CHEAP TRICKSTERS DENY PLANS FOR GLOBAL CONQUEST

CHEAP TRICKSTERS DENY PLANS FOR GLOBAL CONQUEST

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I want recognition as a writer...a designer of guitars, of sweaters, and of structural concepts... -Rick Nielsen

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Term Mass Invasion A “Dream Police Action”

by

Richard Riegel

Deep within the concrete-block entrails of Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, there are still many minutes to go before Cheap Trick will be bounding onstage, but the girls are already lining up along the hallway outside the headliners’ dressing room. I take a casual glance at these ladies, resplendent in their pass-plastered shiny blouses and French jeans and stiletto heels, and automatically think: “Groupies,” remind myself that that’s a sexist assumption, and then recall further that it’s also probably true. This is big-league rock ’n’ roll, after all.

Still, an inordinate number of these supposed groupies are carrying cameras tonight—it could very well be that they’re enterprising freelancers out for an honest night’s work, just like your (male) reporter. (And it could also be that they’re actually ' Japanese teens in disguise as occidental ladies of die media, out to get near those delectably round-eyed Cheap Trick bodies! —Ah so, Yoko and Mika! Your cameras gave you away!)