Cheap Trick: Standing On the Edge

Cheap Trick: Standing On the Edge

1985

Epic Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Little Sister  2. Tonight It's You  3. She's Got Motion  4. Love Comes  5. How About You  6. Standing on the Edge  7. This Time Around  8. Rock All Night  9. Cover Girl  10. Wild Wild Women



I can remember hearing "Tonight It's You" on the radio station 102.5 WIOG as a kid...

 It was the type of pop station that used to play Michael Bolton and  Heart ballads...I think they've moved onto Adele and shit like that...Who knows haven't heard it in over a decade...Anyway. I can strongly recall hearing "Tonight It's You" popping out of the speakers of my parent's car in the mid-80's...

The song seemed to contain a whole album's worth of memorable hooks...A virtual orchestra of ringing pop-guitars and a vocal melody that set its sights straight to the stratosphere... The song's heavy rotation inevitably ended and it may have faded from the airwaves, but it stayed in my head for years as I searched high and low for it...There was no internet back then, so if you were scraping to find out who performed a song, you had to spend years combing the old record bins and asking other music aficionados about it...



 Eventually somewhere in the 90's I found the single and played it endlessly...It was almost as glorious as I had remembered it...It had the slight patina of Hair Metal Ballad, but even that couldn't diminish its power...

I never picked up the album "Standing On the Edge"...I was hesitant to check out any Cheap Trick album after "Dream Police" because I was afraid sooner or later I was going to hit "The Flame."



Years after I lost my "Tonight It's You" single, I found a copy of "Standing on the Edge" for $1.99 at a used record store and decided to take the plunge...And it's safe for me to say that this is the exact point where Cheap Trick loses it...

Things start fine enough with "Little Sister." If the 80's drums were a little less booming and echoing, I could see myself playing the shit out of this song...Classic Cheap Trick...They hadn't rocked this hard since "One on One" but the melody is as sharp as "Next Position Please." Fantastic song!

Next up is "Tonight It's You" and you all know how much I like that one...So far, so good...But wait! What in the hell is "She's Got Motion" supposed to be?! I think they're aiming for ZZ Top's Eliminator, but instead of capturing the hard, sleek vibe of that album, it's a clattering headache...Skippity skip!



Uhhh, maybe I shouldn't have skipped ahead so soon..."Love Comes" is  an endlessly dull power ballad with maybe the ickiest and most intrusive keyboard sound I've ever heard...And when you slow things down this much it's a good idea to have some sort of melody or something...I think "The Flame" is better than this song...

The next two songs ("How About You" and the title track) don't irritate me, but on the other hand, they don't exactly excite me either...Wallpaper rock. 

"This Time Around" is great though...I'd say it falls squarely in the 80's power ballad category, but this time they do everything right...Robin sings the hell out of that soaring chorus! I guess it kind of remind me of "I Don't Love Here Anymore" mixed with mid anthemic 80's U2...Damn, this thing wasn't a hit?

..and that's pretty much it..."Rock All Night" sounds like some terrible Slaughter song, and "Wild Wild Women" has a heavy riff and not much else..So yea, I don't think I'm going any further on these Cheap Trick albums..."Standing On the Edge" has three stunners and a whole lot of blah tracks...I'd skip it if I was you...

Let's listen to "This Time Around" by Cheap Trick. Rock on, brotha...