Good Luck On the New Tour!

[FeedbackLourde]

Hey Guys,

Good luck on your West Coast/SouthWest-East Tour! I know y'all will kick ass. See you in the Spring!

FeedbackLourde

[mr maltese]

Yeah man same here,...hope you guys kick ass and look forward to hangin' out with you on the next East coast tour

Play loud be proud!

[rowenafair]

we're several shows in now - anyone have any reviews/reactions yet? a little bird told me they were working on "come and get it" - i do hope they put it in the set list, and down and dirty, maladjusted child, dont know about you - any set lists anyone???

[Bess]

ON THE NET

Guilty Pleasure: 60's Metal Pioneers Blue Cheer To Play L.A.

By Philthy Phil, 8-Foot Viking
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 @ 12:14 AM

With Sonic Medusa
OK, I'll admit, we don't usually tip you off to shows we think might be worth checking out, but this sounds like it could be fun.
Thanks to our hottie landlord (pictured...yeah that's really her. She's even got a back stage pass that if you magnify, it almost looks like it says "Motorhead") for letting us know her boyfriend's band, Sonic Medusa is opening up for 60's Psychodelic, stoner-rock, metal pioneers, Blue Cheer.
The show is February 5th at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles, and worth a check out, for the very least, to see what your Dad was listening to when he used to get laid regularly (by different women).
Click on the flyer to the right to learn more about Blue Cheer, and for those who already know...then you know I am doing more than just trying to make sure we don't get evicted the next time Junkman brings midget pornstars into the studio.
As for Sonic Medusa, if you like Motorhead, Judas Priest, Black Flag, Iron Maiden, High on Fire, Sabbath, then these guys could do it for you. Click on their link below to check out their MySpace.
There, I did it, kind of a favor, but just the same, something kind of cool, from an historic point of view.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proto-metal gods Blue Cheer are making a racket as if it were 1967 all over again
By Chris Parker
Published: January 31, 2008
Even as Haight was serving up a summer of love in 1967, something darker was brewing in the Bay. Not Altamont, which was still a couple of years away, but Blue Cheer — a thunderous blues act that delved into the shadowy corners of psychedelia rather than indulging the flowery, paisley beatitude of the Grateful Dead and their cohorts.

Blue Cheer, back in the day.
Where:
Rhythm Room
Details:
Blue Cheer, and Hands On Fire are scheduled to perform on Thursday, January 31.
Subject(s): Blue Cheer
When they formed in 1966, they were a six-piece. By the next year, they had been culled to a power trio — by most accounts, the loudest of their time. While based around 12-bar blues, the sound was thick and rolling, swathed in distortion and quaking bottom end, prone to grimy excursions teetering on the verge of breaking down before returning home. Out of the box, they scored a hit with their signature cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues," off their classic debut, Vincebus Eruptum.
"There was a saying around then, 'Kiss babies and eat flowers.' Blue Cheer's motto was 'Kiss flowers and eat babies," says singer/bassist Dickie Peterson. "According to the general consensus of San Francisco's psychedelic peace and love musicians, we were outcasts."
Inspired by the hard rock blues improvisations of Cream and Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer was among the pioneers of the American acid-rock movement, along with Iron Butterfly and other acts (The Count Five, The Seeds) that might have been lost were it not for the popularity of the Nuggets collection and periodic garage rock revivals during the past couple of decades. Yet Blue Cheer stands out among their peers for the primal throb and intensity of their shows. Sure, they were loud; they were the first band in the U.S. to employ Marshall amps, having them shipped over from Britain after hearing Hendrix use one.
"I always had guys come up to me and say, 'You can't do that with that amplifier.' See this knob here? Just turn it up to 10. It's that easy," Peterson recalls. "We were pretty sassy little shits."
There's an apocryphal tale that before one of their most famous shows — in 1968 at Detroit's Grande Ballroom, with the MC5 and the Stooges — a call went across Michigan for amplifiers. According to the story, the MC5 borrowed as many as they could to ensure they'd stack up against Blue Cheer, and proceeded to blow windows out in the back of the ballroom.
These days, Peterson's using Ampeg amps (guitarist Andrew "Duck" MacDonald uses old, tube-style Marshalls), but it gets just as loud. He recalls a show a few years ago in an Osaka, Japan, skyscraper.
"The low-end on these Ampegs was beautiful — it vibrated the foundation of the skyscraper we were in. The low-end was so intense that it shook the tubes right out of Duck's amplifier. The tubes fell out and just started breaking on the floor. Duck looked at me, at first like he was really angry, and I just started laughing and then he started laughing, and the audience started laughing," Peterson says. "It's like, if this isn't rock 'n' roll, what is?"
For Peterson, playing music will always be about the live performance. He, MacDonald, and drummer Paul Whaley still tour old school, cramming in the back of a van with their gear, because, according to him, "When you start getting away from that shit, you stop playing rock 'n' roll." It's a topic dear to his heart, and he echoes a familiar garage/punk ethos when he suggests their sound is "10 percent music, 90 percent attitude. It's how you deliver it."
Witnessing Blue Cheer live greatly enhances your opinion of them. There's a physicality to their thick-limbed boogie that probably can't be appreciated without surrendering the volume knob, and giving over to the slashing peals of guitar and the muscular rhythms.
"Our rhythm section has a lot of tension in it, because Paul's always playing the backbeat and I'm always shuffling. Normally, those two things don't go well together, but we manage to find a wormhole and make it work," Peterson says.
Though one is reminded of Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins when Peterson recites the hoary conceit about the audience being the fourth member of the band, it's hard to be too judgmental. Blue Cheer's been at it for 40 years; who's to say they didn't invent that cliché? Any suspicions to the contrary are erased when Peterson confirms that (other than the combustible drummers bit) they are Spinal Tap.
"I think they wrote that movie from us; somebody heard enough of our stories. We still get lost on our way to the stage. You think after 40 years of walking around in sub-basements and dressing rooms, you would have an instinct," Peterson says. "Nah, we get lost, man."
Because Peterson came of age in San Francisco during the '60s, you can pretty much take drug abuse for granted. After all, Blue Cheer took its name from a strain of Owsley Stanley's acid. Peterson lost his brother to heroin, and was addicted himself for a time. Many early Blue Cheer songs, such as "Out of Focus" and "Doctor Please," are inspired by youthful indulgence, and Peterson is forthright about it.
"'Doctor Please' was about romanticism," he explains. "Part of the reason I became a heroin addict was because I'd been told, 'If you take marijuana, you'll be slave to it all your life.' I found out real soon that was a lie. They said, 'War is good.' Vietnam showed me that was a lie. So when heroin and these other drugs popped up, we said, 'They already lied, why should we believe them now?' This is why I say don't lie to the kids: All you do is open them up for another screw-up later in their lives."
Proto-metal gods Blue Cheer are making a racket as if it were 1967 all over again
Continued from page 1
Published: January 31, 2008
Though he doesn't like recording ("I do it because that's what you do in this business"), the band's supporting their first album of new material in 15 years, What Doesn't Kill You. Surprisingly, the highlight track is the ballad (pretty much a Blue Cheer first) "Young Lions of Paradise," dedicated to many of his lost peers.
Where:
Rhythm Room
Details:
Blue Cheer, and Hands On Fire are scheduled to perform on Thursday, January 31.
Subject(s): Blue Cheer
"That's what this song is about — surviving it. I'm here to tell you there are more that didn't than did. The ones that aren't here, those are the 'Young Lions of Paradise.' Those are my friends that died young. I don't mean Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin, some screwy-ass, psychologically amputated rock star," he says. "I'm talking about the guys that struggled like the rest of us. I stood next to them and did the same drugs, while they dropped to the floor and I didn't."
While it may have its dark moments, Peterson protests that the blues Blue Cheer was founded on isn't about feeling bad. He cites jump blues, and almost sounds as though he's describing Van Halen. "It's the music I cut my teeth on," he explains. "It's about women, sex, dancing, fast cars, and being cool. It has nothing to be with being sad. Just the opposite — it's about having a good time and kicking out the jams, as the MC5 would say."
Let the kicking begin.

[rowenafaire]

thanks bessifer - is that philthy phil the one and same from motorhead i presume?

any firsthand reports from our gang?

ps. why do people insist on calling stan owsley owsley stanley?

[mr maltese]

a little bird told me they were working on "come and get it" -

I hope that ain't just someone spreading a rumour because I've been wanting them to do that song since they've been actively touring since 2006 - I also hopin' for Gypsyball & Sun Cycle (those are more of a long shot but not impossible to play) but Come and Get It would be the easiest song to play to try and quickly add to their setlist out of the three.

[FeedbackLourde]

Satisfaction wouldn't be too hard either. I guess Feathers wouldn't go over live . It would be nice if they did Ride With Me & Girl Next Door occasionally. Blue Steel Dues too. BUT alas, I am being redundant........

[rowenafair]

redund away, FBL, how else will they know what people would like to hear? it's a pretty big back catalog they carry round! mr maltese, that rumour came thru a friend from the band's own mouth so to speak -

[mr maltese]

well then I am especially looking forward when they hit the east coast in Spring,...to see and hear them do that song live will really
be the highlight of the show for me,....I picture them performing it at a slower tempo judging by the way they've been doing all their other classics,.....if they did Feathers I would picture them also doing that slower than the way they used to do it as well - good news to hear

[FeedbackLourde]

Well at the beginning of the last huge tour they did, about a year ago when Whaley first came back, Duck told me that they were planning on doing Come & Get It but didn't have time to rehearse it (they literally get less than a week to warm up for each tour). They do have a ton of stuff that doesn't get played that would be cool to hear. We've accepted the fact that certain songs will never be dropped from the set but it would be cool if they could alternate a handful of the others from gig to gig. The impression that the band has is that all the new fans only want to hear BC 1968 material despite the fact that they are buying up ALL their albums. Maybe if more of you would be more vocal they'd consider adding more old stuff (they are trying to work in more of the new album which is classic in and of itself). But beware....BC only does what BC wants to do.....

[Festooned Piglips]

Although they can never get it close to what the Master Himself did, how about "Peace Of Mind" and "Fruit And Iceburgs" for starters?

[mr maltese]

I agree they should do "Peace of Mind" and "Fruits and Icebergs"
I know that Paul Whaley said that he would do those songs,...I think Duck would do a great job playing those tunes

[Dew Dude]

If Dickie took sick the night of a show and they had Eli Brown aka Festooned Piglips on standby to replace Dickie on bass and vocals, I bet they would play those songs then, because FP would have gotten permission from his High Upness, thus avoiding the risk of being sued should they make a hoss`s ass of things.

[rowenafaire]

but who would do the whining - i mean singing?

[FeedbackLourde]

Paul can. He used to sing lead on Hoochie Coochie Man when he was in the Oxford Circle. And Duck has proven on the last album how good he can sing. Maybe those tunes would be better off if an actual Guitar God sang them:-)