Tracking Angle contributors

Henry James, in another of his sour moods, once characterized then-President Theodore Roosevelt as "the mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and resounding noise." Thankfully, the Master died before hearing Cheap Trick. We think we know this record, and the Trick, too. A generation of rockers have dined out on the chops served up on the original (and brutally truncated) 1979 Epic release. The party crowd (i.e., all of us) has shaken sufficient booty, tail, and keister to make it one of the essential rock albums. And why not? The noise quotient is high enough for blare-oriented ideologues and the giddy fun intrinsic to the band's power-pop attack gets everybody else. The Tricksters make damned sure of that.