Cheap Trick at Auditorium Shores 3/19

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The last time Robin Zander was at SXSW in Austin, years ago, "it was so drunk and crowded, I just went back to my hotel room," he said, in what could be one of the more accurate descriptions of SXSW out there.

"YOU were so drunk and crowded?" Rick Nielsen laughs.

"Yes, I WAS so drunk and crowded," Zander replies.

"Who can remember that?" Tom Petersson, sitting to his right, leans over and laughs. "I was with you. We didn't even know who we were."

Now, as one of the most enduring rock bands out there, Zander, Petersson and the rest of Cheap Trick are happy to be here - not as visitors, but as performers, and probably the biggest band to ever grace the stage at Auditorium Shores during SXSW.

Said Zander, laughing: "We were starting to get alittle pissed off, frankly, because we weren’t invited, and then it came down the pike, and then we were happy …"

Joking aside, Nielsen said, it was "an honor" to get the call.

"A lot of bands were name-dropping, and they were assuming we'd never show up here," guitarist Rick Nielsen said with a smile, during an interview on Wednesday. "So when we got the call, it's like, it is an honor. This is the stuff, everyone around the world knows about Austin because of this. And your bar-b-que."

Cheap Trick is scheduled to peform at 8 p.m. on Friday at Auditorium Shores, headling a show that includes Cracker and the Bodeans. And for the next two days, they're looking for stuff to do.

Petersson wants to see Chilly Gonzales , and Nielsen wants to see Satnam Ramgotra , a friend of theirs (not on the official schedule). Zander says he's doing what many of us do - playing it by ear.

"The best way to do it is just to walk up and down the street, and walk in and out of the clubs," he said. "If you try to follow that pamphlet thing, forget it."

Says Neilsen: "I want to see 400 bands. One minute of each. ... there's so many bands on the roster, I’ve forgotten what was going on - by the time I get to the end of the page, I’ve forgotten what’s at the top. I knew about a tenth of them."

The stop is part of their current tour supporting "The Latest," their most recent album, released in June 2009, after35 years and more than 20 million albums sold.

An ever-evolving and adapting band, Cheap Trick started as rock dudes in the mid-70s, with their fans buying their albums at record stores and listening to them on the radio.

Now, a new generation of fans buys them on iTunes, hears them on video games, watches them on Conan.  They're on Facebook (38k fans), MySpace (76k friends), Twitter (4.6k followers, but that's just in the last six weeks) and YouTube (3.5 million views).

But Cheap Trick says their fans haven't changed - and neither has their approach to music - in spite of the tech revolution, the skyrocketing social media, the generational shift in their followers, and the evolution of media.

"Luckily, we still have the content of Cheap Trick," Nielsen said. "With The Latest, that's about our 28th or 29th release. It’s pretty amazing that we’re still doing it. Now we get asked to be in more and more things."

As if to prove that point, their newest album - "The Latest" - was released not only on CD but also on 8-track.

"Everything we've done has been trying to do good stuff. We never tried to go towards a trend, or copy anybody's anything," Nielsen said. "We always tried to be ourselves and that's been a blessing and a curse."

Asked what they think of being around emerging bands at SXSW, Petersson smiled and said it seems to be par for the course.

"We seem to always be around someone who's emerging," Petersson said. "New emerging hair bands, new emerging punk.. It's always something new, emerging. And we're just kind of going along."

Replied Nielsen: "We could be the next big thing."

Added Zander: "We could be The Latest."

(Incidentally, the 8-track was a huge hit with Conan O'Brien, who owns a vintage GT with an 8-track player (and if he takes it out, the car loses its value). A big fan from way back, O'Brien used "Surrender" as the soundtrack to his very first show - and then used the band's music again on his last.

(Asked if they were on Team Leno or Team Coco , the band was mostly noncomittal - discussing how they were friends with both, they're not taking sides, and the fact that Zander gave Leno a custom made lock for his motorcycle while Conan, a guitar player and collector for years, owns a Rick Nielsen guiltar. 

And then, Petersson: "We're not getting into it... Make a wild guess.")