Cheap Trick does Sgt. Pepper live

Tonight Kate and I (with our friend, Rob) saw Cheap Trick perform The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album in its entirety and it was fabulous. Cheap Trick was accompanied by a symphony orchestra, an Indian sitar ensemble and several guest musicians which all combined into a production that was everything I wanted it to be.

As the Sgt. Pepper album is "only" about forty-five minutes in length, the show started with the symphony orchestra and guest musicians playing other Beatles songs before Cheap Trick hit the stage. This made for one of the highlights of the show for me as a great instrumental version of Eleanor Rigby (a truly great sad song) was followed by a solid version of my favorite Beatles song, Across The Universe, sung by Rob Laufer (whom I hadn't heard of before) backed by The Clark County Children's Choir, which was followed by a great instrumental version of Something, that had an incredible guitar reworking by Bill Lloyd. Joan Osborne sang Can't Buy Me Love and Long and Winding Road beautifully, in addition to Drive My Car with Ian Ball (of the alternative band Gomez). Ian Ball did a fantastic rendition of I Am The Walrus, and then...

...it was time for Cheap Trick to hit the stage with their cover of all of the Sgt. Pepper album. My favorite Beatles album is Abbey Road, but that doesn't mean that every song on Sgt. Pepper isn't great, because they all are. I've loved The Beatles music for years because their lyrics and music is so encompassing, timeless, often very witty, and just plain BRILLIANT. Cheap Trick, as I suspected they would being as they are fine musicians, performed the Sgt. Pepper songs wonderfully. Singing Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was special guest, Joe Elliot from Def Leppard, and although I'm not a Def Leppard fan, he did a great job with that number. I remembered reading a couple of days ago that Cheap Trick and all of the guest musicians ended the night by singing All You Need Is Love (which isn't on Sgt. Pepper). A Day In The Life is the last song from Sgt. Pepper that Cheap Trick did (and it was great) and as this is such a sad song I was thinking that following it with All You Need Is Love would have been a very poor choice, but instead they sang the ending tracks from Abbey Road; Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, and The End, and then everyone closed with All You Need Is Love and all was good (well great).

As we were leaving the Hilton theatre I turned to Kate and Rob and said that now Paul and Ringo need to get together and perform Dream Police live as a thank you to Cheap Trick - wouldn't that be awesome!?