🎶 ALBUM VAULT #241 🎶
Next up on the concert journey…
Cheap Trick – At Budokan — 8/10
💿 Black Vinyl
Or in my case…
AT HANOVER PARK! 😂
I saw Cheap Trick there with some really great friends and had an amazing night.
Sadly, one of those friends was another Jim, and we lost him. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while, and I never got the chance to reconnect before he passed.
That still bothers me.
People move in and out of your life, you assume there will always be another chance to catch up…
and sometimes there isn’t.
Life. Blah.
Now the album…
At Budokan is one of THE classic live albums. Cheap Trick recorded the shows at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan in 1978, and when the album hit America in 1979 it completely blew the doors open for them. It reached #4 on the Billboard 200 and eventually went triple platinum.
Rick Nielsen. Robin Zander. Tom Petersson. Bun E. Carlos.
What a band.
You’ve got “Hello There,” “Big Eyes,” “Need Your Love,” “Surrender,” “Clock Strikes Ten” and their killer version of “Ain’t That a Shame.”
But come on…
“I Want You to Want Me.”
The studio version was already good.
The Budokan version is the one everybody knows.
The screaming crowd, Robin’s vocal, the whole thing just jumps out of the speakers. That live version reached #7 on the Hot 100 and became the song that really broke Cheap Trick wide open in America.
This is an AMAZING live album.
The only reason it gets an 8 from me?
I’m just not a huge live-album guy.
But if you’re going to own one…
This is a pretty damn good one.
And every time I think about that Hanover Park show, I think about the friends I was there with.
Especially Jim.
#CheapTrick #AtBudokan #IWantYouToWantMe #Surrender #RobinZander #RickNielsen #HanoverPark #ConcertMemories #BlackVinyl #LiveAlbum #AlbumVault