I decided at the last minute to go catch Cheap Trick at the Warfield Theater tonight.

They put on a great show. Robin Zander still has that amazing voice, and the songs rock. The venue's sound system was too muddy to show off Tom Petersson's twelve-string bass tone, but they still sounded great.

The set was a mix of older classic Cheap Trick songs and stuff from their new album. The new album Special One is pretty good, and a couple of the songs they played from it really worked well with enough energy for a live gig. My only complaint was that they ended the set with the new album's opening song "Scent of a Woman", which isn't as good as the other new songs they selected. I wished they had picked a better closer, but I still enjoyed the show a lot.

The little bonus was that, even from 20 feet or so away, I managed to catch one of Rick Nielsen's guitar picks flying through the air. A very cool souvenir. Of course, given the number of picks that Rick sends flying into the audience during the course of a show, I realize that my odds were actually pretty good.