It's a subject I would rather avoid given how many Trickster fans (don't continue reading!!!) we have here, but (having seen Cheap Trick three times in concert) since you asked:
- Whenever I saw Cheap Trick live, I found them a billowing barrage of noise. They seem to have no control over their live sound at all. I remember a gig where they played together with Status Quo and Deep Purple, both were sound machines of immaculate industrial precision, Cheap Trick sounded like the echo of a second rate garage band playing a mile away in comparison.
- Tom Petersson's live bass sound is so diffuse, he might as well not be playing at all. It's all one great undifferentiated sound mess, to the point of sounding out of time in places
Perhaps they are fine in clubs, at open airs I have seen them fail every time. "Live At Budokan" sounds diffuse to me too, the only thing you hear well and without too much echo-o-o-o-o are the Japanese girls screaming.
My gosh, they even sound noisy here, Nielsen's guitar is a mess to me, he makes Neil Young's electric guitar playing sound controlled in comparison:
The guys who wrote the original don't (granted, the audio is doctored):
Oh, and I don't like Rick Nielsen's habit of playing minor scale solos over major chord progressions either. He sure would not have lasted long with The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Outlaws, Charlie Daniels, 38 Special or Molly Hatchet. Or Boston for that matter. Playing solos in major keys skillfully is a thoroughly American art which he doesn't master - he plays like a Brit who doesn't know better (Oasis have issues finding the right keys for solos over major harmonies too). It drives me nuts when guitarists don't know their scales. Nielsen is a professed Status Quo fan, in that case he should take lessons with Francis Rossi re the art of major scale solos:
