Just A little Bit first appeared on Blue Cheer's 2nd album of 1968 Outsideinside. It's their second song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at # 92. In 2007, the band re-recorded a more current version of "Just a Little Bit", and it was featured on the album What Doesn't Kill You.
Rush Drummer Neil Peart added the opening drum beat to Rush's version of "Summertime Blues,"
One of my favorite BC tunes and I frequently play it myself on my guitar and drums. (because it's fun as hell!).
While Vincibus Eruptum was cut in a simple straight forward forum with minimal overdubs, Outsideinside found the band embracing the possibilities of the recording studio.
Basically Blue Cheer decided to see how much polish they could add to their formula without the skull-crushing force of their live attack. This can not be said, however, of their 2007 version which finds them brutal as ever.
1968 version
2007 version
I feel a good sensation
And I been lifted child by your soul creation
Don't you stop just to look away
I want you to listen, child, to what I say
Don't you drift away too far
Out out of sad times, of just exactly where you are
'Cause it's just too much the way I feel
I just can't believe that it's so for real
You have a strange desire
When you walk across the ground
Then you set the Earth on fire
I feel a good sensation
And I've been lifted, child, by your soul creation
Don't you stop just to look away
I want you to listen, child, to what I say
C'mon, c'mon , won't you please, just a little bit
Their Biggest Hit and Finest Moment... Right Out of the Gate.
Blue Cheers first hit, a cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" form their debut album: Vincibus Eruptum (1968), cruised all the way up to No.14 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, their only such hit, and the album peaked at No.11 on the Billboard 200. In Canada, the song peaked at #3 in the RPM Magazine chart, and No.1 on the Dutch singles chart for one week in 1968.
The "Summertime Blues" single was backed with Dickie Petersons original song "Out of Focus."
While not as regularly played or recognized as much as The Who's version, it's hella more distorted. This Version was ranked #73 on the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" of Rolling Stone. This version omits the responses and instead, each band member does a quik "solo."
This was the first heavy metal song to ever make the pop charts, beating both "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and "Born to Be Wild" by months!
Geddy Lee and Eric Clapton, among many others, have cited Blue Cheer as the first metal band.
Also, if you listen, the main riff to "Foxy Lady" has been inserted in various parts of this version.
Rush drummer and Blue Cheer fan Neil Peart wrote the following in memory of singer/bassist Dicky Peterson who died after a battle with liver cancer on October 12th, 2009
In the summer of 1968 I was going on 16, living in a small city (St. Catharines, Ontario), and had been playing drums for a couple of years. I owned a small set of Rogers drums, a plastic AM radio that I would play along to, a tiny mono record player, and 12 L.P.'s. On the bookshelf in my room, I stacked those L.P.'s with the covers facing outward, rotating different ones to the front.
Both fans and haters of my future work with Rush would find those L.P.'s telling, and nod their heads or roll their eyes accordingly: The Who's My Generation, Happy Jack, and, The Who Sell Out; Are You Experienced? and Axis Bold as Love by the Jimi Hendrix Experience; the Greatful Dead's and Moby Grape's eponymous debuts; Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow; Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears; the first album by Traffic (called Reaping in a Canadian only variation, with the cover showing the band posing on a Massey Ferguson combine); and Vincibus Eruptum, the first album by "the worlds loudest band, " Blue Cheer.
L to R: Dickie, Leigh, Paul. 1968
Tiny articles in early rock magazines said Blue Cheer were so loud they had to record outdoors -- part of their seccond album, Outsideinside, was recorded on a San Francisco peer -- and the drummer, Paul Whaley, played so hard he had to wear golf gloves, connonades of drums, forests of hair, were managed by a former Hells Angel named Gut (who described the band as: "They the air into cottage cheese"), and they hated grown ups and rock critics alike. Of course I loved them!
Blue Cheer's version of "Summertime Blues" was a good sized hit that summer of '68, and their two albums that year, Vicibus Eruptum and Outsideinside, galvanized my friends an me. When TV Guide listed Blue Cheer as guests on Steve Alans late night TV show, I was wildly excited (rock bands on TV were rare in those days), I tuned in to watch what I remember as a comicdal period-peice: Steve Allen, in his black suit and tie, thick rimmed glasses, and Brylcreemed hairdo, sitting at his desk and saying something like, "the loud noise you are hearing is just the hum of the amplifiers." Then "Blue Cheer -- run for your lives!"
Cut to a wall of Marshals, a massive set of Rogers drums, and three long haired guys crashing into "Summertime Blues." I had our family TV turned down low, trying not to disturb Mom and Dad, but the speaker was still overwhelmed with static and distortion. Drummer Paul Whaley thrased at the symbols with both arms, Leigh Stephens was a dark haired menace grinding out thick guitar riffs, and Dickie Peterson wailed through a pyramid of blond hair with his bass guitar hung low.
Dickie 1974
I loved those first two Blue Cheer albums, and even the third, New! Improved!, though it was a major departure (not as loud). In 2004, my band mates and I celebrated our thirteenth anniversary by recording an album of covers, Feedback, to pay tribute to our early influences. We combined The Who's and Blue Cheer's versions of "Summertime Blues" and it ended with me playing the innovative drum pattern from Blue Cheers "Just a Little Bit" from Outsideinside, which I had never forgotten.
So Blue Cheer made an enduring impression on this once young drummer, and definitely played their part in shaping Rush's beginnings -- a loud power trio with a fortress of amps, cannonades of drums, and a bass players high voice trying to pierce the darkness, That would be my bandmate, Geddy, who remarked that Blue Cheer might well have been the first heavy metal band.
Dickie Peterson was present at the creation -- stood at the roaring heart of the creation, a primal scream through wild hair, bass hung low, in an aural apocalypse of defiant energy. His music left deafening echos in a thousand other bands in the coming decades, thrilling some, angering others, and disturbing everything -- like art is supposed to do.
A later anthology of Blue Cheer was hilariously titled: Louder Than God, and whever your beliefs, it is certain that death, alas, is louder than God. Given a little ironic licence, pehaps it becomes a fitting epitaph for Dickie Peterson.
Because it sure would look cool chiseled in granite...
(from Rolling Stone)
I was lucky enough to catch Blue Cheer in 2008 when they came through Minnesota to a small venue in Minneapolis for the "What Doesn't Kill You" tour. I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Dickie, who was very eager to answer questions and shoot the shit about music with a fan. I only wish I had this blog at the time. It would have been a fine excuse to sit with the man and interview him. -Moth
To describe Blue Cheer, the first word that comes to mind is... LOUD! It was said by the bands manager Gut, (a one time Hells Angel) that the bands sonic blast could "turn the air into cottage cheese." The classic power trio lineup of guitar, bass, and drums is more than capable of knocking down a house, as we easily find out on their debut L.P. "Vincibus Eruptum" released in 1968.
Blue Cheer have been cited by many as the worlds first heavy metal band. That's true to some extent, perhaps. Iron Butterfly were already on the scene, with Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk right around the corner, but none of them were as single (or simple) minded as the bludgeoning attack that was Blue Cheer. In a blur of Roger Corman films, amphetamines, LSD, long hair, loud guitars and teen lust, the roots of metal, grunge, and stoner rock can all be found on the same album.
Though the shared a home base (San Francisco) and pharmacist (Owsley Stanley) with the Greatful Dead, their musical approach was quite different. Singer/bassist Dickie Peterson, drummer Paul Whaley, and guitar player Leigh Stephens made one HELL of a noise, while producer Abe 'Voco'
Kesh found the groups deafeningly definitive sound. The album is split between three cover songs and three originals written by Dickie Peterson. Of those originals, 'Out of Focus' is a classic. With a funky guitar riff leading the way, the song rides a heavy groove. The tone of the guitar alone defines the Blue Cheer sound -- a Big Muff fuzz box plugged into a Marshal amp and cranked up loud. The circular riff of the song is hypnotic and ranks as one of the bands finest efforts.
Their classic 'Parchment Farm' (a cover of Mose Allison's 'Parchment Farm') is a glorious case of them taking simple blues and transforming it into their own monster. It's a driving rocker that holds the pedal to the metal. 'Doctor Please' is a rollicking number about Petersons first time delving into the world of LSD. As Owsley states on the back of the cover: "subtle color of the mind -- BLUE, call the figure a soul -- CHEER."
The band managed to have a hit single amidst all the fuzz going on. Their cover of Eddie Cochran's classic 'Summertime Blues' lit up AM radio in 1968 and climbed the Billboard charts to number 14. It would be the bands sole hit single. It is the definitive Blue Cheer song in so many ways. They capture the angst and raw teen emotion of the Cochran original, but, like some crazy Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth vehicle it's all souped up and driving way out of control, It certaily didn't sound like anythin topping the charts, but in those times, it really was a stylistic free for all that somehow made sense.
Check out this whacky radio promo for the album!!!
