Out To Get You! (Live 1977)

Brand new sealed double album RSD limited ediition album housed in a gatefold cover.

Cheap Trick were one of the best rock bands to emerge in the 1970s but also one of the most confusing, both musically (a combination of power pop and aggressive hard rock) and visually (two dreamboat rockers and two ridiculously attired misfits). And even at their peak, with classics songs like “Surrender,” “I Want You to Want Me,” “Dream Police,” “Southern Girls,” and “Elo Kiddies,” that unevenness often carried over to their albums, which could be too soft or too hard, too overproduced or too schizophrenic, too Beatles or too Alice Cooper.

But onstage, it all made sense. Robin Zander, “the man of a thousand voices,” could coo sweetly or scream maniacally; Rick Nielsen dressed like a cartoon character but played virtuoso trash guitar and wrote everything from brooding ballads to angular-riffed anthems; Tom Petersson’s thundering bass meshed with the unexpected power of the mild-mannered-seeming Bun E. Carlos’ drumming. In concert, the group’s perplexing image worked in their favor: Nobody, especially America’s denim-clad mid-‘70s minions, expected such an odd bunch to rock so ferociously. The fact that their global breakthrough came with 1979’s “Cheap Trick at Budokan,” a fluke hit live album that was initially released only in Japan, reflects not just the oddness of their career but also how difficult it was to capture their explosive onstage energy in the studio. It also made them one of America’s biggest bands.