118. Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (1968)




















Track Listing

1. Summertime Blues
2. Rock Me Baby
3. Doctor Please
4. Out Of Focus
5. Parchment Farm
6. Second Time Around

Review

It does go up to eleven! Blue Cheer give us one of the first Heavy Metal albums. Actually it is quite a bluesy metal, in the same way that Led Zeppelin were later, and there are quite a lot of similarities to Zeppelin, except that they are technically much worse.

This lack of ability is compensated by pure rawness of playing. And the album is a lot of fun if nothing else. It's noisy, spinal tapy and brilliant at the same time. They were the loudest band in the world at the time they made this album, and it had to be recorded twice because they blew up the soundboard first time around. Which is funny.

Basically it is not a great album, but it is a good one. It's fun to listen to and actually pretty catchy. You could be listening to worse stuff, so you should give it a try but don't expect too much. The best thing about this album is that they don't let technical inability stand in the way of making some cool noises. Napster doesn't have it but you can buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Summertime Blues
2. Parchment Farm
3. Doctor Please
4. Second Time Around

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

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.