Running Thoughts #2 – Is “Schlock” Still “Schlock” if Robin Zander Sings the Living Shit Out of It?

Originally Posted December 10, 2014

Cheap Trick.  A legendary rock band who probably summons images of the 1970’s rock/party vibe.  “I Want You To Want Me”.  “Surrender”.  “The Dream Police”.  One of those songs is probably running through your head while reading this.  They were catchy, well-crafted rock and roll songs with a little bit of a “hard” bight from Ricky Nilsson’s crunching guitar riffs.  If your parents were young within a stone’s throw of the 70’s, they’ve probably partied to Cheap Trick, engaged in mild juvenile criminal activity to them, hell, maybe even lost their virginity to them.  You, yourself, may have been conceived to one of their songs.  And if you lived through the late 80’s/early 90’s “classic rock resurgence” that bridged the gap between hair metal and Nirvana’s grunge/alternative wave, then you’ve heard them on the radio – probably one of the three hits songs mentioned above.

Ok – are you ready now.  “The Flame”.  What’s that you say?  “The Flame”?  That late 80’s sappy power-ballad that soared to #1 and dominated the airwaves on the crest of hair metals’ popularity?  If you’re not “in the know”, you’re probably thinking, “what in the hell does that song have to do with Cheap Trick?”  And if you know what I’m talking about, and have had any affection for Cheap Trick over the years, you’re probably groaning.  Why is this, you say?

Well, Cheap Trick was the band that performed and released “The Flame”, a made-to-order “hit” that showcased the band’s 1988 album, “Lap of Luxury”.  It made the girl’s swoon.  It was the song that your 14 year-old male, in burgeoning adolescence, worked up the courage to ask his crush out on the floor to dance to in the school gymnasium.  Hell, it was probably the theme of several proms during that time period.  It was wildly successful.  It was everywhere on the radio and MTV.  So what’s the problem?  The problem is that it wasn’t your typical Cheap Trick kind of song.

Cheap Trick earned the bread & butter of their success and legacy throughout the 1970’s.  They started slow out-of-the-gate in the States, but were wildly popular in Japan where they were often referred to, and treated as, the “American Version of the Beatles”.  To that end, they toured Japan extensively, and when their seminal live album “Live from the Boudakan” was released in the States, Americans finally caught on to the band’s vibe and bought several million copies of that album.  They followed this success up with the studio release, “The Dream Police”, whose catchy, infectious title-song kept the band’s momentum going.  “The Dream Police” became a true classic that remains a staple of the band’s live set to this day.  However, when the 80’s dawned, the band, as competent and prolific as ever, just failed to stay on the airwaves.  Their songs (especially the newer releases), failed to garner any radio airplay, and they fell, very quickly, into obscurity.  And then when 80’s hair metal began its ascendancy in the mid-80’s, Cheap Trick was left out-in-the-cold, as bands younger and far less competent than them began racking up the album sales and both audio and video airplay.  They offered a more hard-rocking version of what Cheap Trick had laid the groundwork for a decade earlier, and though, in their defense, the hair metal stars were often vociferous in their praise of Cheap Trick and the influence they had on the music scene, Cheap Trick languished in obscurity.  I have a distinct memory of a 14 year-old me, complete with mullet and Ratt T-shirt, asking an incredulous senior in the high school cafeteria what the hell “Cheap Trick” meant on his own T-shirt.  They were so far off the radar at that point, that deep-penetrating sonar couldn’t have registered them on the younger generation’s consciousness.

Then “Lap of Luxury” came out in 1988.  The band’s record label, tired of the moribund sales of the band’s recent albums – gave them an ultimatum:  either let professional song writers write this album, or cool your heels and hope that the royalties on your past hits provide enough income for you to comfortably retire on.  The choice being not much of a choice, the band naturally yielded – this was an era where recording contracts were hard to get, and if your label dropped you, you may never get a whiff of real recording success again.

Given those particular ground rules, it’s no surprise that “Lap of Luxury” does not sound like a typical Cheap Trick album – it sounds like a collection of songs that record execs think sounds like a typical Cheap Trick album.  That’s not to say it’s complete shit – there are a few highlights (a stirring cover of “Don’t Be Cruel” where Robin Zander gives the King a run for his money on vocals being the most notable), but for the most part, it’s pretty weak tea.

Except for “The Flame”.  “The Flame” neither sounded like a typical Cheap Trick song, nor could it fairly be considered “weak tea”.  I mean, come on, the song made an impression.  It rose to the tops of the charts as the band’s first and only #1 hit, and dominated both MTV (which was a real force in the music industry back in the day) and the airwaves on virtually any channel not dedicated to classical music or country/western.  If you were around in the late 80’s, you couldn’t escape it.  You heard it multiple times, whether in the background at the mall, on your friend’s car radio on the way to school, or in the middle of a standard block of videos on MTV.

And where did I stand on the song at the time?  It was OK.  Honestly, it failed to appeal to me but it definitely wasn’t in the category the garnered my active hate and scorn.  I was pretty much in the middle of my heavy metal phase at this point, so it wasn’t the type of music that appealed to me.  However, by this point I had learned about Cheap Trick and had a grudging respect for them as a band, and while this kind of ballad wasn’t my thing, it didn’t elicit the kind of disdain I normally reserved for Richard Marx, Whitney Houston or the New Kids on the Block.  So it played incessantly in the background and I barely paid attention to it and apparently it wormed its way deep into my subconscious where it hibernated for nigh on 25 years before re-emerging like a cicada to the forefront of my attention.

Why do I characterize it that way?  Well, a couple of months ago, I had a dream.  At that point, I was at the height of my long overdue “get my ass back into shape” phase and it truly was not an exaggeration to say that not only was I working out at the gym nearly every day, but I also spent several nights a week working out in my dreams.  This one was a little peculiar though in that while I was running (which is my normal “dream exercise” seemingly), I was passing all these memories of people and events from high school, like I was slowly jogging my way through a long, ethereal dream-tunnel of memories from the eighties.  And can you guess what the soundtrack of this dream sequence was?  You betcha.  Cheap Trick’s, “The Flame”.  The song I barely paid attention to.  The song I probably hadn’t heard in well over a decade-and-a-half.  And as sometimes happens to me while slumbering (maybe once or twice a year), I felt oh-so heroic in that dream.  Not that I was doing anything particularly heroic in it, mind you.  I’ve found over the years that dreams are not so much about what’s happening in them, as they are about what you’re feeling while the dream events are happening.  And I felt like I was straining heroically through my jog.  Like all these people from the past, all these friends and loved ones, adored me and counted on me to get through this jog for some monumentally important purpose that nonetheless remained undefined.  It was like one of those training sequences from those interminable 80’s action movies where the nominal hero, having gotten kicked around in the first part of the movie, undergoes a stirring training scene with Survivor or Journey playing the background only to overcome all odds at the end and emerge triumphant.  Except, in my dream, it wasn’t Survivor or Journey providing the soundtrack.  It was Cheap Trick, and the song was, “The Flame”.

So, upon waking, I found myself suddenly paying attention to, and having all these seemingly profound emotions about, a song that hadn’t crossed my radar in ages.  So, of course, I had to look it up on YouTube and listen to it – which I did.  The lyrics are typical made-to-order, appeal-to-the-mainstream pap, custom designed to sound inspirational and meaningful without actually having any meaning what so ever (ala Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”).  Musically, it was nothing special either.  A very simple opening note progression played on an acoustic guitar (quietly – so as to show how sensitive the artist is being), builds to soaring choruses punctuated with intermittently-placed power chords to emotively demonstrate that, yes, while I’m being loving and sensitive here, my feelings are so damn strong they deserve to be punctuated by power chords damn it!

But I loved it.  And I was eating it up.  And I was playing it over and over while at the gym doing my cardio on my favorite running apparatus, and it was inspiring me to new personal bests in terms of time and distances.

What the fuck was going on here?

Well, as time passed, of course the shiny aura that my dream placed over the song began to fade and I’ve been able to look at it a little more objectively since.  No doubt, my dream, and the feelings that accompanied it, was largely responsible for my sudden obsession with the song that flared out brightly over a couple of weeks.  That aside, the song is not completely without merit.

To whit – Robin Zander, Cheap Trick’s vocalist and sometimes second guitarist, sings the living shit out of that song.  I say this objectively in a manner completely devoid of bullshit.  He.  Sings.  The.   Living.  Shit.  Out.  Of.  That.  Song.

I could just end there and let the video roll, but I feel compelled to punctuate this with a few more emphatic statements before closing.  I always kind of knew, but only more recently have I adamantly felt, that Robin Zander is a fantastic vocalist.  In fact, I would go out to say that he is probably the single most underrated rock and roll vocalist of all time (which is a fitting destiny considering he sings for one of the most criminally underrated rock and roll bands of all time).  Above, I alluded to the fact that he gave Elvis Presley himself a run for the money on his version of “Don’t Be Cruel”, which, not ironically, was also a very successful single off of the “Lap of Luxury” album.  You can say what you want about Cheap Trick and what you think of their music and what you further think of the executively-produced “Lap of Luxury” album.  But one thing you can’t say is that they didn’t have a singer who could, and routinely did, sing the paint off the walls.

So it brings me back to the titular question of this installment of “Running Thoughts”, is “The Flame” still schlock despite the excellence that Robin’s vocals bring to the song?  That, of course, is probably a matter of opinion.  However, if one were to hold a gun to my head, I’d have to admit that yes, objectively speaking, the song is every bit the contrived piece of pap I described it as.  However, there are times when, through the efforts of a true artist plying their craft, even pap can reach heights and obtain worth it never should have normally aspired to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready to put “The Flame” up there with “Sympathy for the Devil” or “Stairway to Heaven”, but, through the heroic efforts and divinely-bestowed talents of Robin Zander, it merits more consideration than a throw-away pop ballad from the 80’s normally would.  If nothing else, it is worthy of being a “guilty pleasure”, as it has for me late in life.  Though in this case, I think it’s a completely defensible “guilty pleasure” and shows that, even in the most contrived, artistically devoid situations, true worth can be brought to the table by a phenomenally gifted artist giving it their all.

So I’ll leave you with this clip of Cheap Trick playing “The Flame”.  Keep in mind that this particular clip is done live at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach Florida, and not in the sterile confines of a recording studio.  This song isn’t being filtered through a mixer to iron-out the rough spots.  And this long precedes the era of auto-tuning where even chumps like me can have their singing wrung through a computer to ensure that all the notes are hit at the right times.  Nonetheless, Robin gives a nearly flawless performance with this song, hitting every note in a way that today’s audio-enhanced artists can only dream of.  Give it a chance.  Listen to the whole damn thing.  And keep in mind that this is live in every way, shape and form.  I increasingly believe that live vocal performances of this nature, at least in popular music, are slowly becoming a thing of the past.  In which case, I would say this clip should be preserved in the Smithsonian someday.  Stand up and take notice kiddies, this is how it used to be done.

 

And if you just can’t stand this version of Cheap Trick, fine then you cold, unfeeling excuse for a human being.  Here’s “Surrender”: