Lively Times Magazine

lively times magazine

Lively Times Magazine was a bi-weekly music and entertainment newspaper published in Rockford, Illinois. Serving the Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin area, the paper started operations in early 1976. In mid-1978 the publishers, Tom Sala and Steve Johnson, sold the paper, and it continued to be circulated under new management through at least 1979.

With Rockford being Cheap Trick’s home town, many issues of the magazine included articles about the band, recording notes, appearance schedules, or other snippets of information. One issue inexplicably has a photo of Cheap Trick’s drummer Bun E. Carlos on a page with no caption and nothing else that references him whatsoever. I suppose part of the charm of a local newspaper is that they will use just about anything of local interest to fill up space.

This issue includes a 4-page review of Cheap Trick’s album Heaven Tonight. It is not a particularly favorable review with some songs being given a rating of only ‘1’ on a 5-point scale, and there is a lot of ink bemoaning the inclusion of keyboardist Jai Winding on so many of the songs. As part of his conclusion the reviewer writes, “For Cheap Trick, Heaven Tonight seems a solid statement that the band will not stay in one mode longer than needed. The new album introduces new instruments (Winding’s keyboards, Nielsen’s mandocello and Petersson’s 10-string Hamer bass) and sheds some of the attractions of the old.” Editor’s note: Petersson actually used his 12-string bass on this album.

Another regular inclusion in Lively Times are advertisements for Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen’s father’s music store, Ralph Nielsen Music City, an example of which is shown here. In addition to being “Where CHEAP TRICK Shops!”, we think Nielsen’s music store was also where the seeds for the band’s unusual instrumentation ideas germinated. Not only did the store carry the guitars and other instruments found at every other music store, but they also dealt in more exotic instruments such as the Mellotron, Tiple, and other “old time” stringed instruments that are now seldom seen. We think it was Rick Nielsen’s exposure to these unusual pieces that led to his creation and use of the mandocello, as well as being a significant factor in the creation of Hamer’s first 12-string bass.