Hey It's Me Again

Cheap Trick : Voices

[Purchase]

In the Fall of 1979 Cheap Trick finally released Dream Police, an album Epic decided to hold back when the group's Live At Budokan and the singles"I Want You To Want Me" and "Surrender" made them superstars. Creem Magazine readers enthusiastically voted Cheap Trick the second best group of the year after Led Zeppelin ( and ahead of The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Clash). 

The live album only raised the stakes higher for the hardest rocking band from Rockford, and Dream Police failed to deliver the needed home run. The title cut, "Voices" and the last track "Need Your Love" are all solid. But the nine minute long "Gonna Raise Hell"is just as awful as its title suggests. This is the deep cut Cheap Trick puts high up in their set lists when they know they're performing in front of drunk crowds. I saw them at a casino a year after they were playing their great albums in their entirety. I think they started with "Hello There", then played "Clock Strikes Ten". I was thrilled. Then came "Gonna Raise Hell" and the concert ...kinda went to hell for me.

Dave Marsh, writing for Rolling Stone, actually called "Voices" disastrous and adds:

The issue isn't whether or not Cheap Trick can become the great American rock band we lost when Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down, but whether Rick Nielsen has the guts to probe deeply enough to let loose what's there. Dream Police doesn't offer any answers, yet it does suggest some dire possibilities. I hope that the deterioration I think I'm hearing is something else -- maybe Nielsen really is struggling to come to terms with rock + roll demons -- because Cheap Trick is too fine a group to be buried in the circle of hell reserved for those who had potential and squandered it.

Robert Christgau gave Dream Police a lukewarm B-, writing

What's always saved this band for me was the jokes, but this time they're not just in the grooves, and there's only so much you can do with funny hats on the cover. A good heavy band, sure -- be thankful for the fast tempos. But probably not a great heavy metal band. And you know what happens to a good heavy metal band long about the fifth album.