Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick Roseland Ballroom, NYC, September 15, 1999 photo © 1999 NY Rock   more photos

Upstarts Guided By Voices, the working man's art rock band, opened the show with their raucous but melodic brand of rock and roll. The band is something of a cross between Squeeze and The Replacements. Their songs are as tuneful as those of the former; their onstage behavior is as debauched as that of the latter.

As an aside, Guided By Voices appear to be strictly Bud men. No fancy green bottles of imported larger did litter the stage during the band's long but heartfelt set. And while the hooky material of dozens of songs such as "Don't Stop Now" and "Game of Pricks" was truly infectious, I have to admit that watching band members intoxicate themselves silly just doesn't have the same attraction as it once did for me.

Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices Roseland Ballroom, NYC, 9/15/99 photo © 1999 NY Rock   more photos

Nonetheless, the band does have a certain joie de vie that kept the crowd bobbing and weaving, and Robert Pollard's voice, clearly one of GBV's most valuable assets, was in top form. By the time the boys staggered offstage the audience was duly primed for headliners Cheap Trick.

Contrary to Guided By Voices' Animal House approach to rock & roll, there was no beer guzzling by the members of Cheap Trick during their high-octane, classic-rock set. These boys are professional rock stars, and I say that with all due admiration. Though the show is full of irreverent good humor, courtesy of the bawdy behavior of guitarist Rick Nielsen, the band obviously takes its music seriously. The result is a polished but exciting set of some of the most creative rock music to be had on the planet. (I would comfortably place "Surrender" in the top ten of the most influential rock songs ever penned.)

Nielsen bounced across the stage, flinging guitar picks into the audience like pocket change to the poor. He had about a thousand of the little plastic things attached to his mike stand. This is, in fact, much of what Nielsen's persona is about: a parody of the excesses of rock and roll. He switches not between two or three guitars during the course of an evening, but between about 50 of them. His trademark instrument is not a double-necked number like that of Jimmy Page but one with five (at last count) necks protruding from the instrument's body.

Vocalist Robin Zander's voice was a strong as ever, and if you ever thought that fair-haired boys like him tend to age badly, Zander will single-handedly destroy that myth for you. As I said before, whether he's been eating right or has a damn good plastic surgeon is of little import. His ability to perform as solidly and magnetically as he does, is what matters. Backed by original members Bun E. Carlos on drums and Tom Petersson on bass, he and Nielsen put on a show that bubbled over with some of the most combustible energy to be found in any rock & roll laboratory anywhere.

I left the Ballroom that night with the following thought: Rock & roll isn't about politics. It isn't about love or even sex, for that matter. It's all about spirit, and as Cheap Trick proved during the evening, if you've got that, you just might live to be a hundred and still be wearin' your rock and roll shoes.

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