Cheap Trick

Cheap Trick delivered crunchy-chord pop with a molten metal center and scored with hard rock power ballads. Through lineup changes and a late-career return to their original sound, what's constant are the brazen vocals of Robin Zander, the pacemaker-steady backbeat of Bun E. Carlos, and the guitar-geek heroics of Rick Nielsen. Well beyond Budokan, Cheap Trick has earned its status as rock 'n' roll royalty.

Maybe it's the way Robin Zander wails away with such libidinous glee. Then again, it could be Rick Nielsen's goofball guitar godyssey. Perhaps it's Bun E. Carlos's no-frills skinsmanship or Tom Petersson's nimble bass. Hell, whatever the group's secret sauce, it's time to surrender to Cheap Trick's oddball charms.

As his band's self-proclaimed High Priest of Rhythmic Noise, Rick Nielsen has been blessed with a talent for writing heavenly pop hooks. That gift has graced Cheap Trick with a mighty tune stack piled high with slab upon slab of candy-coated rock 'n' roll goodness. And those slabs just get sweeter the higher you climb.

Wacky, tacky, and relentlessly rocking, Cheap Trick has been making hard-edged power pop for three decades. Throwing a pair of pretty boys (Robin Zander and Tom Petersson) up against a couple of, um, not-so-pretty boys (Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos), Rockford, Illinois' finest stood out from the start. But in the end, Cheap Trick won their fans and fame the honest way: through incessant touring in support of era-defining anthems like "Surrender" and "I Want You To Want Me."