Album Reviews

You gotta thank Sundazed for digging out and reissuing raw, vital stuff like this and not charging audiophile prices. For one thing, they wouldn’t be able to sell it for $30.00 and it wouldn’t be worth lavishing such care on it anyway. But that doesn’t mean stuff like this is any less worthy.

You gotta thank Sundazed for digging out and reissuing raw, vital stuff like this and not charging audiophile prices. For one thing, they wouldn’t be able to sell it for $30.00 and it wouldn’t be worth lavishing such care on it anyway. But that doesn’t mean stuff like this is any less worthy.

Side one of this album shows you that music is universal and regional at the same time. Listening today to the wah-wah infused, slow, heavy, sloppy rhythms churned by Blue Cheer you hear snippets of The Grateful Dead, Love, The Jefferson Airplane, Spirit and other west coast bands. The locale is immediately identifiable as is that some of this was recorded outdoors and some in, hence the album title. You shouldn’t have trouble telling which is which.

On side two when the band covers Booker T.’s “The Hunter” (also covered by Free), you’ll know you’re indoors and you’ll know the engineering takes a huge step forward with Tony May and Eddie Kramer at N.Y.’s finest studio tan parlors. You’ll hear Kramer’s Hendrix influence on “Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger,” which might be the most kick-ass thing on the whole record. If I was in a bar band I’d cop this and drive the patrons crazy.

You hear that as a place and you hear the totality as an unmistakable place in time. I don’t think kids today could study this and duplicate it no matter how hard they tried, not that they’d try. And it’s not because they couldn’t do it technically that they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t do it because they just aren’t from then. You can hear then in this, musically and sonically. You can hear the social turmoil, counter-culture heavings, the acid, the rebellion, the nervous energy. You can hear all of it in the whirlwind on side one.

Is it well recorded? No. Is it properly recorded? Yes. This is how it had to sound to be authentic. It’s loud, raw, bluesy, “heavy” and psychedelic at the same time. You’ll be swept up. And by the end you might swear Humble Pie and Blue Cheer were the same band.