not new music tuesdays

Blue Cheer - Outsideinside (1969, Phillips)

I'd been planning to do a Blue Cheer record for the past few weeks; this fucking heat always makes me think of 'Summertime Blues.' After seeing the Monday Morning Rock video this week I'm guessing the weather has the same effect on Stonedranger, but they say that great minds think alike.

Blue Cheer was uncharacteristically heavy for a late 60s San Francisco band, often drawing inevitable comparisons to other 'power trios' (I HATE that term) like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. While I'm all down for groups not sounding like the Dead or Jefferson fucking Airplane, I really wish they didn't have a color in the name of the band. I know everyone was on acid or whatever, but was all that 'everything's colorful' shit really necessary? Did hippies really not understand why people hated them?

Both Outsideinside and their debut, 1968's Vincebus Eruptum, are fabulous records and there is rarely a month that goes by that I don't listen to one or both of them. I am unfamiliar with their later records that were released after the departure of guitarist Leigh Stephens, but I can say that I'm not a huge fan of his replacement Randy Holden's mega rare 1969 album Population II.