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American Standard: Cheap Trick from the Bars to the Budokan and Beyond<\/i>\nBackbeat Books
\nby Ross Warner<\/p>\n
American Standard: Cheap Trick from the Bars to the Budokan and Beyond<\/i>
\nBackbeat Books
\nby Ross Warner<\/p>\n
The subject of Cheap Trick is no stranger to book treatment. Brian Kramp\u2019s well-received 2022 book This Band Has No Past<\/i> is among the most highly-regarded of several books about the rocking foursome from Rockford, Illinois. Just two years earlier, Doug Brod\u2019s 2020 They Just Seem a Little Weird<\/i> chronicled the band\u2019s rise, placing it into context alongside the successes of KISS, Aerosmith and (perhaps oddly) Starz. Three years before that came Still Competition: The Listener\u2019s Guide to Cheap Trick<\/i> by Robert Lawson. And that same year \u2013 2017 \u2013 saw the release of Out of the Basement<\/i>, a look at Rockford\u2019s music scene that inevitably centered upon Cheap Trick. There have surely been others.<\/p>\n
All of which raises a salient question: Is there a place for yet another book about the band? The editors at Rowman & Littlefield imprint Backbeat Books certainly seem to think so. They greenlit Ross Warner\u2019s American Standard: Cheap Trick from the Bars to the Budokan and Beyond<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Warner takes a decidedly different tack than many of those who came before him. Focusing primarily on the group\u2019s live history, he spends comparatively little time discussing the group\u2019s catalog of studio albums. An admittedly contrarian favorite of mine, the Todd Rundgren-produced Next Position Please<\/i> gets no more than a couple of sentences in Warner\u2019s 230+ page book. And when he does focus on an album, it\u2019s \u2013 wait for it \u2013 Cheap Trick at Budokan<\/i>.<\/p>\n
To be fair, that album was the juggernaut and albatross that defined Cheap Trick\u2019s career. And to Warner\u2019s credit, he explores both the yin and the yang of that album\u2019s staggering success. There\u2019s comparatively little firsthand material in the books pages; Warner\u2019s efforts seem more focused on research than interviewing. A notable primary source was Cary Baker, the journalist (and later key industry exec, and later still celebrated publicist); Baker was an important and early champion of the band, and provides keen insight.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, rather than talking to the principals themselves, Warner did a very deep dive into the archives. Drawing from the many interviews the band has done over the years \u2013 and injecting a healthy dose of skepticism applied to what Zander, Petersson, Carlos and Nielsen have told journalists on the record \u2013 he stitches together a perspective that sets American Standard<\/i> apart from previous books on the band.<\/p>\n
Those interested in the ups and downs of Cheap Trick since its formation will learn a good bit by reading Warner\u2019s book. One quality that it \u2013 here\u2019s that word again \u2013 inevitably shares with other titles covering the band is that it falls short of definitive. The book doesn\u2019t fully address the band\u2019s influence, nor their major part in ushering in the wave of power pop bands, nor (as mentioned above) their work in the studio.<\/p>\n
But because Cheap Trick has always been larger than life, one book could never tell their story. American Standard<\/i> certainly adds to the reader\u2019s understanding of how and why the band soared to the top thanks to Budokan<\/i>, as well as why the record became something of a millstone around the group\u2019s metaphorical neck.<\/p>\n
In fact \u2013 owing to nearly a third of the book addressing the famed live album in one form or another \u2013 American Standard<\/i> might be thought of an an in-depth essay (with quotes) on Cheap Trick at Budokan<\/i>, with some contextual content applied before and after it. That\u2019s not a knock: not for nothing did the record sell more than 3 million units in the U.S., earn a place in one of Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s best-ever-albums lists and earn recognition from the Library of Congress\u2019 National Recording Registry as an important recording. So in the same way that Cheap Trick deserves coverage in multiple books, At Budokan<\/i> deserves \u2013 and with Ross Warner\u2019s American Standard<\/em>, gets<\/i> \u2013 extensive coverage as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American Standard: Cheap Trick from the Bars to the Budokan and Beyond Backbeat Books by Ross Warner The subject of Cheap Trick is no stranger to book treatment. Brian Kramp\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,49,62,65],"tags":[501,5655],"class_list":["post-29221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-cheap-trick","tag-ross-warner","cat-10-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29221"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29319,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221\/revisions\/29319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}