"Lost" Cheap Trick

If they remember Cheap Trick at all, most people remember the band for their early, commercially-successful albums, e.g. "At Budokan" or "Dream Police." But although they fell out of critical and commercial favor, many of their later albums are quite good. Some are not so good, admittedly, but "Music for Hangovers" is a great live album, and fine complement to "Budokan."

"Woke Up With a Monster" (1994) is a pretty good. It's produced by Ted Templeman, the producer who discovered Van Halen and made them into stars, and the album sounds as if Templeman is trying to turn the band into a typical 1980s hard rock band. The thing is (as a character in a book I just read, Kate Atkinson's "When Will There Be Good News?" is wont to say), Templeman has a lot to work with. There's no better hard rock singer than Robin Zander, and Rick Nielsen is a fine hard rock guitarist. It's a cheap album, too; it's available on Emusic.