By 1997, Cheap Trick were not only celebrating the release of their thirteenth studio album, but also their 20th anniversary as a national act. In hindsight, it's hard to believe that the band was only reaching the midway point of a career that as seen the band has put more miles on their tour bus than any ten bands combined and be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Despite working for their third label in as many albums, Rockford's fearsome foursome seemed more unified and determined than ever to prove their relevance in a post-Nirvana musical landscape that was giving way to the No Doubts and Sugar Rays of the world.
While 1994's Woke Up With A Monster had been closer in tone to the band's masterfully subversive debut effort, 1997's self-titled album was a signal to longtime Trick fans that CT were just as eager to wipe the slate clean and start anew.
Of course, the band didn't completely break from their past, recruiting Next Position Please engineer Ian Taylor (best known for his work, with Roy Thomas Baker, on the Cars' first two albums). The resulting album shows Cheap Trick firing on all cylinders and more determined than ever to move forward in an industry hell-bent on pigeonholing them as a classic rock act.
While "Anytime", "Yeah Yeah", "Baby No More" and "You Let A Lot Of People Down" rock as hard as anything on their critically-acclaimed debut effort, the rest of CT 97 is chock full of Beatlesque beauties brimming with subtlety and nuance.
Unfortunately, the promise of a new beginning soon gave way to a new set of label issues as Red Ant Records ran into financial difficulties within weeks of the album's release, forcing them into a period of corporate restructuring in hopes of finding a new buyer to stave off the inevitable bankruptcy of the label.
With the band still making the rounds on TV and radio to promote their new album, their label was hoisting the white flag of surrender. By the time they'd gone into the studio with Steve Albini to re-record In Color in 1998, Red Ant was history.
This left the band with no way of releasing In Color V 2.0.V Even so, the album somehow found its way onto the interweb as bootleg copies started surfacing at record shows and the like. As recently as 2010, Rick Nielsen was promising an eventual release for the album that has yet to materialize.
Just as Red Ant collapsed, the band found themselves getting back into bed with Epic Records, whose Legacy Records imprint was re-issuing Cheap Trick's first three albums, complete with bonus tracks.
By the end of '98, Cheap Trick had pioneered the concept of performing classic albums in their entirety; a theme that brought the band to Chicago's Metro for four sold-out shows. Luckily for those who couldn't attend, the band took the opportunity to record each show and released the highlights as Music For Hangovers, their first live album since Cheap Trick At Budokan.