Cheap Trick "Christmas Christmas"

Cheap Trick got their well-deserved spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 and they are BACK with three new albums in two years including “Christmas Christmas” released on October 20, 2017!

I have been enjoying Cheap Trick music since I heard “Ain't That a Shame” back in 1979 on CHOM-FM coming out of Montreal while I lived in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York as a teenager. It was a live recording I heard, from the legendary “Cheap Trick at Budokan” album recorded in Japan. That song, and that album, defined for me what rock and roll was supposed to sound like and Budokan was the first album I ever bought.

In their first ten years Cheap Trick put out nine studio albums from their scary-dark debut “Cheap Trick” in 1977 to “The Doctor” in 1986. These years included masterpieces like “In Color” in 1977 which made it into Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time (Budokan is also on that list), along with “Dream Police,” “All Shook Up,” and “One on One” in 1979, 1980, and 1982 respectively.

After the first decade the albums came slower but included great moments like 1988's “Lap of Luxury” with the number one hit, “The Flame.”

Then, from April 2016 to October 2017 Cheap Trick went on a Rock and Roll rampage, getting inducted into the Hall of Fame and releasing not one, not two, but THREE excellent albums including the latest, “Christmas Christmas.”

This latest album has 8 covers that provide a veritable history of rock and roll Christmas songs from Chuck Berry's “Run Rudolph Run” in 1958 to Jimmy Fallon's cheerfully nihilist Saturday Night Live song from 2000 “I Wish it was Christmas Today.” Along the way Cheap Trick covers Wizzard and Slade, Harry Nilsson and The Kinks, The Ramones and Charles Brown's 1960 masterpiece “Please Come Home for Christmas” which was also covered by The Eagles in 1978.

The album includes a solemn and beautiful version of the Christmas classic “Silent Night” with majestic chords and three original Cheap Trick songs: “Merry Christmas Darlings” about getting together with family and “Our Father of Life” and “Christmas Christmas” which are a Part 1 and Part 2, the first slow and reflective, the second ending the album with a high energy bang.

Cheap Trick's “Christmas Christmas” sets a high standard for future rock and roll Christmas albums and is destined to be pulled out every holiday season for many years to come.

After 40 years of recording Cheap Trick is still defining what rock and roll is supposed to sound like and what it's supposed to do: fill you with energy and make you feel GOOD.

Merry Christmas Darlings!

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[A great new rock and roll Christmas album for your collection.]
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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

The main melody swirled around and around....

This morning on the way to work I switched to the classical station on the radio and was immediately swept away by music I never heard before.

It started out very softly softly and built up slowly so slowly louder and louder minute after minute.

It had a kind of military-style snare-drum beat repeated over and over in the background and a theme that played again and again over and over in the foreground – but with different instruments each time and always bigger and bigger and louder and louder.

The drums and the bass gave it a very obvious beat stronger and stronger and the main melody swirled around and around with a vaguely middle eastern sound, I thought.

It seemed unusual to me, not the kind of thing I usually hear on the classical station, but very interesting and enjoyable to listen to. It was also very programmatic, very VISUAL. I thought I could imagine it playing in one of those old WWII movies while columns of tired and dusty soldiers ride tanks and trucks and jeeps, across a desert maybe, just out of one battle, on their way to the next.

I wonder why that exact image came into my mind. I wonder what images other people would see listening to this great piece of music....

The masterpiece ended with a wildly discordant chord and I listened carefully to see if the announcer would say who it was, maybe some obscure composer I never heard of before.... The announcer said today is Maurice Ravel's 142^nd birthday. The composition... Bolero.

Now I have heard ABOUT Ravel's Bolero many times but today, for the first time, I HEARD it! Fantastic!

You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxxCYNNyFNU

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[Check out this book about Ravel. I haven't read it yet so if you get to it first please write a little review I can publish here.]
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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway