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| Direct link to this article here: http://tinyurl.com/bluecheerappreciation Had "Summertime Blues" not gone Top 15 in the spring of 1968, Blue Cheer might not have had the opportunity to unleash their expression over numerous albums through multiple personnel changes. Vincebus Eruptum sports a serious silver/off-purple cover wrapped around the punk-metal fury. Leigh Stephens is nowhere near Hendrix, Beck, Clapton, or Jimmy Page, the skill of a Yardbird is replaced by a thud of bass/drums/low-end guitar. Vocalist Dickie Peterson takes almost six minutes on Mose Allison's "Parchment Farm" to talk about shooting his arm, shooting his wife, picking cotton, and having sex. Definitely more risqué than Grand Funk Railroad's "T.N.U.C."...read more here: | | Joe Viglione will be writing an Appreciation of Blue Cheer...the group posted many of my AMG reviews on their website. Just saw them play in Allston, Massachusetts on April 8, 2007 with Tennie Komar...time flies by so quickly, it's been two and a half years since the gig...seems like yesterday. |
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The title is a bit misleading for, although this is certainly "new" Blue Cheer, it is hardly an "improvement." It is important as a document of a band with some influence and certain cult status. Now that the Velvet Underground have achieved true cult superstardom, it is bands like Blue Cheer that continue to get rediscovered by devotees of '60s music. Here, bassist Dick Peterson and drummer Paul Whalley present two distinctly different Blue Cheers. Read more here:
Blue Cheer, the fourth album, is the perpetual group in transition once again rolling with the punches. A vast improvement over New! Improved! Blue Cheer, the sound here is more contained, consistent, and identifiable. Rather than cover Eddie Cochran, as they did with their hit "Summertime Blues" off Vincebus Eruptum, the outside material is tellingly by Delaney Bramlett and MacDavis, a wonderfully laid-back "Hello L.A., Bye-Bye Birmingham." By this time they were sounding more like the Band than the first disc's monstrous musical onslaught, which resembled a naïve Cream or precursor to Grand Funk. Read more here:
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| The Original Human Being opens with the driving "Good Times Are So Hard to Find," a West Coast version of the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man" that generously lifts from that classic Jimmy Miller/Steve Winwood/Spencer Davis composition. Founding member Dickie Petersen is augmented by horns, of all things, on the blues-pop "Love of a Woman." Blue Cheer sounding like Traffic and Tower of Power in two fell swoops is not what the menacing cover photo would indicate. Indeed, you can't tell a book by its cover. Logically, Blue Cheer should have taught Black Sabbath a thing or two, but the band heads more in the direction of Ozzie's Magic Lantern with its singsong hit "Shame Shame" than the grunge of guitarist Tony Iommi. Titles like "Preacher" and "Black Sun" may be better suited for Sabbath, but for fans of this ultra-cult band from the '60s, The Original Human Being is a vast improvement over the band's third outing, New! Improved! Blue Cheer. Read more here: |
"Hiway Man," which opens the sixth album by Blue Cheer, is a far cry from their version of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues," which launched this group to worldwide fame. And though they were the original group to put their amps on "11," Oh! Pleasant Hope is a musical album. This first track, resplendent in heavy vocal reverb, sounds like Waylon Jennings fronting Quicksilver Messenger Service. OPH quickly changes pace with "Believer"'s interesting riff and the experimental production by Blue Cheer and Eric Albronda. Albronda assisted on the production of the self-titled fourth album, Blue Cheer, and co-produced BC#5 - The Original Human Being. It is the production that is a significant ingredient that makes this project by a legendary cult band so appealing. Read more here:
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