Julian Cope’s Album of the Month

THE GODLIKE GENIUS OF BLUE CHEER was invented by Julian Cope for the purposes of this eulogy to the late, great Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer, who just died on October 15th. Although Blue Cheer’s 21st century myth as thee Ur Power Trio is nowadays so suffused with an incandescent Post-Everything 20/20 hindsight that Messrs. Peterson, Whaley & Stevens sit quite snugly alongside the other great Ancestors (MC5, Stooges, Pentagram) on most Stoner Rock.commer’s record shelves, it’s still particularly important at this sad time of Mein Hairy Dickie’s sudden demise to remember that Blue Cheer’s story only even began to re-surface during the Grunge-y, Sabbath-informed-in-a-Melvins-stylee St. Vitus-propelled early ‘90s, as a whole new generation of orphan rockers suddenly asked “But whence sprung our current Mung Worship? And who were these pre-Sabbathians who bequeathed us these snottiest of lick scraps & riffic mishaps?” Had the more literate among them trawled the then-current selection of 1980s Blues Rock treatises available on the high street rockshelf, they’d have been alarmed to discover that Blue Cheer had been entirely passed over by the Bluesologists, those prim Robert Cray’n’Elick Crapton Authenticists relegating Dickie’n’Co to that sub-category just below ‘Hendrix & Cream Copyists’ known as ‘Garage’. Yup, alongside the Count Five is where Blue Cheer dwelled throughout the 70s and 80s. THEY was the world’s forgotten boys (not Nincompoop & the Stooges). Ahem, anyway even Charles Shaar Murray’s big 1982 blues tome CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC didn’t give’em a mench; didn’t even dignify the Cheer with a snidey one-line putdown; their absence in the index says it all. Squish. And the real truth of it? Well, let’s take a look at the sonic evidence, i.e.: the compilation of music contained within this Album of the Month #114. For it was all of it released between July and October 1968, when the original version of Blue Cheer was at its Mekong Delta-strafing height. Yup, the Cheer unleashed two hugely dynamic and killer albums barely 14 weeks apart, each one being chock full of great bludgeoning soul, berserk & off-kilter (so-called) blues rock, and hefty freeform bass’n’drum excursions of sheer cranium pummelling, over which white noise ramalama was inappropriately daubed as often as was possible. So was it blues after all? Who knows? Search me, I hate the blues and love Blue Cheer, so what does that say? Besides, being managed by Hell’s Angels and named after a brand of LSD, Blue Cheer was the absolute antithesis of the Zeitgeist, singer Dickie Peterson later commenting: “We were the ugly stepchildren. Everybody of the San Franciscan scene was all ‘kiss babies’ and ‘eat flowers’. We were sort of ‘kiss flowers’ and ‘eat babies’; we weren’t peace and love.” No shit, Sherlock! Blue Cheer’s debut album VINCEBUS ERUPTUM was an absurdly unbalanced adventure playground of screeching white noise guitar drool and Exxon-levels of axe spillage from Leigh Stephens, clumsy shed-building drum assaults from Paul Whaley and Mae Westian corner o’the mouth vocal asides from bass player Dickie Peterson, each band member showing next to no regard for the standard soul or blues chord patterns that struggled to be heard far far below. Buoyed up by their freak occurrence US Top 20 teen hit versh of ‘Summertime Blues’, the rest of this first LP wedded the Cheer’s brutally tough soul and blues rhythm section to Leigh Stephens’ inordinately disconnected take on the role of the modern lead guitarist, almost every solo commencing as though the guitarist had been caught on tape actually in the act of Giving Up Guitar Playing. Chaos ensues every time his turn comes, as Stephens’ inner demons force him through the solo (“Come on Leigh, you daft tripping cunt, you can give up guitar after this one final assault”). Three months later – in October ’68 – the gentlemen of the ensemble returned with album number two, entitled OUTSIDEINSIDE, and ‘twas another catalogue of drunken midnight dodgem shunts, amphetamine stop-start buzzsaw sprawls, even the occasional moment of delightful Pin Drop silence, this time occasionally overladen with mucho stacked soul harmonies (MC5-style a year ahead) and some exquisitely heavy keyboard contributions from a divinely ordained guest pianist/organist by the unlikely name of Ralph Burns Kellogg. And it is to this brief but Uber Visionary period (July-October 1968) that I have concentrated my attentions for this Album of the Month #114. Side One (July ’68) 1. DOCTOR PLEASE (7.53) 2. OUT OF FOCUS (4.08) 3. SECOND TIME AROUND (6.17) Side Two (October ’68) 1. FEATHERS FROM YOUR TREE (3.34) 2. SUN CYCLE (4.18) 3. JUST A LITTLE BIT (3.30) 4. GYPSY BALL (3.01) 5. COME & GET IT (3.18) download...http://rapidshare.com/files/182383480/Blue_Cheer_-_What_Doesn_t_Kill_You...___2007.rar So, what’s it sound like? Julian continues below... also an MP3 stream is available. via Head Heritage.