cheap trick

GENERAL LABOR
Gonzo journalist and onetime rock star
Somewhere in the USA

10.) Binge watching old bands I love on YouTube, live concerts, etc.
Particularly Cheap Trick, Redd Kross, the Divinyls, Rose Tattoo, Beasts Of Bourbon, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Smack, Tex & The Horseheads, Little Kings, Viletones, Chris Isaak, 39 Steps, Bounty Hunters, Jacobites etc. And The Fleshtones - greatest live band I ever saw have lots of great stuff to watch on YouTube, Kings of Rock ‘n’ Roll!

9.) Carry It Forward
The most revolutionary, serve the people, activist organization I've ever seen in real life provides coats, hats, gloves, sleeping bags, tents, rides, hotel rooms, wheelchairs, etc to the real people in the community that the government does not care about. Millions of people in the USA USA are becoming homeless and evicted while the get rich politicians drink champagne with their warpig donors. Almost like they wanna kill the poor. BE LIKE CARRY IT FORWARD, wherever you are!

8.) Slade is the right answer to almost any question!

7.) Remembering how Real Friends are precious
Especially in these dark clampdown death plague winters when so many groovy people like Dave Kusworth, Eddie Van Halen, Mike Mindless, Mike Doman, Clay Anthony have passed on.

It's almost 2019… and the world seems to be going mad. But the big question I ask myself… is rock dead?

I see alternate styles of music like rap, hip-hop and commercial pop dominating youth culture. I wouldn’t recognise Drake or Flume if they dropped their USB sticks in front of me. In closeted rock’n’roll enclaves such as the I-94 Bar dirty rock’n’roll seems to be thriving, but one by one icons are dropping off the perch. How much longer can it survive?

The benchmark I’ve been looking at is guitar sales. Electric guitar sales have slipped 22.7 percent since 2008… the price of guitars is rocketing, yet it appears that the acoustic market is on the up… Something like a 15 percent increase over the same period. Although insipid, whiny vocal sounds have probably been tied to the same trend.

The trend that parallels the increase of Ed Sheeran wannabes is the rise of vinyl sales. I’d guess that pot smoking hippies, listening on their Technics SL1200 to Bob Dylan re-masters trying figure out how to play protest songs while avoiding the dreaded F chord are to blame.

Despite my sense of foreboding I did manage to catch some quality rock’n’roll but I put that down to confirmation bias. My personal faves:

Perth’s powerpop label punching way above its weight, Zero Hour Records, has announced a double CD tribute to Cheap Trick.

The 38-song collection includes music from The Affections, Rob Smith and Danny McCarthy, Plasticsoul and Spike Priggen and is due out on May 22.

Pre-orders get a swag of extras and you can take the plunge here. 

You can also pick up dirt cheap stuff from Dom Mariani (his unplugged acoustic album is an underrated gem), Turnaround and a slew of lesser-known acts from the garage-pop underground.

Cheap Trick
+ The Angels
The Palais, St Kilda, VIC
Wednesday, 13 March 2024 

Hello I-94 Barflies! I hope you are all in fine form. Myself, I’m still recovering from seeing the amazing Cheap Trick at The Palais Theatre in St Kilda and they did not disappoint.

Dragging myself out of bed at 430am for a 1000 kilometre public transport round trip is never pleasant and as the years creep by, travelling does get more fiscally challenging. But family and live rock ‘n’ roll is what gets me off the land and out of The Farmhouse. First, let me say this if you’re ever in Melbourne The Pint On The Punt in Richmond is a nice place to start your drinking, get a feed and sleep on a lumpy mattress. It’s also within walking distance of the now boring suburb of St Kilda. 

_{A Stooges Asthma Attack at th Grande Ballroom in1968. Robert Matheu photo.} 

The year 2006 was something of a watershed for fans of high-energy rock and roll of the Detroit variety. The reformed Stooges were in full flight and an historic six-CD, eponymous Sonic's Rendezous Band box set came out on UK label Easy Action.

The box set's executive producer of the box was ROBERT MATHEU, a Detroit-raised and former Creem magazine staff photographer. Sadly, Robert passed away in 2018, but a dozen years before, he told the back-story of the box set to the I-94 Bar - and of course regaled us with stories about the MC5 and the Stooges. 

We're revisiting many of the stories originally published on the I-94 Bar that were archived when we moved virtual location a few years ago. This is one of the trips back in The Time Tunnel. 

_{Frank with The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs.}

TOP TEN ALBUMS

 Cheap Trick – "In Another World" 
The masters of hard rock power-pop return with another banger. What year is this? How is it possible these guys are still so good? 

The Wildhearts – "21^st Century Love Songs"
Ginger is one of my favorite songwriters and this Wildhearts album is a ferocious reminder that he is still at the peak of his powers.

The Darkness – "Motorheart"
My favorite Darkness album since their debut, this one has swagger, hooks, and lots of blistering guitar riffs!

2022 was another year that was hampered by the pandemic; while we are seeing green shoots of recovery, the scars are still pretty deep. I’ve spent most of the year doing the usual stuff, so this is some of what has poked it’s head up in my rounds.

1. Guitar sales
2022 wasn’t all bad news for rock and roll. It seems that the market for new guitars has nearly reached $3b globally… which is a helluva lot of new Fender Strats. I know I’ve been doing my bit, but it does mean that the death knell for guitar based rock and/or roll may have been premature.

2. Young Rock Renaissance
On the back of those sales we’ve been seeing an increase in younger rock acts taking up the mantle. While the standard bearers of the Aussie bogan rock scene, Amyl & the Sniffersand The Chats,  have gone from strength to strength, I’m seeing a lot of younger acts finding their feet on the live scene in Sydney. Special mentions to Euterpe, Polly and of course, out of self interest, Pocketwatch.