BLUE CHEER: OH! PLEASANT HOPE (1971)
1) Hiway Man; 2) Believer; 3)
Money Troubles; 4) Traveling Man; 5) Oh! Pleasant Hope; 6) I'm The Light; 7)
Ecological Blues; 8) Lester The Arrester; 9) Heart Full Of Soul.
Okay, come out and confess: who was it told
Blue Cheer that they should drop whatever they were doing and start being The Band, of all people? Or, if not The
Band, then at least The Doobie Brothers. All of a sudden, just as Original Human Being showed assured signs
of the band set to return to their «caveman glory», they do a 180-degree twist
and give us acoustic guitars, on-the-porch attitudes, lyrical tales of highway
men, traveling men, money-troubled men, believers and arresters, and as if that
weren't enough, Dickie Peterson only takes lead vocals on the last three
tracks, leaving the rest to Gary Yoder. Granted, not a lot of people must have
been paying any attention to Blue Cheer in the era of ʽStairway To Heavenʼ,
but for those that were, the band's conversion to a roots-rock-oriented strategy
must have been quite a shock.
The saving grace of the album, however, is that
it never tries to take itself too seriously. Much to Blue Cheer's honor, they
do not even attempt to generate a «soulful» or «spiritual» atmosphere, as the
instrumental abilities and arranging skills of the band would be inadequate.
Instead, they make good use of their pop sensibility, loading many of the songs
with modestly catchy, sometimes even funny «roots-pop» choruses — like, probably
the only point in listening to ʽHiway Manʼ is hearing Yoder bawl "MONEY,
give me all you have!" as if he were rehearsing for a Monty Python sketch
or something. It ain't much to go on haunting you in your dreams, but at least
it saves the song from proverbial boredom, and that is more or less the way
this entire album works — through decent pop hooks.
The title track, in particular, amounts to pure
parody: its verses are set to the precise melody of ʽThe Weightʼ ("Billy
Joe went lookin' round..." = "I pulled into Nazareth..."), but
the uplifting / optimistic message of the chorus, unlike the obscure invocation
to Fanny, is spelled out with the utmost precision: "Oh, pleasant hope /
Where we're gonna get our dope? ... / Oh, pleasant hope / Grass will flow like
wine" — except that even Steppenwolf sounded like they really meant it
when conversing with the enemy (ʽDon't Step On The Grass, Samʼ), whereas ʽOh!
Pleasant Hopeʼ is sung so nonchalantly that you don't even get to feel it for
them.
But if the title track simply pokes fun at
marijuana deprivation, ʽI'm The Lightʼ is downright blasphemous — not only does
it mix gospel organ with Indian sitar (did George Harrison ever have something
like that?), it actually means what it says: the protagonist tells his
girlfriend that "I'm the light, I'm the only one you'll see" and that
"It's one hand for all mankind while the other holds the flame". For
that matter, the sitar plays quite a seductive pop melody — transpose it to
electric guitar or flute, speed up the tempo a little bit, and you got yourself
a readymade Manfred Mann pop single. Not a masterpiece, of course, but second
time in a row that Blue Cheer have used the sitar in a non-conventional manner
and gotten away with it.
For nostalgia sufferers, there is a bit of a heavy rock vibe here:
ʽBelieverʼ is driven by crunchy distorted guitar (despite being one of the
poppiest songs on the album), and ʽHeart Full Of Soulʼ (a Peterson original,
nothing to do with the famous Yardbirds hit) has a dark, scruffy bassline,
chaotic leads, and growling / screaming vocals straight off Vincebus — a little peace offering for
the veteran fans if they were obedient enough to sit all the way through to the
end. But all of this is still quite tame even compared to Human Being, let alone Vincebus,
and seems to be here mainly in order to establish some sort of shaky link to the past.
Still, all things considered, I like the
record, and give it a thumbs up. The fact that it never charted is
expectable and understandable, as is the fact that, totally frustrated over
their loss of direction and obscure future perspectives, Blue Cheer finally
broke up after it had flopped. But once you get over the initial
disappointment, and once you start realizing that they weren't really trying to establish themselves as
a «serious» roots-rock act, but rather urged us all to take it with a grain of
salt, Oh! Pleasant Hope comes across
as an inoffensive, occasionally charming trifle, not entirely devoid of
interest. And after a few listens, it might even come across as a concised,
focused send-up of the whole genre — which, by early 1971, was certainly in
need of a good send-up, like all genres that eventually start falling back on
their own clichés.
Check "Oh!Pleasant Hope" (CD) on Amazon
"unlike the obscure invocation to Fanny"
ReplyDeleteGeorgiy, agreeing on what exactly a 'fanny' is is one of the great divides between British and American English. Ask a collegue you can trus in, m'kay?
'trust'
Delete"Fanny", in this case, is someone's name. Also, the group should have changed its name long before this point. The record itself isn't actually horrible, just desperately mediocre (and received next to no promotion to boot). A change of name would have lowered expectations, and given them a much better shot at building an audience (which they were having to do from scratch anyhow, since the time of the 4th album).
Delete