#142 Cheap Trick

Cheap Trick is one of my favorite bands (see Post No. 140). The first time I saw them was about 15 year ago (?) on New Year's Eve. Alyce and I went downtown to Union Station for the festivities and discovered they were playing. We stood about halfway back and to the left of the crowd.

Their guitarist, Rick Nielsen, is quite dramatic on-stage so I started watching just him. During one song, he started pointing his finger toward the crowd and then making the "come here" motion with his finger. He was pointing in our general direction and we kept turning around to see who he was pointing at. Like a scene out of a music video, the crowd turned seemingly at one time to look back and we realized he was pointing at...ME. He kept doing the pointing thing but we just laughed and I was a little embarrassed so we stood still. A little while later a man came up to me and said Rick wanted to meet me. What?! Alyce and I followed him to the side of the stage and we waited for the song to end. Rick ran off the side, shook my hand and said, "I'm Rick." I said, "I'm Linda." He said something like, "You ARE really tall!" and then he ran back on stage.

Alyce and I went back into the crowd to watch the rest of the show. Rick is known for throwing guitar picks into the crowd and has them lined all the way up and down his mic stand. He started throwing them in my general vicinity but none reached me. A nice guy in front of me caught one and ended up giving it to me, telling me, "He was throwing this to you." I still have it. Very cool - has Rick's caricature on one side and the Cheap Trick logo on the other.

The only other time I saw them was at Verizon when they opened for Heart and Journey a few years ago. Then I was surprised at the Colts game. I would love to see them again, and maybe even meet Rick again.