Cheap Trick Came Back to the Room Where They Played With The Cars in 1978
Cheap Trick with James Hatem
Mayo Performing Arts Center, Morristown, NJ
Saturday, September 19, 2026
by Chris Vaglio
Photos by Chris vaglio
There is a moment at most Cheap Trick shows where the room stops being a theater. For the Morristown crowd at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, that moment landed right at the midpoint of the set, when Rick Nielsen started trading lines with the people down front like he was working a bar on a Thursday night. Seats or no seats, it stopped feeling like a sit-down venue and started feeling like a club.
That is the trick this band has been pulling for fifty years, and they are still very good at it.
A Long Jersey History
I have been seeing Cheap Trick for a long time, and they have taken me through most of the New Jersey rock circuit along the way. There was a stretch where they seemed to turn up at Suntan Lake in Riverdale every single summer, which is the kind of Jersey summer detail that either means nothing to you or means everything. I have seen them at PNC Bank Arts Center, though never as the headliner there.
I missed them back in March when they headlined the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville. So getting them at the Mayo PAC, in a room with real sightlines and a sound system that rewards you for paying attention, was a genuine treat.
photo by Chris Vaglio
James Hatem Comes Home
Credit where it is due to the opener, too. James Hatem is a Denville native, now based in Nashville, and he is out with Cheap Trick on the All Washed Up Tour. This was a hometown show for him in every sense, right down to his mom being in the building. He was excellent. Strong songs, real presence, and the thing every opener should understand but so many do not: he played a tight set and got off. No overstaying, no testing the room's patience. A perfect opening act.
Hits, Deep Cuts and One Very Rare Lead Vocal
They skipped the traditional "Hello There" opener and came out swinging on "Clock Strikes Ten" instead, then spent the entire front half of the set in 1977 and 1978. "Radio Lover," "Big Eyes," "On Top of the World," "Ain't That a Shame," "Need Your Love" and "The Ballad of T.V. Violence" is not the running order of a band trying to coast. It is a band making you earn the hits.
"The Ballad of T.V. Violence" is the genuine deep cut of the night, pulled off the 1977 debut, and it is not a song most of this room came in expecting. "Radio Lover" is nearly as unlikely, a 2017 track from We're All Alright! sitting in the second slot. And "I Know What I Want" is worth flagging on its own: it is Tom Petersson's only lead vocal in the entire Cheap Trick catalog, and he still takes it himself. That is the kind of choice that tells you a band is paying attention to their own history rather than just reciting it.
The hits were all there in the back half. "I Want You to Want Me," "Surrender," "Dream Police," and then "Goodnight" to close, which is how Cheap Trick has ended shows for most of my life.
The tour is named for All Washed Up, their 21st studio album, and they pulled "The Riff That Won't Quit" out of it, a two-and-a-half-minute shot of exactly what the title promises. They also handed "High Roller" to Robin Taylor Zander, who now plays rhythm guitar and sings alongside his father in the touring lineup.
A song from Heaven Tonight in 1978, sung by someone who was not born when it came out, could easily feel like a gimmick. It does not. He can sing. With Daxx Nielsen on drums, there are now two sons in this band carrying parts their fathers wrote, and it sounds less like a succession plan than like a band that just works.
Still, the high point was "Dream Police." It is one of my favorite Cheap Trick songs and it does not lose a thing live. The siren-riff swagger, the layered vocals, the way the chorus keeps escalating past where any sane pop song would stop. Forty-seven years in and it still detonates.
photo by Chris Vaglio
Zander's Voice, Nielsen's Show
The band sounded great, and the real story there is Robin Zander. His voice has not aged. Not "has aged well," not "still gets there." It sounds like the record. For a singer who has been fronting one of the loudest American rock bands since the Ford administration, that is close to unexplainable, and he was hitting it all night.
Nielsen, meanwhile, remains the most entertaining man on any stage he stands on. The guitar parade, the mugging, the picks flying into the crowd, the between-song needling. At one point he brought up a show they played with The Cars back in the day, and placed it at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic.
Close, but the real answer is better. In July 1978, Cheap Trick played Morristown on a bill with The Cars, both bands still early in their run. The venue was called the Morris Stage then. It sat at 100 South Street. That is this building.
The place went back to being the Community Theatre later that same year and became the Mayo Performing Arts Center in 2011, but the address never moved. Nielsen was standing roughly where he stood forty-eight years ago, misfiling it by about thirty miles, which after five thousand-odd shows is a forgivable rounding error.
I was not old enough to have been in that room for that bill. Knowing it happened in the same room I was sitting in is its own kind of consolation.
one Gripe
My Only gripe with this show was the clock. Cheap Trick hit the stage at nine and we were on the sidewalk a few minutes after ten. That is roughly sixty minutes for fourteen songs, and it is short even by this tour's own standard: most nights on the All Washed Up run have gone closer to eighty-five minutes.
I understand the math. Most of this crowd wanted to be in the car before eleven, and nobody in this band is a spring chicken anymore. But with a catalog this vast, two or three more classics would have cost almost nothing and sent everyone home floating. They had the material sitting right there.
photo by Chris vaglio
The Source Material
None of that dulls the larger point. Cheap Trick is still one of the greatest American rock and power pop bands, full stop. The DNA is everywhere. Half the guitar-pop bands working today owe them a debt whether they know it or not, and the ones who know it say so loudly. A band that formed in the 1970s should not still sound like this, and they do. Watching the originals deliver it at this level is not a heritage act going through the motions. It is the source material.
If they come back around anywhere near you, go.
See if they are coming to your town soon - Cheap Trick Tour dates
Setlist 9/17/2026 @ Mayo PAC Theater Morristown, NJ
Clock Strikes Ten
Radio Lover
Big Eyes
On Top of the World
Ain't That a Shame
Need Your Love
The Ballad of T.V. Violence
The Riff That Won't Quit
High Roller
I Know What I Want
I Want You to Want Me
Surrender
Dream Police
Goodnight
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