[.ca] Outsideinside

The birth of Heavy Metal !!:
Luckilly,I was a teen in the 60's and when I first heard on the radio 'Just a little' realy couldn't believe it ! I was a fan of all that hardrock staff coming out those days like Hendrix,Cream,Moby Grape,but this one was a break-through, many years ahead! I don't agree with the reviewer saying that they were one of the pioneers of Heavy Metal. These guys invented heavy metal.The music in this disc has a primitive sound not compared to any other heavy group that followed their roots.It is a mix of heavy rock with psychedelia. A MUST to have, if your a fan of this kind.

The Dawn of Heavy Metal:
Blue Cheer is one of the most underrated rock groups of the sixties. You can clearly hear on "Outsideinside", that Blue Cheer was one of the pioneers of heavy metal. I understood that from the first song "Feathers in Your Tree." Personal favorites are the first five songs on the Album and "Babylon". I did not care for the Blue Cheer cover songs. Otherwise the album is an all out rocker. Unabashedly,unappologetically and gleefully, Blue Cheer turns up those Marshall amps and play till their fingers bleed. The bass and drums are a perfect complement to the lead guitar. I personally have no interest on what illegal substances the band was on at the time, only the finished product. I clearly hear Black Sabbath albums to come.

One of a kind:
Absolutely, without a doubt, the ultimate psychedelic album of all time. My work here is done.

I guess you had to be there . . .:
First off, in any kind of real terms, this thing is horrible. They can hardly play. But, step back with me into the acid-soaked days of the late 60's and this was a crucially important album to many. Blue Cheer was (initially) a power trio of three skinny kids who used noise to build a rep. Gut, a former Hell's Angel and briefly their manager, said once that they played so loud they turned the air into cottage cheese. A friend of mine saw them play in Frisco and counted 24 Marshall pilot lights behind them. I don't know why "Vincibus" gets first billing, 90% of it is absolute crud. Leigh Stevens couldn't play a lick, and his "solos" on that album just consist of a lot of noodling around. The only reason it's remembered at all is for "Summertime Blues", and poor old Dickie Peterson is still milking that cow, heading the latest incarnation of a band that aligned with Delaney and Bonny for awhile - what a weird history! But "OutsideInside" was a special album. Stevens backs off and concentrates on power chords, Dickie bellows out the lyrics in his best voice (before he destroyed his vocal chords) and the songs are much better thought out. Well, they had more experience by then, they were just kids after all. But that's not why the album resonated at the time. No, it was the acid experience, all the way. The cover makes it clear what they're all about, and that's even echoed on the inside, an inconic b & w picture of the rail-thin long-haired threesome in tight bell bottoms dwarfed in front a mass of double stacks, with Whaley's sticks making acid trails through the air. This was one of those albums that sounded absolutely magical on acid (and of course one that sounded completely stupid straight). It wasn't the la-la-la of something like "It's a Beautiful Day" or other trip standards of the time, no, this was the agro side of acid, the "I can stand more micrograms than you" attitude. If you were in that crowd and had that mindset about acid, then this album was central to the experience, played over and over again very loud. It created its own special world that existed only between the covers of this album, and the band shared that with you, sitting on their toadstools with acid smiles. This was music meant to overwhelm, to dominate and roar. There was a real message here of . . . I don't know what, difficult to explain . . . mastery somehow, something like that. You felt invincible with a head full of acid and this blasting through the speakers. Powerful stuff at the time, probably completely useless now, except to trigger memories . . . for good or ill.

Blue Cheer's finest:
This is the greatest album these guys put together. I wish I had a time machine so I could go see them.

• Feathers from Your Tree
• Sun Cycle
• Just a Little Bit
• Gypsy Ball
• Come and Get It
• (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
• Hunter
• Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger
• Babylon