Blue Cheer: Vincebus Eruptum
1968
| Philips Records |
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. Summertime Blues 2. Rock Me Baby 3. Doctor Please 4. Out of Focus 5. Parchment Farm 6. Second Time Around
California-based Blue Cheer's 1968 debut is often hailed as a proto-metal/punk landmark...Proto-punk for its amateurish recklessness and proto-metal for its skull-crunching heaviness...Listening to this, I get the opinion they were aiming to outweigh Cream in the blues-rock density department and thanks to the sheer, deafening volume ended up in MC5 territory...Although this record predates "Kick Out the Jams" by a full year...
I love it when 60's bands get all heavy....It works so well with the tones and recording technology of the time...Buzzy, bottom heavy guitars and extreme Stereo panning... When you toss this on you're greeted to a thunderous version of "Summertime Blues"...If you thought the Who's "Live at Leeds" take on this was the most ass-kickin, fire breathing version possible, then you haven't heard this yet...The guitars just melt your brain while the bass and drums pummel away in the background as Leigh Stephens screams in your goddamn ear... They might be right...There might not be a cure for this...
I can only guess how calamitous "Doctor Please" must have sounded in '68...All feedback, fuzz and relentless pleading for drugs... The lyrics to "Parchement Farm" seem pretty scandalous too, for the time:
"I'm done picking that cotton in a leather foot sack,
A goddamn shotgun at my back!
I been sitting over here on Parchment Farm,
All I did was shoot my arm..."
Hard to believe only three guys were able to kick up this much racket...So gnarly, noisy and glorious there's no way it's not going to live forever...As rock n' roll seems to grow safer and more mannered with each passing year, "Vincebus Eruptus" just keeps sounding better and better...
We're gonna need some stronger drugs, Mr. Nixon....Let's check out "Doctor Please" by Blue Cheer...
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