BLUE CHEER: LIVE & UNRELEASED '68-'74 (1968-1974; 1996)
1) Summertime Blues; 2) Out Of
Focus; 3) Doctor Please; 4) Fighting Star; 5) Adventures; 6) Make It To The
Party; 7) New Orleans; 8) Ace In The Hole; 9) Punk.
Naysayers may say their nays in their gayly
ways, but Blue Cheer are still sort of a «legend», and every «legend»
presumably deserves a set of archive releases, and any set of archive releases
is worth at least a brief mention and a sample, and I assume that Live & Unreleased '68-'74 is as
good a sample as any to try and convince the audience that nobody really needs
to hear, own, or seriously discuss Blue Cheer archive releases. But sure, they
deserve all the archive releases they can get, if somebody is willing to invest.
This package, released quite a while ago, is
bluecheerfully messy in that it combines two absolutely different things —
three live performances of Vincebus
Eruptum material by the original
Blue Cheer, and then a set of six studio tracks that were recorded, but left in
the can by a short-lived version of the band in 1974, which included Ruben de
Fuentes on guitar and Terry Rae on drums. Apparently they just happened to find
themselves in a studio one day without a record contract, and twenty-two years
later, we were informed.
The live tracks (first two taken from the Steve
Allen TV show, third one God knows from where) are played very close to the
studio arrangements, although ʽDoctor Pleaseʼ is further extended by two more
minutes of noise, chaos, and feedback: dynamic and spirited, but adding nothing
to the studio experience, while the sound quality is totally abysmal. Best
thing about the whole deal is Steve Allen announcing, "the Blue Cheer...
run for your life!" at the end of the first track — a commentary that
says it all, whether you want to take it seriously or sarcastically.
Surprisingly, sound quality does not get any
better on the studio material from 1974, suggesting that the tapes had spent
those twenty-two years in somebody's damp basement, or maybe Dickie was using
them as wrap-ups for his personal stash. The material does, however, fill in an
important knowledge gap: as you remember, Oh! Pleasant Hope ended the band's early career on an unusual
«roots-rock» note, while The Beast Is...
Back reinvented them more than a decade later as a heavy metal outfit —
this particular pit stop shows that already by 1974 Peterson had completely cleared
his head from all that «folksy» nonsense, returning to a heavy, pub-rock oriented
sound that recalls Slade or early Rocka
Rolla-era Judas Priest. From here, it would only be a matter of adding an
extra layer of distortion and glossy pop metal production to get to the eventual
sound of The Beast.
However, the songs themselves are uniformly
dull — uninventive blues-rock with just enough competence to make it
listenable, but nothing to make it stand out from all the competition. The
cover of ʽNew Orleansʼ does not work at all, because combining the song's
original party cheerfulness with an aggressive hard rock sound makes as much
sense as trying to put salt in your chocolate — and it is still more memorable
than all the other tunes put together, although, granted, the impression may
be exacerbated simply because of the dreadful bootleg-quality murk of the sonic
flow. At any rate, it is hardly the fault of Ruben de Fuentes, who seems to
honestly try to get the best out of his typically mid-1970s hard rock guitar.
But whatever be the situation, Live
& Unreleased is clearly recommendable only for the staunchest fan of
the band; for everybody else, it is as good a thumbs down as any.
"[it] makes as much sense as trying to put salt in your chocolate"
ReplyDeleteActually, sea salt and dark chocolate go surprisingly well together.