Having completed my initial assignment “to post 25 albums in 25 days that have had a major CREATIVE impact on me” (thanks, Chris Estey), and having enjoyed said project a GREAT deal, I’ve decided to post 25 MORE, for good measure.
So, “50 albums in 50 days”, here I come. Upon completion later this month, I think it will amount to a highly entertaining “map” of my musical sensibility!
As before, I’ll be posting “just album covers without any explanation”, and nominating “a different person each day to do the same”.
By the by, please feel free to follow the eventual links (in the comments) to my longtime home at EAST PORTLAND BLOG, where my dear friend (and EPB editor) Ricky has been re-posting my daily album selections (in an expansive layout where you can view ALL the variant album covers and aural media formats AT ONCE), plus a link to one song I’ve chosen to spotlight from each recording!
If you missed any along the way, want to revisit a particular post, or simply wish to listen to the songs, it’s MUCH easier to scroll back through these posts on EPB than it is on FB. Once you’re there, just click on the Tom Kipp “button”!
Today I nominate: Ricky (Illinois native!)
Day 47:
Cheap Trick: SAMURAI ROCK BAND (Slipped Disc Records, US, bootleg LP, 12 tracks, 1977) [contains “He’s a Whore”]
Cheap Trick: SAMURAI ROCK BAND (Slipped Disc Records, US, bootleg LP reissue w/ reduced cover art, 12 tracks, 1977)
Cheap Trick: TRICK OR TREAT (Impossible Record Works, US, bootleg LP, 12 tracks, 1978) [contains “You’re a Loser” in place of “He’s a Whore”!]
Cheap Trick: PICK ‘EM AND FLICK ‘EM (Roaring Mouse Records, US, bootleg 2 x compact disc set, 28 tracks, 2000) [includes the entire Armory show and adds their blazing, contemporaneous 8-song performance from DON KIRSHNER’S ROCK CONCERT!]
Cheap Trick: THE ARMORY ROCKER ’77 (Breakdown Records, Japan, CD-R/unofficial release, 14 tracks, 2003)
Cheap Trick: ROCKFORD ARMORY, ILLINOIS ’77 (Klondike Records, US, compact disc/unofficial release, 13 tracks, 2015)
Cheap Trick: RAISING HELL: THE 1970s/2 CLASSIC RADIO BROADCASTS (FM Concert Broadcasts Ltd., UK, 4 x compact disc set/unofficial release, 37 tracks, 2015)
Purchased: 25 June 1988 at The Record & Tape Exchange in Fairfax, VA, precisely one month before I commenced my four-year stint as its manager! (bootleg LP)
Note: All seven of these illicit live releases are based, to varying degrees, on an 8 October 1977 show in Cheap Trick’s hometown of Rockford, IL, held at the local Armory. The 19-song set was recorded and broadcast by Chicago radio giant WXRT 93.1 FM, mere weeks after the release of the band’s famed 2nd album, IN COLOR.
In June 1988, I blundered upon SAMURAI ROCK BAND in the bins of a Northern Virginia used record store I would soon be managing. I’d been an early Cheap Trick fan for ten years, but when I got the record home and first played it, I literally COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EARS!
Turned up really LOUD, the compressed, slightly distorted radio broadcast sound conveyed a ROARING, MUCH fuller-bodied version of the band’s first two classic, pre-fame albums.
It was almost (to my jaded ears) a Platonic Ideal of what Cheap Trick’s bespoke cross of Power Pop, Heavy Metal, and even a sort of fierce-yet-humorous Protopunk could be!
I’m of course eternally partial to that original bootleg LP, as were my pals in Silkworm, who played the tape I immediately sent them in their van for many years.
But the budget-priced, 4cd RAISING HELL: THE 1970s collection is the ONLY readily-available version of this material that includes the ENTIRE broadcast set, and also (if narrowly) boasts the best overall sound!
So that’s what I’d recommend, particularly since it can be had for less than twenty bucks online. (By the by, its 3rd and 4th discs add a solid June 1979 Chicago gig, recorded about three months prior to the release of DREAM POLICE.)
– Tom Kipp
A careful vinyl rip to YouTube, and a pretty decent representation of the original boot, aside from not listening via a powerful stereo system through legit loudspeakers!
Anyhow, enjoy:
For those who’d prefer to go right to the PEAK (of not just SAMURAI ROCK BAND, but of the band’s ENTIRE CAREER!), here’s the supercharged version of their ’70s Teen Epic, “Downed”, my own favorite Cheap Trick song by a good margin:
to
By the by, re: “Downed”, I should probably have invoked both 1979’s OVER THE EDGE (whose soundtrack it considerably tones up) and 1993’s DAZED AND CONFUSED (which apotheosizes the ’70s teen era/ethos we both grew up in, even though we inhabited such apparently divergent milieu, i.e. Havre, MT vs. Chicago, IL!).
But I’d ALREADY made this the lengthiest album post of the 47 to date, so perhaps it was best that I left The Last Word to my Illinois-bred editor! LOL
[Note from Ricky, the person nominated today by Tom Kipp – Thank you Tom! My heart is overflowing with warmth and goodwill for Tom Kipp and all of humanity! There is no ceremony of social belonging and inclusiveness that could be quite as fulfilling and confidence-building for me as it has been right here to be inducted into the Tom Kipp entourage and circle of discerning music mavens. Thank you Tom, I can now be certain that I have arrived and I will begin to enjoy the privileges of Membership. It is also a great honor to be associated with my favorite band of my first 18 years, a band with Scandinavian last names and a Strindbergian tolerance for art which uses familiar forms and even sweet harmonies to lure listeners into an aesthetic creation which at first seems amenable and proper, but in time shows itself to be frightening and riddled with destructive psychoses. I think of a song like “The Ballad of Richard Speck” when I say that Cheap Trick was the soundtrack to all of the bipolar extremes of Chicago in the late 70s: John Gacy vs. Steve Dahl, insanely hot summers where old people fried in their tenements followed by crippling blizzards and cold winters, an outwardly friendly and caring populace which hid networks of exploitation, crime and racism, an appearance of civic health and wealth, which hid a crumbling infrastructure. Cheap Trick embodied the sound of a sad and twisted soul trying unsuccessfully to come off as unfazed and pleasant and they pulled this off perfectly on their first album. The disappointing balance of their careers can be blamed on Hollywood, sugarcane rum and cocaine fun bags. The Samurai Rock Band bootleg is the perfect way to remember their early artistic successes. I was in the radio audience listening to the concert on a General Electric clock radio when it was originally broadcast on WXRT. Thank you again, Tom, for bringing me in as a “made man” in your music-loving syndicate. You’re good people, TK!!!👍❤️😇😎😀☕️]
