SAN FRANCISCO -- Cheap Trick know Budokan, and this was no

Budokan.

It was the Fillmore auditorium -- and on Tuesday night, it was the next best

thing.

The music was the same, if a little grittier and bluesier. The show started as it

did 20 years ago, with a rousing "Hello There," which segued into a hard and

fast "Come On, Come On," followed an hour or so later by the one-two punch of

HREF="http://www.addict.com/music/Cheap_Trick/Ain't_That_A_Shame.ram">"

Ain't That A Shame" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Clock Strikes Ten."

Guitarist/bandleader Rick Nielsen still showered the crowd with a flood of guitar

picks and eye-popping guitar histrionics. Singer Robin Zander flipped his

golden-boy blond hair and wailed his power-pop delights as if 20 years had

barely crawled by while fleshy drummer Bun E. Carlos hid behind his white

gloves and bashed out his indelible licks during

HREF="http://www.addict.com/music/Cheap_Trick/Surrender.ram">"Surrender"

(RealAudio excerpt) and "Need Your Love."

And then there was spiky-haired, calm, cool bassist Tom Petersson who stuck to

the basics and grinned his way through the show with nary a peep.

"Entertaining" is how fellow bassist and Primus leader Les Claypool -- who said

he'd never seen Cheap Trick live before (except on the '70s show "Don

Kirschner's Rock Concert") -- described the performance. "Rick Nielsen was

flinging guitar picks between his legs at me during the show."

Rockford, Ill., power-pop legends Cheap Trick celebrated the 20th anniversary

of their career-making 1978 show at Tokyo, Japan's enormo-dome Budokan by

playing the entire show, in order. It was the third official performance of this

nostalgia tour spawned by the popular live LP Live At Budakon (1979).

The private party (sponsored by new media company RealNetworks and co-

sponsored by SonicNet) took place -- not coincidentally -- on the same day that

the band released the two-CD set Cheap Trick at Budokan: The Complete

Concert.

The 19-track album presents the landmark concert in its entirety for the first time

ever on CD, so, in this age of Quadrophenia stagings and Tommy

on Broadway (both performances of the Who's classic albums), what better way

to celebrate than by re-creating the show for an audience of several hundred

Silicon Valley suits noshing on gourmet treats?

It hardly mattered who was there, though. Zander, impeccably dressed in a

royal purple, crushed velvet suit, his blond mane loosely tied back, strutted to

center stage, grabbed the mic and ripped his way through the hour-and-a-half

show as if he were playing to 50,000 rabid Japanese kids. As usual, each one

of the members played to form, with "naughty uncle" Nielsen -- dressed in a red

suit, baseball cap and sporting his now de rigeur long, braided goatee,

complete with a pre-sold-out price tag hanging from the end -- encouraging the

audience by gesturing with his arms and handling all the between-song banter,

much of which mimicked the live album.

"On drums Mr. Bun E. Carlos!" he shouted before the evening's obligatory drum

solo.

Petersson, meanwhile, sported a red velvet waist coat and an oversized red

stained-glass crucifix, kept to himself, as did Carlos, the steady-beat rhythmic

heart of the band.

"I think they pulled it off like consummate professionals," said 42-year-old Mark

Christmas of Washington, D.C., an audio engineer for the National Geographic

Society, who, despite being familiar with only one or two songs, danced at the

back of the auditorium well into the night.

Before the show, Claypool, dressed in a black fishing hat and wearing a scruffy

beard, was huddled with Petersson discussing their mutual admiration for

Morphine. A bass player talking to bass player about a band known for, what

else, their bass player?

Opening the show, apropos of nothing, was one-time David Letterman sidekick

Larry "Bud" Melman, who asked the audience, "Is everybody tripping yet?"

before launching into some jokes more fitting for a Rotary Club convention.

But all that was forgotten once Cheap Trick took the stage. Up until about the

fifth song, "Big Eyes," you'd be hard-pressed to suss the difference between the

old live Budokan album and the new, in-the-flesh one. It was on that song, as

well as on later versions of "Lookout" and "Can't Hold On," that the band, best

known for its soaring, speedy power-pop melodies, revealed a slightly grungier,

bluesier sound that one might well assume was borne out of Cheap Trick's

recent years of tumultuous career ups and downs.

The already walking-blues stroll of "Can't Hold On," which slithers along on the

album, felt ever sadder and lonelier on the Fillmore stage, which Nielsen later

acknowledged that the band had never graced before, adding jokingly, "since

our first incarnation as the Beatles."

As expected, the crowd went ballistic for a rousing rendition of "Surrender," the

band's biggest hit, with Nielsen busting out his signature five-necked guitar for

as fierce and youthful a celebration as the band's ever had. It made you

wonder about the words spray-painted on the side of a backstage equipment

case.

"Morpheus," read the inscription, a nod to the mythological god of dreams, as if

Cheap Trick were preparing for anything weird that came their way.