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Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (1968)


DudeAsInCool

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Pitchfork does a pretty decent review of Blue Cheer - in America, no other band outside of the MC5 could claim they are the father of Metal music. This much I know for sure, Blue Cheer was the loudest rock in roll band in the world, and to this day, I don't think anyone has topped them in terms of shear volume. If you are curious, check out Summertime Blues and Out of Focus...

And they are touring once again!

DAIC

******

Blue Cheer

Vincebus Eruptum

[Philips; 1968; r: Track; 2003]

Rating: 9.0

A lot of people will frustratingly inform you that the genius of Vincebus Eruptum lies in its overlapping of blues riffs and heavy metal guitars. A lot of people are also wrong. First, let's define the term:

Vincebus Eruptum (v.): to completely dispense with traditionally composed blues song by frantically bending every string on a guitar, strumming without playing any actual notes, ramming your head against the speakers, and generally inducing a psychotic thunderstorm of sound and fury signifying nothing.

There's only one reason anyone has ever been interested in Eruptuming: Leigh Stephens. In the summer of 1967, Stephens heard the accumulations of blues and rock inside his head, and formed Blue Cheer, situating himself between Cream's rhythmic tightness and Hendrix's flamboyant excess. Fortunately for us, Stephens was resolutely less experienced than either, and in the process of developing this incompetence, he inadvertently birthed punk, heavy metal, and the most primal version of the inexorable and inept guitar freak-out. Vincebus essentially acts as the juncture of the lethally lethargic, basement-murder morass of Sabbath and the vomit-spewing anxiety of early punk rock. There may be occasional blues passages, but trust me, there's no overlap. When Stephens solos, there is nothing but wind-howling terror.

Blue Cheer's signature song, "Summertime Blues", is a prime example of this bludgeoning. The band makes several attempts to get their instruments to sound like they're playing together, but whenever singer/bassist Dickie Peterson and drummer Paul Whaley accidentally forget that they're in the same band, Stephens rushes into the mix with a mind-expanding psychedelic gundown. Eddie Cochran's version actually sounded like summer; this sounds like whatever kind of season they have in a coal mine with skeleton scaffolds. The production is so lo-fi, it's practically transcendent. Whereas psychedelic used to be all about the Grateful Dead and Strawberry Alarm Clock (maybe "Tomorrow Never Knows" on a good day), Stephens was one of the progenitors of those gloriously nauseating spaz-outs we now know was to be the future of rock.

On "Doctor Please", a sort of less subtle "Doctor Robert", Peterson yelps, "I need your pain killers!" while Stephens unleashes undulations of deafening wreckage and turbulent reverb. The rhythm section is barely audible, and when it is, it can barely stay ahead of Stephens. This is the kind of music Lester Bangs must have loved and Spinal Tap and Tenacious D must have mocked: musicians who, like the bands on Nuggets, live not to perfect their technique, but to simply rock. And while Blue Cheer, at this early stage, have yet to work out their kinks, their songs are already stunning: "Out of Focus" croaks tales of "the magic madness" and "mystic dream," a prepubescent version of Zeppelin's bombast, while "Second Time Around" is a grimier and more explosive predecessor to Yes' "Heart of the Sunrise".

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very entertaining...and right on the mark in a way.....however, we always must remember that rock critics are really just giving us their own opinion and can never actually speak for the rest of us......i was 18 when "summertime blues" was unleashed on an unsuspecting world by blue cheer...i had my own imported copy of "vincebus eruptum" one week later.....imagine what that did to me...... :) :)

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I was around when all the Blue Cheer noise was going on...and I do mean noise. It was readily apparent that they were a minimally skilled group of bangers who did the only thing they were capable of doing...playing loud and hard. There's a market for this out there, so the group is revered as being ahead of their time. But in that time they deservedly got little respect.

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I was around when all the Blue Cheer noise was going on...and I do mean noise. It was readily apparent that they were a minimally skilled group of bangers who did the only thing they were capable of doing...playing loud and hard. There's a market for this out there, so the group is revered as being ahead of their time. But in that time they deservedly got little respect.

My musician friends love them and I stand on what I said above - Out of Focus and Summertime Blues are still great today

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My musician friends love them and I stand on what I said above - Out of Focus and Summertime Blues are still great today

Dude, what I'm saying is that they weren't great in the late 60's. They were regarded as amateurish in their own time, not being able to stand the comparison to other groups and individual stars who were producing the best music then...and virtually all that music is still highly regarded today. Blue Cheer's record sales were dismal. I recall getting both Vincebus Eruptum and Outsideinside in the cutout (discount) bins for 33 cents each (albums at the time sold new for $5-$7), and I felt like I got my money's worth, but not a lot more. If not for Summertime Blues I would have felt cheated. By today's standards, perhaps they're regarded as ahead of their time...but by standards in the late 60's they barely made a ripple.

update: I decided to research the album sales of Blue Cheer to see if my statement on sales was correct. The answer is yes...and no. Vincebus Eruptum actually fared quite well, peaking at #11 on the Billboard album charts. Outsideinside went the other way, barely cracking the top 100, and the band fractured at that point, with noted guitar banger Leigh Stephens being asked to leave the group.

Edited by Kooperman
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I wont argue with you that they were a one trick poney. The second album sort of sucked, if I recall...and they never were able to make inroads like the rest of the SF bands. Still, the first album is legendary and stands on its own...

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Blue Cheer was a San Francisco-based rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s, who helped to pioneer heavy metal music. Original personnel were singer/bassist Dickie Peterson, guitarist Leigh Stephens, and drummer Paul Whaley. A prototypical power trio, the band was named after a variety of LSD promoted by underground chemist and Grateful Dead backer Owsley Stanley. This variety of LSD took its name from a popular laundry detergent.

Their first hit was a cover version of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from their debut album Vincebus Eruptum (1968). The single peaked at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, their only such hit, and the album peaked at #11 on the Billboard 200 chart.

The group's sound was hard to categorize, but was definitely blues-based, psychedelic, and very loud. The band has been subsequently acclaimed as an influence on garage rock, punk music, heavy metal, and grunge. Julian Cope has written, "In 1968, nothing but nothing in America and Britain sounded as brutal as Blue Cheer except for the Velvet Underground."

The group underwent several personnel changes after the 1968 release of Outsideinside, and then through yet more changes during and after 1969's New! Improved! Blue Cheer (different guitarists on side 1 and 2). After Leigh Stephens was replaced by Randy Holden, formerly of Los Angeles garage rock band The Other Half, in 1968, Blue Cheer's style changed to a more commercial hard rock sound à la Steppenwolf or Iron Butterfly. For the fourth album Blue Cheer, Holden, who had left during the third album, was subsequently replaced by Bruce Stephens. Stephens later quit and was replaced by Gary Lee Yoder, who helped complete the album.

The new line up of Peterson, Ralph Burn Kellogg, Norman Mayell, and Yoder in 1970 saw the release of The Original Human Being and then 1971's Oh! Pleasant Hope. When Oh! Pleasant Hope failed to dent the sales charts, Blue Cheer temporarily split up.

From 1988 to 1993, Blue Cheer toured mainly in Europe. During this time, they played with classic rock acts as well as then-up-and-coming bands: Mountain, Outlaws, Thunder, Groundhogs, Ten Years After, Yardbirds, Danzig, Mucky Pup, Biohazard and others.

On the Nibelung Records label they released several albums. 1989 saw the release of Blue Cheer's first official live album, Blitzkrieg over Nüremberg. This album was recorded on Blue Cheer's first European tour in decades. The drum chair was then taken by Dave Salce; bass by Dickie Peterson; guitar by Duck McDonald.

1990 saw the release of Highlights & Lowlives studio album, comprised of blues-based hard rock, sometimes reminiscent of Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones, and several ballads. The album was produced by notable grunge producer Jack Endino. The line-up was Peterson on bass and vocals, Paul Whaley on drums, and Duck McDonald on guitars.

Blue Cheer followed up "Highlights" with the much heavier Dining with the Sharks. McDonald was replaced by German ex-Monsters guitar player Dieter Saller. Peterson was on bass and vocals again, and Paul Whaley was again on drums. Also featured is a special guest appearance by Groundhogs guitarist Tony McPhee. The album was produced by Roland Hofmann.

In the early 1990s, Peterson and Whaley re-located to Germany. Whaley still lives there while Peterson has since moved back to California. Guitar work has been handled by Duck MacDonald since that time. Blue Cheer are still active as of 2006. Their last release was Live in Japan, 1999, and their last tour was a club tour of England in 2004. Peterson and MacDonald performed with drummer Prairie Prince at the Chet Helms tribute gig in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in Summer 2005. They finished recording an album in Virginia in Winter 2005 with Joe Hasselvander of Raven and Pentagram on drums. Paul Whaley has since returned to the band as drummer. Blue Cheer is planning to go on tour in Spring of 2006.

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  • 7 months later...

Blue Cheer were a band like no other; Vincebus Eruptum was a revelation in heavy sounds.

I can't recall ever hearing material from Outside/Inside, but somewhere I've got a copy of "The Original Human Being". The group had significantly changed its sound by that time.

The album was a crashing failure, but that period did produce a couple of interesting songs that are worth listening to even now. They'd gone into a psychedelic/progressive phase by this time; the songs were dominated by the sounds of a sitar. They are :

"I'm the Light" : An almost orchestral piece, with crashing thunder and wind, a heavenly choir, and a catchy sitar riff. The lyrics are "cosmic" and occasionally silly : "One foot in the acid world/The other one in the grave/Til you see my light/One hand for all mankind/While the other one holds the flame/Til you see my light, babe"

"Babaji" : An instrumental driven by....you guessed it....sitar. One of the catchiest sitar numbers I've ever heard (and I've heard maybe. . . two)!

UK Swings

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