...like many frisco area punkers (oxford circle/savage resurrection to name but two) the cheer saw the anglo sensation 'cream' play the fillmore and decided it was time to stop emulating the yardbirds/stones and get a dirty heavy groove on and they didn't come no heavier in the summer of 1967 than the cheer whose first forays into the studio produced this monolith of overamped gutbucket slop...like a pressure cooker about to explode and head on out into the voodoo swamp like a kildozer thrown into nirvanic oblivion this 6 track LP upped the ante for yankee combos who wanted to stay up to date yet not get too psychedelic (which too soon proved to be a passing fancy of the flower power tymes)...with the studio thick with reefer and the cheap suds flowing they lay down this testament to the dawn of time, the everpresent weaving thud of the drum dispensing the word and the vibe with the strings bending and screaching and choking the listener into compliant submission...approved by the local chapter of the 'hells angels', the cheer could later walk the heroin infested frisco hills with the confidence and superior knowledge that such kudos brought back in the day...
...as this second LP by the cheer kicked off with piano colouring in the mix it looked somewhat omminous, had the noisenix become musicians and all the negative connotations that brings to good rocking, the possible ruination of the sock-it-to-me swill and splat these cats excelled in...but such concerns proved unfounded and they soon hit the amped up fuzz and shattered the galaxy for some time to come...the cheer had become more comfortable in the studio, the hyper tensive blowout of the previous 'vincebus' had been channeled and slightly streamlined though the lunkiness of cheer playing is a heavily contributing positive factor in their noise...stereo pannin and two channels flowing simultaneous give great disorientating distortions to any high the listener might be on...this is the cheers psychedelic masterpiece, their high art effort as opposed to another bluesrock drug bender...still plenty of bad attitude fuzz and buzz stoner mindsoup for layabouts to get grooved with (special lookout over on side two) and none better than the cover of the stones pinnacle 'satisfaction'...not as immediate as the hit they accidently had with the earlier eddie cochran cover this is a psychedelic bad trip that just pounds into the cranium and goes right to the center of the mind...the original cover opened right out to a quadruple gate fold with some snappy photo collage and painting and freak out trip poster...still approved by the 'angels' with in fact one going by the biker handle 'gut' executed the cover concept so that was cool...
...new!improved!, does this mean the two earlier joints were not any good, they are to be forgotten about?...this may well have been the thinking at the time, maybe somewhat muddleheaded with hindsight but that was what it seemed back in the tail end of the psychedelic sixties...the heavy heavy sludge attack had been replaced with acid guitar psych on the second side and 'songs' on the first, all this curtesy of personel changes that would eventually plague the cheerian world...the acid blast of side two is in some ways a continuation of the first albums bad attitude sprawling slop bucket but it's the first sides tune-smithery that shows the path the cheer would follow into the seventies...chronologically the second side was recorded first with randy holden replacing leigh stephens on the stringbending, randy had been with the 'other half', a going nowhere local punk outfit who'd actually managed to get a long play disc onto the market but otherwise did nothing to mark them out from dozens of other teen R&b combos...randys side is a real nice blasting acid racket, not really frisco ballroom psych but a frontal lobe pounder that don't stop until its over, nicely nice and drugged...inversely side one was recorded later with randy gone from the fold replaced by two cats from another 'frisco acid splatter combo, 'mint tattoo' who also had managed to parley their noise into getting an album released to less than limited success in the bean counting department, though in itself a worthy effort...dickie peterson and paul whaley may have still been in the band but this side does not sound too much like the cheerian mind blast of old, it's much more 'adult' in its outlook, 'new rock' if you will, the future leaking through to some extent, a certain annominity seaping into the preceedings, it could have been made by any number of combos but the name makes it get a few more spins than it would otherwise and this is a good thing because there is some goodness flowing through, it just takes a while to gather its own momentum...petersons vocals are really coming on like some primal bluesman on a couple of tracks, the teenage stoner days are over, a new day is dawning over the cheer camp but the early eruptions would never leave them, they would always be known for the work they laid down on the first wax, a monolithic slab of disturbance that today is still felt where rocking noise is of a premium...(to put the early cheer into some kind of frame of reference, when they played the grande ballroom in detroit in 1968 the stooges took note of their use of loudness for the sake of loudness, stun the audience into submission and take no prisoners (ironically the very essence of amerikkkanism, but here put to a 'socially acceptable' use)...dig it, an album of two halves, literally and otherwise...
...'red weather', the first of two solo joints from axe abusing thud and stun master supreme, blue cheers one and only leigh stephens and a somewhat mystifying entrance of a disk, its everywhere and nowhere at the same time, its perplexing in its perspicacity of reason...the question begging for consideration at this late stage of the game is why was this considered as a dud at the time by most 'knowing underground consumers' when in reality its a magnificent indulgence in quiet seduction for the mellow but vibrant weed head, the loafing cat who checks out wasted sounds to groove on for a couple of hours, chilling with 'buds and suds'...a bargain bin special for a year or two as it was cut out to deletion within not too long a time frame, a lot of heavy rocking bad attitude stoners saw this as distracting with its change and pace, from rocked acid blasts to trance like musicianly playing of a repetition of notes...leigh gets real moaned out with two or three acid fried weirdness inducing blasts of bad tempered drug punch, its blue cheer on an out there consciousness mind expanding trip, invoking some 'demon brother' to guide the way into some future world, this is the moment blue cheer mutated into a snakey tentacle explosion of melting jelly, a carpet ride over the gates of the forbidden city where only the most righteous of flipped out cats dwell...other tracks have a much more flowing mellow but funky and tight, hitting the groove with the right approach, an urbane but urban modern R'n'B effort, moving the audience in the way that will improve any 'high' that will be undertaken whilst getting to grips with the concept going down over the two sides...it's a future / past voyage into the possibilities of substance abuse, a street level experiment into taking the rock'n'roll culture into a viable endless form of metamorphic diagrams on the theory that the world was born from the 'BIG BANG', leigh shows his world born of an even 'BIGGER BANG', the thunderous cacophony thrown down by blue cheer...from mind blasts to mind soup ticklers leigh stays long enough to work the necessary massage on the wobbly lobes of listenerhood, the collected vibe of psychedelic experience as seen through the rough tough city scapes of fifties / sixties amerikkka, where the concept of a 'free' life expectancy was nil from birth, the moment of conception dooms the squares from any hopes of escaping 'operation mindcrime' are dashed into near extinction, cats like leigh use the noise of latter day capitalism to save the world from the blahs, the societal gel of harsh and soft pressure used usually to get the customer, the uptight mug (and such a 'willing' mug most of the time) to consume to save the empire, are here turned around so a roller coaster ride is in constant repreperation in order to save the 'head' from any blahs that may be forthcoming in the then new decade...
...this forth LP from the 'cheer' is probably their most perplexing if looked at as a fresh start for the name if not the actual cats trading under the 'blue cheer' banner, only dickie peterson remains from the original gut busting ensemble, the others are from various frisco outfits (sopwith camel / KAK / mint tattoo) so it should have been a promising new start with a fair amount of acid blasting power noodling but no!, its kind of faceless long hair rock, it could be anybody (indeed it is really, lets face facts here), but the name 'blue cheer' must stand for solid distorted drug rock so what's on offer and what is perplexing about the disk...side one starts with a tamla motown riff (roadrunner) and keeps in an upbeat funky mood, while track two keeps the funk and branchs out into country soul groove with some nice semi acid guitar noodle happening towards the last half...more country soul via a delaney bramlett tune ('hello L.A., bye-bye birmingham',bramlett looking like hot property back in 1970), a nice punchy groove with sanctified keyboards working out reverently...it gets to around track four when visions of 'humble pie' appear, only this is the 'pie' if they were really the small faces ie; no rod stewart or peter frampton, just the small faces getting a mellow funk going, keeping it perculated in a hazy reefer fog in a country cottage somewhere deep in the psychedelic netherworld of perpetual HEPness...track five sounds like an outtake from leigh stephens 'red weather'LP so a good way to reach the half way point with a nod to the original string wrecker for the 'cheer...side two is not getting off to a good start with some formula bar band thud ode to groupies but does end with the patented peterson howl, nice...next up is more 'nice' rock with jazzy sounding modern keyboard and old school keys working away and towards the end it reminds one of the first lee michaels joint (carnival of life') so thats not a bad thing at all...gospel style rock with track three gives out as a head nodder, a nice groove is established that has an unfinished feel, as if something more was needed but they never found out what it was...another decent rock tune follows with everyone working as a unit, more professional sounding on the whole album with none of the earlier feelings of 'IT COULD ALL FALL APART' at any minute which even the new!improved! disk had, let alone the first two and that is what makes this LP not as rewarding as the others, the unstable acid vision is not present, it has been left behind in the dusty past...the LP rounds up with one more tune that's okay, its competent and nice and thats about the size of the whole wax, competent and nice, a whole lot better than the contemporaries putting out similar sound but still not blue cheer, they would not rise until many years later and then on a different continent and a different decade... 
...blue cheers fifth long play wax and though it has filler it's still better than the previous, self titled effort which was lame in the extreme, below par and certainly not worthy of the name it carries...it kicks off with some kind of acid rock choogle thats riding on an old spencer davis riff, good start, quite funky...second tune in is a horn rock style workout, good-time bar rock, nothing too special going on here, filler disguised as in a soul groove, it's kind of like some pop rock effort from a year or two earlier, the kinda stuff the cheers racket set out to destroy(inadvertantly possibly)...following on with some acid rock that's a bit generic but the guitar sound has a nice basement-psych proto metal vibe...the real problem with the 3 later cheer disks is the material is not necessarily totally weak as such, but it's ordinary most of the time, these cats trading under the cheer name were slightly directionless, they played with some aplomb and we can see they are doing their best, but the cheer as an entity, a vessel unto itself peaked early with different cats and a different perspective, originally they started wanting to be cream and then they set their sights on getting a hendrix groove workin and that the essence of what made it work, they had no real idea how to emulate these combos so they just got to it the best they could, not too much thinking, just HIT IT and see what happens, real rock'n'roll...anyhow more bar rock follows and then its 1967 somehow with some bongo/sitar/moog jamming, totally in the groove and just right for a hit on the pipe, a spaceways special in 4 minutes...some jazzy modal funk comes next and things are looking good, like maybe now some new cats have arrived and taken the cheer namein yet another direction with some low slung R&B loping along the avenue, digging the groove...back to some filler, so-so country rock, not as bad as it could be but really no excuse...now its acid rock bar blues, nice and funky, smeared in sleaze, just right, followed by some chunky rock funk with some nice old school soul jazz type keyboard(wolfman jack gets name checked, undoubtably in some vain hope of getting some air time from the great weird beard cat of the radio waves)...last track has an air of resignation about it and that probably sums up this LP, a sometime perplexing disk, but worth a few spins and there's always the forward button for when those certain moments of dullness creep in..
...this is a well tasty little treat from those capt.trips cats out from japan with an exploito/tribute to the mighty blue cheer...originally a heavy blues sludge outfit of epic proportions they gradually transformed themselves into a hollywood (goats head soup) stonesian glitter bar band via hippy rural capers, but its the two extremes that are of significance on this outing...first three tunes (dig the TV hosts intros) come from the first LP and a mindblowing crunch it is, showing the first cheer wax production wasn't a 'mistake' as thats the sound these cats make give or take a blast of bad attitude and fx pedal, a freewheeling 'bad trip' rock'n'roll combo just kicking the summer of love into the dusty hills back to the red dog saloon...this is the teenage blue collar reefer/drinking yankee version of the cream at their most pounding trance onslaught, this is the sound of low rent hendrix in saturation orbit as they pummell every last grace of history from the very corpse of rock, and rock hadn't quite been codified in '68 and these cheer cats already bulldozing it off the boogie highway...maybe if the cheer didn't have the personel problems/changes they'd kept the intial promise as they show here they got the goods, they walk it like they talk it and in '68 the year of the barricades, when sides were being drawn and it was the riot thing to do, san fransisco rock was drifting into the country faster than was morally/culturally good and when the pigs got heavy manners and government drugs flowing through the streets it was up to cats like the cheer to keep the faith with the rocking force field that keeps the squares away...johnny come latelys once tried to talk up the rural rock version of the cheer but the arguement don't stand up after a couple of listens, sure they're nice and all but the very name blue cheer should make hippys run for cover not embrace them...onward from track 4 a very different cheer is happening in gold star studios in 1974, laying down some glitter boogie rock with riff ideas/stance purloined from the stones/NYdolls/foghat all with ace hustler kim fowley and ex- steppenwolf nick st.nick at the controls looking for an entrance into mid 70s rock with some rodney english disco splatter laid over some boogie licks given some keefism from goats head...it aint the greatest thing to come down the pike and it sure aint the worst, its part of the cheer groove with dick peterson and three chancers and also any 'underground 70s' pre pistols rocking is always interesting seeing how ideas and preferences appear in every widening circles as late 20th century c(k)ulture comes into focus more and more...some unkind cats may wish to see this as 3 sixties burnouts trying to get a handle on the youth market but the youth market at this juncture was too stoned to know what they wanted but it probably weren't this...these last tracks do kind of grow and not so much in a perverse/ironic way, they just work their way into the organic computer and when grooving on a late summer afternoon they become real friendly and hang nicely in the air, but its the first three air churners that make this mandatory ear filler, those distorted blasts of mayhemic energy just blow a cats lid off...
...released by those erstwhile pychedelic dadaists over at capt.trips records, this was dickie petersons second solo slab and it's alive with heavy blues rocking voodoo, the beat of the street is happening on stage and in the air, molecules are getting down with the creator, the god of heavy heavy funked out street level rocking is on a super blast of 'bad attitude' good vibes rock'n'roll...this is the way it should be done by the older cats, putting some scrape and moan into the work, not just coasting on easy listening 'rock' or apologetic blues like most of the elder folks of 60s / 70s 'barroom heavy metal' purveyorship (we all know the deal with the old cats and their cynical laziness / medical condition), getting down with the ultra blues, putting the flesh on robert johnsons soul to bring him to life for the hour the band are rocking and socking 'it-to-'em'...recorded in the mid nineties in germany dickie and his compadres kick up the most satisfactory of blues rocking and wailing, with guitars squealing in acid-metal ecsatcy, gospel crunching organ work ensures the sanctified are blessed with rocking goodness, that they receive the word from on 'HIGH' all under pinned with beer drinking thump of cheap workable skins...the albums made up of cover versions of well known blues staples, (red house, killing floor, born in chicago) plus vistitations from delaney bramlett / jj cale all glued together with petersons uncanny knack of throwing down the righteous sludge to keep the vibrations flowing in the positive...this disk packs an affirmitive punch to the noggin, blasting the synapes with chromium steel rocking barbs, a low flying mission with fuel injected burners powering the electric spears...recommended beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is a real deal proposition not to be passed over for inferior 'product'...
...blasting their way into century 21 came blue cheer letting loose in japan back in 1999 and with arch looners the deviants on the tour this must have been a good natured jaunt of some hazy proportions...the mere fact that these cats still got it going on is some heavy testament to their hardy and hearty dedication to the cause of mind altering rock'n'roll, the fact they got it going on in such fine fashion is possibly beyond the call of rock'n'roll 'duty' but this album is a megaton of chemically enhanced super-heavy-blues-rocking that stands taller than solomon grundy...as expected there's a good smearing of early classics intermingled with later grist that hits the spot more often than not and this being the cheer that ain't totally unexpected...dickey peterson and paul whaley must be a couple of cats that really know how to translate the blues into urban rock and not lose the R&B on acid vibe, their contemporaries have mainly gone for the 'authentic' approach to the blues or the good time party route, the cheer seem to combine the two, they're authentic to their own sound and they know how to have a good time, there's a place for both in the very name blue cheer (this is the type of racket that ted nugent thinks he makes but falls somewhat short every time, though he did do great funny interviews back in the day)...
...the beast is indeed back and rocking in that patented blue cheer way that all layabouts of a certain inclination know and love and have dug for many a year...unlike a lot of combos that keep on chugging along/reform periodically these cheer cats know that the job of getting 'outta focus' a serious undertaking and should only be attempted by solid stoners on a mission...obviously after all this time, over 40 years the playing has gotten more precise and refined but the urgent and insistent cheer groove that was present on the first 3 LPs is still in place (unlike those 80's wax that didn't really meet the required standard demanded from anything remotely connected to the cheerian name)...bad trip guitar screach and seismic thuds creep and crawl over an hours worth of da-blues, gospel and stoner swill which enhances a heavy bong hit to gonesville every time its spun...
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