Nov. 17

 I was once played in a charity golf tournament with Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen and his son. His son was a scratch golfer; Nielsen a little more than that. So I asked: "What's your handicap?" Said Rick: "My handicap is golf." Ba-da-boom. Cheap Trick has been part of our pop-rock landscape since the mid-1970s. They've played clubs and arenas, toured with the cool and the uncool. One of the things that impresses most is they're a working band. They don't take much time off. They don't rest on their catalog, they continue to create new and good music as evidenced by their 2005 disc, "Rockford." They've always mixed a certain tongue-in-cheek humor with their anthems. Singer Robin Zander always seems to be eternally youthful and Nielsen always plays multiple guitars and tosses zillions of picks at us. It's a ritual, it's a shtick, but it rocks and if "Surrender" isn't the best generational bonding song of all time I don't know what is. "Mommy's all right/Daddy's all right/They just seem a little weird/ Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away!" They play Avalon Friday Nov. 17 with the revived Soul Asylum. Starts at 7 and tickets are $28.
15 Lansdowne St., 617-262-2437 livenation.com