Mark Lager’s Summer Vinyl: Blue Cheer – Outsideinside (1968)

“As a young teenager, Blue Cheer scared me because older teenagers told me that a dog at a Blue Cheer concert dropped dead from the sheer volume of their amplification! Hell, their guitarist only left the group when he went deaf!” exclaimed Julian Cope in his appreciation of the band.

“The only raucous, LOUD and twisted exercise released in-between the advent of Hendrix and the ascension of the Stooges, side one of this wayward, careening and LSD-train wrecked album contains the most out of control power trio-ing EVER… everything played so loud it explodes all over the place like lighting a coffee can full of roman candles with a stream of flaming lighter fluid. Which is how I plan to spend every Fourth of July from now on: reveling in the glorious, howling fury that is Outsideinside,” another exclamation from the Head Heritage site, this time from the Seth Man. (Highly recommend reading his review!)

Both Cope and the Seth Man hit the nail on the head: Blue Cheer is arguably one of the loudest bands in rock’n’roll history and Outsideinside is the band at their psychedelic peak. Outsideinside really is a 4th of July soundtrack – a bag of greasy potato chips, a big bottle of beer, firecrackers, mushrooms, and strong weed.

The album artwork (by a Hell’s Angel nicknamed Arab) is adorned by bizarre eccentricities, especially if you are tripping – drummer Paul Whaley perched on a mushroom, on his right side the greenish, yellowish land is forming an alligator or crocodile mouth and a hand reaches out of the sand to a shell by the seashore, below an elephant flower pitcher and a group of five bearded men with oversized heads carrying an item and running, while on his left side is an eyeball flower atop a tendril and an androgynous Aquarian pouring people floating inside bubbles, while below are more mushrooms on the soil, two naked women standing in the water and another naked woman crawling on the bank, and a bearded, dark-haired man crouching next to Arab’s signature and the date of this psychedelic painting (Spring 68). On the back side of the album sleeve are guitarist Leigh Stephens and bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson and below them a long spoon with a tongue inside, while they are surrounded by tiny mushroom houses with faces, ladders, and windows, on the left side of the two of them, there is a bigger mushroom house with a tongue on its roof and a person at the top of a long ladder and a gigantic mushroom with a camel’s eyelids and face. There is also what appears to be a desert, mountains in the background, a multicolored face melting beneath a tree with birds and flowers, and in the farthest left corner of the sleeve a tiny male figure surrounded by nude female figures.

This phantasmagoria shows how the band’s drug use had increased between their debut Vincebus Eruptum (recorded in 1967, released in 1968) and Outsideinside, recorded during pauses in their 1968 summer tour. The album cover (and the tracks) on Vincebus Eruptum were simpler compared to Outsideinside. The album’s cover had psychedelic lettering with a purple photo of the three band members. The album had only six songs, half of them blues covers and the other half originals. The album was recorded at Amigo Studios in Hollywood, California. In contrast, Outsideinside had only two covers, the other seven songs were originals. The band had kicked off their career in California. Although bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson was a Midwesterner (born in Grand Forks, North Dakota), he had moved out west years before, while drummer Paul Whaley and guitarist Leigh Stephens were both born and raised in California. The biggest irony is that the band was based in San Francisco. The only thing Blue Cheer shared in common with the other bands of that era was the drugs. They took their name from Owsley Stanley’s acid batch (itself nicknamed after a brand of laundry detergent), but their crew (their manager was Allan “Gut” Terk of the Hell’s Angels) and their sound were too radical for the “Summer of Love”.

In fact, by the time they began recording their second album, the band was too loud for studios. In May 1968, they initially planned to record in a local California studio, as they had with their debut. They were too noisy for Pacific Recorders in San Mateo so the only result was a brief fiery instrumental “Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger“. The band continued playing shows alongside Country Joe and the Fish, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Quicksilver Messenger Service, etc. After a concert at the end of May (Fillmore East), the band had a break for two weeks. They recorded two covers, the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” at A&R and Booker T.’s “The Hunter”, made famous by Albert King, at Olmstead, and their own original song “Babylon” at Record Plant -where Jimi Hendrix was recording Electric Ladyland during this same time.

Blue Cheer, desperate for freedom and independence, for loudness, sick of studio rules and standards, said to themselves- “Fuck the studios, let’s record the rest of this album outside!”

In early June 1968, while they were still in New York, the band booked the dock on Hudson Bay-Pier 57. Journalist Rick Bolsom, who was there for this momentous occasion, described the band’s setup (“six Marshall amp stacks, 12 speakers, a double set of drums”), the effect their high volume had on the city (“the whole waterfront of New York came to a rather abrupt stop in that first 30 seconds”), and the track being recorded (“one hour, two broken guitar strings, and a broken drumstick later, the group stopped for a smoke, and two full hours after that, producer Abe Kesh said ‘yeahhh,’ and “Just a Little Bit” was in the can”). The band recorded “Come and Get It” at Pier 57 too.

The band continued on their relentless summer tour, playing shows alongside Alice Cooper, MC5, the Stooges. They were back in California and had another break, in early July, for roughly a week, before a concert at the Fillmore West. Blue Cheer decamped for Gate Five in Sausalito – a commune of freaks, hippies, outcasts, vagabonds, vagrants. Facing another body of water on another dock (Sausalito has a history of houseboats), Blue Cheer blasted through two more tracks – “Feathers From Your Tree” and “Gypsy Ball“, the former became the opening track (the album’s most powerful song!) and the latter with its lyrics about a wizard must have been heard by Black Sabbath when they recorded “The Wizard” for their famous self-titled debut over a year later. Blue Cheer should be just as acclaimed and acknowledged as Black Sabbath in the formation of heavy metal and stoner rock. Side One of Outsideinside is the proof!

Blue Cheer finally recorded the last and most psychedelic song for Outsideinside during a July sojourn at the scenic Muir Beach – “Sun Cycle“. Although oddly sequenced at track two, this song, more than any other on the album, showed just how dynamic the band was, back and forth between a hallucinatory haze and mysterious shadows – this song is a quintessential stoner’s summertime trip.

Even though side two of the record is not something special, the five original songs that Blue Cheer recorded at outdoors locations on side one are savage, scorching, tremendous, tumultuous tracks that have made Outsideinside a continued influence on bands such as Kyuss, Monster Magnet, and many others.

by Mark Lager