became a hit for Juice Newton). The most prominent song on the album was "Girls Talk," which Elvis Costello wrote and gave to Edmunds to cover. 

It's a typically lacerating but extremely tuneful Costello composition about the emotionally damaging world of gossip. 

"There are some things/You can't cover up with lipstick and powder/Thought I heard you mention my name/Can't you talk any louder?/Don't come any closer, don't come any nearer/My vision of you can't come any clearer/Oh, I just wanna hear girls talk."

Costello and the Attractions did their own version and released it in 1980 as the B-side to their cover of "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down."

"Got a loaded imagination being fired by girls talk/It's a more or less situation inspired by girls talk/But I can't say the words you wanna hear/I suppose you're gonna have to play it by ear, right here/And now girls talk/And they wanna know how, girls talk/And they say it's not allowed, girls talk/If they say that it's so/Don't they think that I know by now?"

The Edmunds version is more upbeat than Costello's, driven by Edmunds' acoustic guitar work and vocal delivery, while Costello's take is a little more sinister. Both versions are excellent, but they just hit differently.

"But the word up on everyone's lipstick that you're dedicated/You may not be an old-fashioned girl but you're gonna get dated/Was it really murder? Were you just pretending?/Lately, I have heard you're the living end."

Edmunds' version was released in June 1979 and hit #4 on the U.K. Singles Chart; it also got to #18 in Canada, which is where I was hearing it regularly on the radio. In the U.S., the song reached #65 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Linda Ronstadt also covered the song on her 1980 new wavy album Mad Love; she also covered two other Costello songs ("Party Girl" and "Talking in the Dark"). Aimee Mann has praised the song, saying she used to cover it live, and Tegan and Sara did a version for the soundtrack of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

After the success of "Girls Talk," Edmunds and Rockpile released the first and only album under the name Rockpile with 1980's Seconds of Pleasure; Edmunds' contract with Swan Song was up so he was freed to do so. The album had a minor hit with "Teacher, Teacher" and the band ended up playing the Heatwave festival in Toronto in August 1980 in front of over 100,000 fans. But tensions between Edmunds and Lowe, mainly over Edmunds' dislike of band manager Jake Riviera, led to Rockpile splitting up in 1981.

Edmunds released four more albums in the '80s with limited success and by the '90s was essentially retired, although he joined a couple of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band tours in 1992 and 2000. He did a tour in 2007 and performed live a few times over the next couple of years. His last release was an instrumental album in 2015. 

Day After Day #261: Goodbye Stranger

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Goodbye Stranger (1979)

When I was first getting into rock music in the late '70s, Supertramp was HUGE. Specifically in 1979, the English band was riding high with "The Logical Song" off their album Breakfast in America, and in Canada, where I was living, the song was everywhere. Breakfast in America was the first rock album I ever purchased, for $4.99 at Eaton's in our local mall and I played it constantly.

That album was their biggest by far, going quadruple platinum in the U.S. (and selling 20 million worldwide) and topping the Billboard 200 for six weeks. But by this point, Supertramp had been around for nearly a decade. They were formed in 1970 by keyboardist Rick Davies, bassist/vocalist Roger Hodgson, guitarist Richard Palmer and drummer Keith Baker, with financial backing provided by Dutch millionaire Stanley Miesegaes. 

Playing prog rock, the group's first two albums flopped. After the second album's failure, the entire band except for Davies and Hodgson quit and Miesegaes withdrew his support. Supertramp then added bassist Dougie Thomson, Bob Siebenberg (then going by Bob C. Benberg) on drums and John Helliwell on sax and other instruments. Meanwhile, Hodgson had switched to guitar and keyboards and Davies stepped up a second lead vocalist. 

Davies and Hodgson were originally writing together but began to do so separately; Davies was more of a blues-rock guy while Hodgson favored lighter, poppier fare. Whatever the formula, they finally figured it out on 1974's Crime of the Century. The band scored a top 40 hit with Davies' "Bloody Well Right," but also had success on rock radio with Hodgson's "Dreamer" and "School." The band found a strong balance between prog and pop elements, and the album hit #38 on the Billboard 200 but #4 in the U.K. and Canada.

The band's next two albums--Crisis? What Crisis? (1975) and Even in the Quietest Moments (1977)--were less successful, except for the latter's "Give a Little Bit," but Supertramp was still building a fanbase. For their sixth album, Davies and Hodgson were considering a concept album about the differences between the two of them, but ultimately backed off that idea and just focused on writing fun songs. 

The result was the megahit Breakfast in America. "The Logical Song" got most of the attention, but the band also had hits with the title track, "Take the Long Way Home" and "Goodbye Stranger." The latter song was written and sung by Davies about a drifter who breeze through one-night stands.

"It was an early morning yesterday/I was up before the dawn/And I really have enjoyed my stay/But I must be moving on/Like a king without a castle/Like a queen without a throne/I'm an early morning lover/And I must be moving on/Now I believe in what you say/Is the undisputed truth/But I have to have things my own way/To keep me in my youth."

The song is propelled by Davies' Wurlitzer piano, but Hodgson's guitar provides some additional oomph. Davies' vocals are supported by Hodgson's falsetto backups on the chorus.

"Like a ship without an anchor/Like a slave without a chain/Just the thought of those sweet ladies/Sends a shiver through my veins/And I will go on shining/Shining like brand new/I'll never look behind me/My troubles will be few/Goodbye stranger it's been nice/Hope you find your paradise/Tried to see you point of view/Hope your dreams will all come true/Goodbye Mary/Goodbye Jane/Will we ever meet again/Feel no sorrow, feel no shame/Come tomorrow, feel no pain."

The song ends with a bang, with Hodgson taking a shit-hot guitar solo that was uncommon for a band like Supertramp. It's pretty damn spectacular.

Even the album cover was iconic, an airplane-seat view of Manhattan with actress Kate Murtagh in costume as a waitress standing in for the Statue of Liberty, holding a glass of orange juice on a tray instead of a torch. 

The band followed up Breakfast in America with a double-live album called Paris, which went top 10 and scored a hit with a live version of "Dreamer." In 1982, the band released ...Famous Last Words..., which got to #5 on the Billboard 200 and had a hit with "It's Raining Again." But it was nowhere near as successful as its predecessor. 

In addition, Hodgson had moved to California and decided to go solo after tour ended in 1983. Davies continued to lead Supertramp, which released Brother Where You Bound in 1985; the album spawned a top 30 hit with the jazzy "Cannonball." The band toured for the album but only played Davies compositions, which angered some fans. The next album, 1987's Free as a Bird, was less successful and the band split up after that tour.

Davies reunited with Hodgson in 1993 to play "The Logical Song" and "Goodbye Stranger" at a party for A&M co-founder Jerry Moss. Afterwards, they got together and wrote two songs, but disagreements about management led them to split again. In 1996, Davies reformed Supertramp with Helliwell, Siebenberg and five other musicians and recorded Some Things Never Change, which came out in 1997 and included the two songs Davies wrote with Hodgson. It was a minor hit, reaching #74 in the U.K. Another album, Slow Motion, was released in 2002. 

Both Supertramp and Hodgson have toured periodically over the years, but never together. The last Supertramp show was in 2012; a 2015 tour was announced but later cancelled because Davies was having health issues.

The balance between prog and pop has resulted in Supertramp getting overlooked in recent decades, but the band had a good thing going for a while.

Day After Day #248: Refugee

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Refugee (1979)

From one set of Heartbreakers to another: While Johnny Thunders and his ragged crew of junkies and reprobates were ripping it up in NYC, Tom Petty was working with his own band of the same name. 

A native of Gainesville, Florida, Petty had formed the band Mudcrutch in 1970 with guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench joining a few years later. The band enjoyed local success for a few years, but in 1974 moved to Los Angeles to try and get a major label deal. Leon Russell signed them to his Shelter Records label, but after their first single "Depot Street" didn't chart, the band split up.

Petty stayed on the Shelter payroll as a songwriter and solo artist and in 1976, re-teamed with Campbell and Tench to form Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Stan Lynch on drums and Ron Blair on bass. The band's self-titled debut combined Southern rock with a harder-edged snarl, but it didn't do much initially in the U.S. A short tour of the U.K. was successful and gave the group a boost. After news of their popularity in Britain, the label re-released "Breakdown" in the U.S. in 1978 and the song became a top 40 hit. "American Girl" also became a classic rock staple in later years after the band got big.

Petty's second album on Shelter was 1978's You're Gonna Get It! hit #23 on the Billboard album chart and featured the punchy single "I Need to Know," which hit #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and "Listen to Her Heart," which got to #59. 

In 1979, Petty and Heartbreakers weren't thrilled when ABC Records, Shelter's distributor, was sold to MCA. Petty refused to be transferred to another label and filed for bankruptcy as a tactic against MCA. After the dispute was eventually settled, the group released Damn the Torpedoes on MCA's Backstreet label and it was a breakthrough hit. On the strength of lead single "Don't Do Me Like That," which hit #10 on the Hot 100, the album sat at #2 on the Billboard albums chart for seven weeks; the album blocking them from the top spot was Pink Floyd's The Wall.

The second single, "Refugee," took a while to put together. Campbell brought in the music and Petty quickly wrote the lyrics, but producer Jimmy Iovine could not find a drum sound he liked. The band recorded 70 takes of the drums, which led to Lynch being fired during the sessions. After the band tried using B.J. Wilson of Procol Harum and Phil Seymour of the Dwight Twilley Band, they brought Lynch back. Campbell even walked out for a few days out of frustration.

But it finally came together and it's a pissed-off classic, thanks to Petty's sneering vocals and Campbell's angry guitar.

"We did somethin' we both know it/We don't talk too much about it/Ain't no real big secret all the same/Somehow we get around it/Listen it don't really matter to me, baby/You believe what you want to believe/You see, you don't have to live like a refugee."

Petty later said the song was his reaction to the pressures of the music business and especially the legal battle with MCA. Even after it was resolved, he was still so angry it colored a lot of the songs on Damn the Torpedoes.

"Somewhere, somehow somebody/Must have kicked you around some/Tell me why you want to lay there/Revel in your abandon/Honey, it don't make no difference to me, baby/Everybody's had to fight to be free/See, you don't have to live like a refugee/Now baby, you don't have to live like a refugee/Baby, we ain't the first/I'm sure a lot of other lovers have been burned/Right this seems real to you/But it's one of those things/You gotta feel to be true."

The song resonated with listeners, going to #15 on the Hot 100 and #2 in Canada, where I was living at the time. Both "Don't Do Me Like That" and "Refugee" were huge radio hits in Toronto. Back in those early days, Petty and the Heartbreakers were often getting paired with punk acts like the Ramones, and songs like "Refugee" make you understand why. 

Damn the Torpedoes is considered one of Petty's best albums, with other hits like "Here Comes My Girl" and "Even the Losers." Unfortunately for Petty, he had more label problems with the release of the band's next album, 1981's Hard Promises. MCA wanted to charge an additional dollar over list price (which was $8.98 at the time) and Petty was vocal about his opposition, even doing a cover interview with Rolling Stone and threatening not to release the album. MCA eventually gave in and the album stayed at $8.98 and became a top 10 hit, with "The Waiting" getting up to #19 on the singles chart. The band also teamed up with Stevie Nicks for the song "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" from her debut solo album; the song was a big hit, going to #3 on the Hot 100.

Petty and the Heartbreakers released three more successful albums in the '80s. Blair left the band in 1982 and was replaced by Howie Epstein. Petty also joined the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys in the late '80s with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, and then Petty made his first solo album in 1989, Full Moon Fever. The band wasn't thrilled by his solo move, even though most of them played on the album. Produced by Jeff Lynne, Full Moon Fever was a huge hit, going to #3 on the Billboard 200 and spawning three hit singles. 

The Heartbreakers released Into the Great Wide Open in 1991, but that was the last new music (except for "Mary Jane's Last Dance" off their '93 Greatest Hits album) until 1996, when they did the soundtrack for the movie She's the One. Lynch left in 1994 and Dave Grohl played with the band on Saturday Night Live and several live shows; Petty offered him the job but Grohl chose to focus on his solo project, which eventually turned into Foo Fighters. Petty released another solo album, Wildflowers, that year (and one more in 2006). Drummer Steve Ferrone and multinstrumentalist Scott Thurston joined the group officially after the 1999 release of the Petty/Heartbreakers album Echo. 

Petty had even reunited with his first band Mudcrutch, releasing albums in 2008 and 2016. Petty and the Heartbreakers would release three more albums, the last being 2014's Hypnotic Eye, before Petty's death in 2017 of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 66. 

Stuck In Thee Garage #541: August 16, 2024

You know how 2019 seems like a lifetime ago? Try 1979, when some of us were tweens and others of us weren't, uh, born yet. The technology was primitive, there was lots of crazy strife in the world and people complained about gas prices, but life seemed pretty good to me. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played music from 1979 in hour 2, but it was all stuff that was considered new wave or punk; no disco, AM gold or hard rock. Kicks a fair amount of arse, if you ask me. And if you disagree, well, you're out of order. This whole court's out of order!

This playlist is definitely not out of order:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Jack White - That's How I'm Feeling/No Name

X - Sweet Til the Bitter End/Smoke & Fiction

Osees - Pixelated Moon/SORCS 80

Oneida - Salt/Expensive Air

Velocity Girl - Audrey's Eyes/UltraCopacetic (Copacetic Remixed and Expanded)

Peel Dream Magazine - I Wasn't Made for War/Rose Main Reading Room

Chime School - Another Way Home/The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel

Fucked Up - Face/Another Day

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Raw Feel/Flight b741

ORB - Tailem Bend/Tailem Bend

Swervedriver - Up from the Sea/Doremi Faso Latido

Los Campesinos! - Long Throes/All Hell

Redd Kross - The Main Attraction/Redd Kross

Ekko Astral - Devorah/Pink Balloons

Plus/Minus - The Pull from Both Sides/Further Afield

Hour 2: 1979

The Clash - Death or Glory/London Calling

Gang of Four - Ether/Entertainment

The Buzzcocks - Harmony in My Head/Singles Going Steady

XTC - Making Plans for Nigel/Drums and Wires

Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Accidents Will Happen/Armed Forces

Joe Jackson - Don't Wanna Be Like That/I'm the Man

Joy Division - Shadow Play/Unknown Pleasures

Public Image Ltd. - Careering/Metal Box

Gary Numan - Metal/The Pleasure Principle

The Police - Does Everyone Stare/Reggatta de Blanc

David Bowie - D.J./Lodger

Talking Heads - Heaven/Fear of Music

The Cars - Candy-O/Candy-O

Graham Parker - Local Girls/Squeezing Out Sparks

Squeeze - Slap and Tickle/Cool for Cats

You can find all the hott rock HERE, pally!

Day After Day #205: Cars

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

Cars (1979)

The late '70s are so long ago now that it seems like nobody remembers them anymore. It was a pretty cool time if you were 12 years old. There was a lot going on in the music world. The old arena rock bands were still around, but there were also some cool sounds emerging from the underground. 

I was just a kid in the Toronto 'burbs listening to AM radio at the time, so I wasn't aware of everything happening, but artists like the B-52s, the Clash, Joe Jackson and Blondie were breaking through and I was digging all of them. Another one who blew up in late '79/early '80 was Gary Numan. He had spent a few years as the frontman for Tubeway Army, which started as a punk band and then dove into a synthesizer-drenched new wave sound. The group had a hit with "Are Friends Electric?" (which went to #1 in the U.K. in 1979); "Down in the Park" didn't chart but has become a fan favorite.

In mid-'79, Numan started recording his next album and added a new backing band. He did a John Peel session and opted to debut four new songs and drop the Tubeway Army name. For The Pleasure Principle, Numan decided not to have any guitars on the album, opting for a completely electronic and robotic sound, exploring how technology would change society. 

The first single, "Cars," was released in the U.K. in August 1979 and went to #1; the single was released in North America in February 1980 and went to #9 in the U.S. and #1 in Canada, where I was living. It was everywhere on the radio and it was so different from anything else out at the time. 

There's not a whole lot in terms of lyrics, but Numan sings it like an android and musically, it sounds like it was dropped in from outer space. The lyrics were inspired by a road rage incident, Numan said in an interview. "I was in traffic in London and had a problem with some people in front. They tried to beat me up and get me out of the car. I locked the doors and eventually drove up on the pavement and got away from them. It's kind of to do with that. It explains how you can feel safe inside a car in the modern world...When you're in it, your whole mentality is different...It's like your own little personal empire with four wheels on it."

He also said he wrote the whole song in 30 minutes, starting with the bass riff.

"Here in my car/I feel safest of all/I can lock all my doors/It's the only way to live in cars/Here in my car/I can only receive/I can listen to you/It keeps me stable for days in cars."

At the time, the song was looked at as a novelty, especially on this side of the Atlantic. Much like the song "Pop Muzik" by M, which was also a big hit around that time; the U.S. equivalent might have been Devo. But like that band, Numan had a lot more to offer, both before and after "Cars" came out. 

"Here in my car/Where the image breaks down/Will you visit me, please/If I open my door in cars?/Here in my car/I know I've started to think/About leaving tonight/Although nothing seems right in cars."

The video was also a hit, although this was a full year before MTV would launch. There was a local show in Toronto called The New Music that would regularly air videos and I saw "Cars" there, as well as "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads, "Lucky Number" by Lene Lovich, "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police and many more. 

I never checked out The Pleasure Principle at the time, but I did many years later (like the mid-2000s) and man, it is so good. Numan never had another hit in the U.S. after "Cars," but he's been successful in the U.K. over the years. He went in a more industrial direction in the '90s, inspired by Nine Inch Nails, who were originally inspired by him. Numan is still recording (he's released 19 solo albums) and touring and has definitely become a revered figure in the alternative music world.

Day After Day #187: Cheap Sunglasses

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Cheap Sunglasses (1979)

Long before they had flashy videos on MTV and were spinning their guitars, the guys in ZZ Top were touring the country playing their own brand of gutbucket blues and hard rock. 

The band formed in Houston in 1969 after the breakup of singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons' previous band, Moving Sidewalks. He was joined by bassist Lanier Greig and drummer Dan Mitchell; Greig was replaced by Billy Ethridge and Mitchell by Frank Beard. The band was signed by London Records; Ethridge wouldn't sign the contract so he was replaced by Dusty Hill. 

The band's third album, Tres Hombres, came out in 1973 and featured the hit "La Grange," about a brothel; the album went to #8 on the Billboard 200. Gibbons' guitar tone made the band stand out, and both he and Hill traded off lead vocals. Their next album, Fandango!, was half live and half new songs, one of which was "Tush," which hit #20 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

ZZ Top made one more album, Tejas, for London Records before going on hiatus in 1978 while Beard was dealing with addiction issues. Gibbons went to Europe, Beard went to Jamaica and Hill went to Mexico; Hill later worked for three months at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport because he wanted to feel normal after spending several years touring the world. The band reunited in 1979 to make a new album, with Gibbons and Hill both sporting the long beards that would become synonymous with ZZ Top. 

The band signed with Warner Bros. and released Deguello in late 1979. The first single was a cover of Sam and Dave's "I Thank You," which was a minor radio hit. The second single was an original that was a good encapsulation of the ZZ sound: Gibbons singing about his love for inexpensive shades, combining swampy boogie riffs with a unique guitar sound thanks to the fake Fender Gibbons played through a Marshall amp with a blown tube. 

"When you wake up in the morning/And the light is hurt your head/The first thing you do/When you get up out of bed/Is hit that street a-runnin'/And try to beat the masses/And go get yourself some cheap sunglasses/Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah."

Gibbons said in a Guitar World interview that the song's three verses came to him while the band ws driving through La Grange, Texas.

"Spied a little thing and/I followed her all night/In funky fine Levi's and her/Sweater's kind of tight/She had a West Coast strut/That was sweet as molasses/But what really knocked me out was her cheap sunglasses/Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah."

The album version features an almost 2-minute instrumental break, and the song closes with another 90 seconds of funky vamping, punctuated by Hill's thumping bass. The single version is 2:40, more than 2 minutes shorter than the album one.

"Now go out and get yourself/Some thick black frames/With the glass so dark/They won't even know your name/And the choice is up to you/'Cause they come in two classes/Rhinestone shades/And cheap sunglasses/Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah."

The song only went to #89 on the Billboard Hot 100 but it got plenty of FM radio play and the album hit #24 and went platinum. While in Europe on the Deguello tour, ZZ Top played the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, where they shared time with electronic act Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; Gibbons was a fan and started adding synthesizers to ZZ's sound starting with the next album El Loco. The electronic influence really came through on 1983's Eliminator, which was a monster hit thanks to singles "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Legs" and their accompanying videos. Engineer Linden Hudson worked closely with Gibbons, using drum machines and synths to replace much of Hill and Beard's work. Hudson didn't receive credit for his co-writing work and ended up suing after the band used his song "Thug" without permission; ZZ Top ended up paying him $600,000 after he proved he had the copyright.

Still, the band became big stars thanks to the videos, which featured them in cheap sunglasses, trench coats and the long beards (except for Frank Beard, of course). Their 1985 album Afterburner was also a smash, with four top 40 hits. By 1990's Recycler, the band cut down on the synths and went back to a guitar-based blues sound, but it didn't have the same success as the previous two albums (although it did go platinum). The next 30 years found ZZ Top still touring regularly and releasing the occasional album. 

In July 2021, Hill had to leave the tour with a hip injury and was replaced by his guitar tech Elwood Francis. Five days later, the band announced Hill had died at home at the age of 72. The band cited Hill's wish for them to continue on with Francis on bass. And they're still touring, cheap sunglasses and all.

Day After Day #73: I Don't Like Mondays

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

I Don't Like Mondays (1979)

Long before Law & Order was doing "ripped from the headlines" storylines, musicians were using the news as inspiration. Bob Geldof of the Irish new wave act The Boomtown Rats was doing an interview in the Georgia State University radio station WRAS in January 1979 when he read a report about a school shooting at an elementary school in San Diego. Sixteen-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer fired into an elementary school playground, killing two adults and injuring eight children and a police officer. When asked why she did it, Spencer said, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."

Geldof later said the line "Silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload" came to him right after the interview and Geldof and keyboard player Johnnie Fingers wrote a song about such a senseless act. The band performed "I Don't Like Mondays" in concert less than a month later, originally intending to use it as a B-side, but U.S. audiences reacted well to it so the song was released as a single in the UK in July '79 and in the U.S. in October. 

School shootings were still pretty rare back in 1979, even in the U.S. Spencer fired 36 times into the schoolyard that morning as students were going into the school. She barricaded herself inside her home for several hours before she surrendered. Spencer was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. She was sentenced to life in prison and is still incarcerated.

The Boomtown Rats had formed in 1975, releasing their first album two years later. Their second album, the Mutt Lange-produced A Tonic for the Troops, followed in 1978. It featured three U.K. hits including the #1 song "Rat Trap," which was the first rock song by an Irish band to hit #1 in the U.K. The band had a lower profile in the U.S. but was making inroads when its third album The Fine Art of Surfacing came out in June 1979.

Up in Toronto, I had never heard of the band until "I Don't Like Mondays" came out and immediately, I was hooked. Led by Fingers' on piano and accompanied by orchestral strings, the song was unusual sounding, especially for a new wave band. And of course, the lyrics. Even though I hadn't heard about the school shooting, "I Don't Like Mondays" was a grabber.

"The silicon chip inside her head/Gets switched to overload/And nobody's gonna go to school today/She's going to make them stay at home/And daddy doesn't understand it/He always said she was good as gold/And he can see no reason/'Cause there are no reasons/What reasons do you need to be shown?"

The song was a huge hit in the U.K., where it went to #1, and in Canada, where it went to #4 on the singles chart. It was catchy and shocking and sad all at the same time. The Rats caught some heat for capitalizing on a tragedy, and Geldof later said he regretted writing the song because he made Spencer famous. But there's no denying the power of the song.

Of course, some folks who didn't know or care about the story behind it just adopted the song as an anti-Monday screed because who doesn't hate Mondays?

"Tell me why?/I don't like Mondays/I wanna shoot/The whole day down."

Geldof and the Rats released a few more albums and had some hits, but he became bigger than the band eventually. He starred in Pink Floyd's movie of The Wall and then in the mid-'80s became famous for organizing Live Aid, where the Rats played at Wembley. The band split up a year later and reunited in 2013 for a tour. They released a new album in 2020.

Meanwhile, school and other mass shootings have become a common occurrence here in the U.S. Crazy to think that it's been 45 years since "I Don't Like Mondays" and we're no closer to a solution.

Day After Day #62: London Calling

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

London Calling (1979) 

As I've noted earlier, I enjoy punk rock but I'm about as unpunk as it gets. The Clash was the first punk act I really got into, albeit through some of their least punk-sounding songs in "Train in Vain" and "Lost in the Supermarket." You could argue they were already post-punk by this point, anyway. 

Led by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the band was already established as one of flag-bearers of UK punk by the time they went into the studio to record their third album, London Calling. They really stretched out on the album, experimenting with a variety of styles including reggae, ska, pop, rockabilly and heavy rock. What didn't change was their penchant for social commentary, whether it was about consumerism on "Supermarket," paranoia ("The Guns of Brixton") or oppressive capitalism ("Clampdown"). Quite simply, London Calling is one of the greatest rock albums. Period.

The first single from the album was the title track, which reflects Strummer's concerns about the world around him, including nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island, police brutality and even the band's situation, which in 1979 found the Clash in debt and without a manager. It opens with a slashing guitar riff as Strummer barks out the lyrics.

"London calling to the faraway towns/Now war is declared, and battle come down/London calling to the underworld/Come outta the cupboard, ya boys and girls/London calling, now don't look to us/Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust/London calling, see we ain't got no swing/Except for the ring of that truncheon thing."

Things aren't looking up for, well, anyone.

"The ice age is coming, the sun's zoomin' in/Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin/A nuclear error, but I have no fear/'Cause London is drowning and I live by the river."

"London Calling" went to #11 on the UK Singles chart, but it didn't chart in the U.S., where "Train in Vain" was a hit instead, going to #23 on the Hot 100. The album of the same name hit #9 on the UK album chart and #27 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S. The Clash were set up for major success, so of course they followed it up with a sprawling triple album, Sandinista! The band decided to stick it to their label CBS, which resisted releasing London Calling as a double album and then released Bruce Springsteen's The River as a double a year later. Despite mixed reviews, it went to #24 in the U.S.

Fast forward a few years later and the Clash were everywhere. "Rock the Casbah" was a top 10 hit, as was the Combat Rock album. The band opened for the Who on the latter's "farewell tour," which surprised me because the tour was called "Schlitz Rocks America,' which seemed pretty far from punk. Not long after, Jones left the band and was replaced by two guitarists; the new lineup released the unfortunate Cut the Crap in 1985. It was widely panned and Strummer broke up the band weeks after it came out. 

In the years that followed, Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite and Strummer began a solo career, but they resisted reuniting the Clash despite receiving constant big-money offers. Strummer died in December 2002 from a congenital heart defect, a few months before the Clash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I saw B.A.D. play at the House of Blues in 2011, which was fun. Wish I'd gone to see one of Strummer's tours before he departed this mortal coil. The Clash remains one of my favorite bands. Fortunately, they left a decent amount of music behind...even Sandinista.

Day After Day #51: I'm the Man

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

I'm the Man (1979)

As you go through your life, there are certain songs that just grab you: You hear them once and you can't get enough of them. For me, one of those is Joe Jackson's "I'm the Man." 

I was 11 for most of 1979 and starting to really get into pop music. Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" was all over the radio up in Toronto. It actually was first released as a single in October 1978 and didn't do anything, but was re-released later in '79 and became a hit (#21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #9 in Canada). I heard it a lot that summer and really dug it, so when Jackson released a second album that fall, I paid attention.

"I'm the Man" was the title track of Jackson's second album and it was a blistering new wave rocker about a conman, or a "spiv" as the Brits say (according to Jackson). Unlike some of the early punk acts, Jackson's band on his first three albums was full of terrific musicians who could masterfully play new wave, rock or even jazz. Bassist Graham Maby powers "I'm the Man" with a killer bass line, with Gary Sanford on guitar and David Houghton on drums racking to keep up. 

I loved it and would be constantly listening to my radio to hear it again; this was before you could hear anything on demand, so I was at the mercy of radio programmers. Eventually, I bought the 45. The lyrics were great, too, as Jackson's character is constantly trying to find the next big thing. Jackson was being lumped into the "Angry Young Man" category with artists like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, but like them, he was just having fun. 

"I'll speak/To the masses through the media/And if you got anything to say to me/You can say it with cash/'Cause I got the trash and you got the cash/So baby we should get along fine/So give me all your money cause I know you think I'm funny/Can't you hear me laughing/Can't you see me smile/I'm the man."

He pushed for "I'm the Man" to be the first single off the album and the song totally flopped, failing to chart anywhere but Canada, where it hit #23 on the singles chart. The next single, "It's Different for Girls," ended up going to #5 on the UK Singles Chart. 

I didn't get the album until many years later, but man, it's so good. Those first two albums are kinda perfect to me. He ended up really blowing up with 1982's Night and Day, which had the huge hit "Stepping Out." I got kind of sick of that one because it was massively overplayed on radio, but it's a great song. I've picked up a few of his albums over the years, although he's been all over the place musically. In the late '90s, he started playing classical music. He's gone back to his rock roots every so often and he's still touring.

I've probably heard it a thousand times, but I never get sick of "I'm the Man." It'll never stop kicking ass, and it's even better live (see a classic performance from the Rock Goes to College show in early 1980).

Day After Day #29: Candy-O

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Candy-O (1979)

How do you follow up an essentially perfect debut album? That was the quandary facing the Cars in 1979. Their 1978 self-titled debut was a masterpiece that came out of nowhere and was jam-packed with great songs. Formed in Boston two years earlier, the band's members had all been playing in bands for years; the best-known was drummer David Robinson, who was in the Modern Lovers previously. The album had three singles ("Just What I Needed," "My Best Friend's Girl" and "Good Times Roll"), but all nine songs have been received radio airplay. The band's synth-heavy sound was futuristic sounding at the time, resulting in the Cars getting the "new wave" tag from critics. 

Flush with accolades and a multiplatinum record, the band went back in the studio with producer Roy Thomas Baker and came up with Candy-O, which was released in June 1979. The first single, "Let's Go," was an immediate hit, getting up to #14 on the Hot 100 chart (11-year-old me bought the 45). There were two other singles: "It's All I Can Do" (which reached #41) and "Double Life" (which didn't chart). The album peaked at #3 on the Billboard album chart but ultimately didn't do as well as its predecessor. 

But FM radio was kinder to the Cars, playing all three singles as well as "Dangerous Type" and the title track early and often. The song "Candy-O" was my favorite. Written by Ric Ocasek and sung by bassist Benjamin Orr, the song highlights the brilliant work of guitarist Elliot Easton. An economical player who had already proven on the first album that he can deliver terrific but concise solos, Easton gets room to stretch out on "Candy-O." The brief chorus ("Candy-O/I need you so") gives more weight to Easton and Robinson, and the solo sees Easton tearing into some speedy runs before it jumps into the next verse. 

The song is heavier and darker sounding than most Cars songs and it's only 2:36, but it packs a punch. Orr uses a more sinister delivery to the song, which Ocasek said was not about a specific person. "Different ways to see you through/All the same in the end/Peculiar star, that's who you are/Do you have to win?"

The Cars continued on an album a year pace for the next few years, releasing the experimental Panorama in 1980 and the more commercial Shake It Up in '81. After a break, they came back with Heartbeat City in 1984, which was a monster hit with six singles released and major MTV airplay for the "You Might Think," "Magic" and "Drive" videos. Ocasek married supermodel Paulina Porizkova and the band was never bigger. But by the time they released Door to Door in 1987, the public wasn't picking up what the band was putting down. The album stiffed and the Cars broke up in early '88. 

The members pursued solo endeavors, with Ocasek becoming an in-demand producer. Orr passed away in 2000 from pancreatic cancer. The surviving members reunited for an album and tour in 2010 and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. Ocasek died of natural causes the following year.

Their success was packed into a short time, but the Cars left behind a ton of great songs.

Day After Day #21: Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) (1979)

There have been many interesting artists over the decades, but few have been as interesting and unpredictable as Neil Young. Sixty-plus years in, he's still going: Making new music, releasing old music that's never been heard before, touring. He's made incredible music on his own and with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He's been a huge influence on bands in genres including folk, country, electronic and hard rock and everything in between. He's worked with artists as varied as Devo, Emmylou Harris and Pearl Jam.

Young has so many great songs in his catalog that it's difficult to pick just one. In the 1970s, he took many detours, most of them rewarding. One of my favorites was 1979's Rust Never Sleeps, which featured live versions (recorded the previous year) of solo acoustic songs on the first side and electric rockers with Crazy Horse won the second. An accompanying movie documented the tour, as did a double live released in November 1979 called Live Rust.

The Rust Never Sleeps album begins with the acoustic "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and ends with "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)." Side 2 of the album was already filled with heavy rockers, but the final song features a riff that is super-distorted and sludgy. The song actually came out of a collaboration with Devo for Young's movie Human Highway. Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh came up with the term "rust never sleeps," which Young used in the song. Inspired by punk rock, Young used "Hey Hey, My My" as a rallying cry against the stale arena rock that was in style in the late '70s.

"The king is gone, but he's not forgotten/This is the story of Johnny Rotten/It's better to burn out than it is to rust/The king is gone but he's not forgotten."

The song has been covered many times, including by Oasis, System of a Down, Dave Matthews Band and NoMeansNo, and the line "It's better to burn out than to fade away" was famously quoted by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note. Upon hearing that, Young said he wouldn't perform the song anymore, but the surviving members of Nirvana got him to change his mind. 

It's kinda perfect that Young followed up the release of Rust Never Sleeps with a decade full of truly weird projects, including an album filled with vocoders, synths and electronic beats (1982's Trans), a rockabilly album (1983's Everybody's Rockin'), a traditional country record (1985's Old Ways) and a horn-driven jump blues joint (1988's This Note's for You). He then closed out the decade with Freedom, which echoed Rust Never Sleeps and led to a resurgence in popularity for Young. He was embraced by younger acts, touring with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion and even making an album with Pearl Jam.

I was finally able to see Young in concert five years ago at the Wang Center in Boston, playing solo on a number of instruments and telling stories in between songs. It was pretty great. But I wish I could have seen that Rust Never Sleeps tour. Thankfully, we've got the concert film.

Day After Day #14: Surrender

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Surrender

Growing up in the 1970s was something else, man. I'm not coming at this from some "you kids are soft" vantage point; it was just different. I'm not going to go into all the differences, but for the purposes of this post, I'm going to talk about live albums. The '70s were all about live albums and they totally made careers. 

Sure, you had the Who and the Stones releasing some of the best live albums of all time, but if you were a struggling artist, sometimes a live album was what it took to convince music fans that you were all that. KISS had a good gimmick but their first three albums were duds. It wasn't until Alive! was released in the fall of 1975 that the band broke through, even as they were savaged by critics. The album hit #9 on the Billboard 200 chart and stayed on the chart for 110 weeks. Peter Frampton had four albums under his belt and little success before he released Frampton Comes Alive! in 1976. It ended up going to #1 and becoming the best-selling album of the year, selling over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. It has sold 20 million worldwide. 

Then there's Cheap Trick, straight outta Rockford, Illinois. Formed in 1973, the band released its self-titled debut in early 1977, chock full of excellent, hard-edged power pop, but it didn't register with fans. The band had a gimmick, namely the matinee idol good looks of singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson and the dorkier look of guitarist Rick Neilsen and perpetually smoking drummer Bun E. Carlos. Zander and Petersson would be featured on album covers while Neilsen and Carlos would be goofing off on the back covers. 

A second album, In Color, came out in September '77 and emphasized the pop side with songs like "I Want You to Want Me" and "Southern Girls" but again, it didn't meet with success in the U.S. But it was big in Japan and the band played two shows there in April 1978, just before the release of its third album, Heaven Tonight. Played in front of 12,000 screaming fans, the shows were recorded for a live album intended for a Japan-only release that fall. Cheap Trick At Budokan was later released in the U.S. in February 1979 and after the live version of "I Want You to Want Me" was released as a single, it took off. The song was everywhere that spring, hitting #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #2 on the Canadian singles chart. The live version was fuller than the studio one, with a faster tempo and heavier guitar. The second single was a cover of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame," which hit #35 on the charts. 

At Budokan was a monster success, peaking at #4 on the Billboard 200 and selling over 3 million copies; it went to #1 on the Canadian album charts. Several other songs received tons of airplay on FM rock radio, most notably "Surrender," which was on Heaven Tonight. The song was a modest success when first released, hitting #62 on the Hot 100 chart. But again, the live version surpassed the studio one. The song is a classic teen anthem, contrasting the teen narrator and his parents, but then notes that "Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright/They just seem a little weird/Surrender, surrender/But don't give yourself away." Doesn't get much catchier.

The band followed up the live album with Dream Police later in '79. The title track was a big hit (and I bought it on 45) and it signaled a heavier sound for the band, who started headlining arenas. Petersson left the group but they kept going with a couple of replacements. None other than George Martin produced the next album, 1980's All Shook Up, which went gold. The first half of the '80s saw the band in a downturn, still releasing albums but having less and less success. Petersson returned in '87 and the band started working with outside writers for the 1988 release Lap of Luxury and sure enough, they scored a #1 hit with the ballad "The Flame" and also got to #4 with a cover of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel." 

However, the '90s were a struggle for Cheap Trick, with more lackluster albums. In 1997, they went back to basics, ditching the outside songs on their second self-titled album. It was a strong release but didn't sell much. The following year, the band released the full version of the Budokan album and re-released their first three albums, playing three-night stints in multiple cities and doing a different album front to back each night (I saw them play In Color at the Paradise on that tour). They're still going, albeit without Carlos. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

Cheap Trick headlined the first concert I ever attended, in July 1984 in my hometown at the time, Kingston, New Hampshire. They sounded great, but sadly they were an afterthought compared to the bands on the rise who opened for them: Ratt, Twisted Sister and Lita Ford. After Ratt left the stage, half the crowd left the fairgrounds. I moved up to the front and managed to get a Nielsen guitar pick (not a huge feat since he constantly flicks them into the crowd at every show). I didn't care that they weren't that popular anymore. At Budokan definitely still ruled in my mind.