Summer 2010 Mixtape: Cheap Trick Two-Fer

What are summer nights for but whiling away the moments, hoping it never ends but knowing that inevitably it will. As endless as they may seem, no matter how much you fill them up with fun or adventure or romance or memories, there are only a finite number of them. One day, one night, it won't be summer any more and you'll have to wait for next year. Nevertheless, I'll bet they were each perfect summer moments strung together one after another.

That's how I feel about the next two songs on my Summer 2010 soundtrack. They're strung together back to back, perhaps the best one-two pairing on any record from my youth. Okay, maybe that's hyperbole. I'm sure I'm missing many others, but this one is about as perfect as they come: cuts 2 and 3 from side two of Cheap Trick's earth-shattering Live at Budokan. And when you hear Mr. Bun E. Carlos knock out that punchy double-time beat to "I Want You to Want Me", you know that in six minutes' time and with the last crashing power chords by Rick Nielsen and Tom Petersson on "Surrender", pure pop perfection will, alas, be over like summer moments.