At Budokan

Arch power poppers from Rockford, Illinois, Cheap Trick articulated the myriad dilemmas of suburban teenage boy life in the mid-20th century. Most of it revolved around girls, obviously. Their studio stuff was a little too weird for Americans to get, but apparently the Japanese loved them, and the thousands of screaming fans at Tokyo’s Budokan arena inject Godzilla-sized energy into their pithy adolescent anthems. The transformation of a simple rockabilly bop into a stadium-wide call-and-response catapulted “I Want You to Want Me” into classic rock radio immortality.