The Power of Three

For some reason, 3-piece bands are quite popular, and have been for some time.  Usually – though not always - the bassist is also the singer.  They’re well done enough to put out enough power to be competitive with more traditional 4 and 5 piece bands, but I don’t think of them as being MORE powerful.

 Jimi Hendrix Experience.  Active from 1966 to 1969. Noel Redding played bass, Mitch Mitchell played the drums, and Jimi sang and … played guitar.  Fairly well, in fact.  Remarkably, they only have 3 studio albums, Are You Experienced?, Electric Ladyland, and Axis: Bold As Love.  Hendrix was one of those rare persons whose skill at guitar was light years more advanced, in terms of intuitive knowledge, beyond anyone else.

 Blue Cheer.  I did a previous blog on this band.  They came out around the same time as Jimi Hendrix and Cream (1967), from San Francisco; I think of them as part of that scene, but to this date all the attention goes to the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, with BC being almost completely ignored, an unwanted stepchild or black sheep, which is a shame, because they are definitely MUCH heavier than the others, but it wasn’t – as the others claim – using excessive volume as a crutch for poor talent.   The classic lineup was Dickie Peterson (bass/vocals), Leigh Stephens (guitar), and Paul Whaley (drums).  Stephens retired long ago, so now Duck McDonald is the guitarist – and Dickie IS Blue Cheer.  BC’s claim to fame is their cover of Eddie Cochran’s popular “Summertime Blues” – which they still play in concert.

 Cream.  Also a contemporary (1966-68): Eric Clapton (guitar/vocals), Jack Bruce (bass/vocals), and Ginger Baker (drums).  “Crossroads”, “Sunshine of Your Love”, “White Room”, “Badge”, “Born Under A Bad Sign”, and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” are the top songs.  Clapton went on to do Blind Faith, Derek & The Dominos, and then his solo career.  While he’s definitely a good guitarist, I think he’s overrated; I also consider his solo material a bit too commercial, ironic given he quit the Yardbirds to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers because he considered the YBs were getting too commercial (!). 

 Mountain.  Leslie West’s band, along with Corky Laing (drums) and Felix Pappalardi (Bass).  They were at Woodstock.  West is a big guy – not a bad guitar player, but it’s hard to get past his bulk and appreciate his skill (probably best to LISTEN to him rather than WATCH him).  His most famous song was “Mississippi Queen”.  We saw them open up for Deep Purple in 1985 (Perfect Strangers tour) and he forgot the words to “Nantucket Sleighride”, which didn’t impress us. 

 Emerson, Lake & Palmer.  Keith Emerson (gonzo keyboardist), Greg Lake (bassist/singer – formerly with King Crimson) and Carl Palmer (drummer) – though Cozy Powell stepped in briefly in the mid-80s.  We saw them play at the Cap Center in 1986, but I can’t remember anything.  I’ve heard Pictures at an Exhibition, but didn’t like it – it was too much like King Crimson without a guitarist.  But the first album (self-titled) and Tarkus (2nd album) are both excellent.

 King Crimson.  They qualify only for the Red album, which they didn’t even tour: Robert Fripp (of course) (guitar), John Wetton (bass/vocals) and Bill Bruford (drums).  As I noted in my lengthy KC blog, Red was the pinnacle of a three-album streak including Larks’ Tongues in Aspic and Starless.  Thankfully they did play “Red” on their most recent tour.  And around the time of Thrak (1995), KC was actually a “double trio”: Fripp and Belew on guitar, Trey Gunn and Tony Levin on bass/stick, and Pat Mastelotto and Bill Bruford on drums.

 Grand Funk Railroad.  Mark Farner (guitar/vocals), Mel Schacter (bass), and Don Brewer (drums/vocals), from Flint, Michigan and associated with Terry Knight.  They had their peak in the 70s.  I never liked their top hit, “We’re An American Band”; they had so much better songs, “Walk Like A Man”, “Sin’s A Good Man’s Brother”, “Heartbreaker”, “Mean Mistreater” and “Can’t Take Too Long”.  Supposedly the press hated GFR, even if Homer Simpson was a huge fan. 

 Rush.  From Canada, starting in 1974, and with the same lineup since Neil Peart (drums) replaced John Rutsey after the first album.  Alex Lifeson (guitar) and Geddy Lee (bass/vocals) are the other two.  Lee’s voice took some time to get used to.  My introduction was Moving Pictures and “Tom Sawyer”.  Geddy doubles up on keyboards, filling out the sound a little more.  They are still active, and featured in “I Love You, Man”. 

 Triumph.  Also from Canada, coming out in the mid-70s, and accused of being Rush clones, though their sound is much heavier and more pop-oriented – far closer to Blue Oyster Cult than Rush (though with none of BOC’s quirky and obscure references).  Rik Emmitt (guitar/vocals), Gil Moore (drums/vocals) and Mike Levine (bass).  We saw Triumph at the Patriot Center on Halloween, 1986, with Yngwie Malmsteen opening up – front row seats.  They broke up in 1988, but Rik Emmitt still tours and plays Triumph material. 

 Budgie.  From Wales, England, starting off in the early 70s with Burke Shelley (vocals/bass), Tony Bourge (guitar), and various drummers, most consistently Steve Williams.  Shelley’s voice is somewhat like Geddy Lee’s.  The first four albums were heavy, even to the point of having early Black Sabbath producer Rodger Bain producing them, but with the strangest song titles: “She’s As Hot As A Docker’s Armpit” and “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman”, topping Frank Zappa and Blue Oyster Cult.  The later three of seven albums with Tony Bourge (Bandolier, If I Were Britannia I’d Waive the Rules, and Impeckable) have a snappier, jazzier feel, even vaguely bossa nova, before Bourge left – to be replaced by John Thomas, at which point (1980) they turned into a New Wave of British Heavy Metal Band.  Metallica resurrected their career by covering “Crash Course in Brain Surgery” (on the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP) and “Breadfan”.

 Motorhead.  Fresh from Hawkwind’s ill-advised sacking of him in 1975, Lemmy (bassist/vocalist) lost no time in forming this band.  The classic lineup, which recorded Ace of Spades in 1980, was Lemmy, “Fast” Eddie Clarke (guitar – I always thought he looked like Ritchie Blackmore, even to the point of playing Stratocasters) and “Philty Animal” Taylor (drums).  For one album, Another Perfect Day, the band had Thin Lizzy’s Brian Robertson, but that lasted almost no time.  They also had Pete Gill (Saxon) for some time as well.   Briefly Motorhead had two guitarists, Wurzel and Phil Campbell, but are back to a trio format with just Campbell.  All their albums sound the same to me, but they do rock.  Lemmy is certainly one of the more colorful characters in hard rock.

 Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble.  If I included Hendrix here, SRV belongs here too.  His bassist was Tommy Shannon (who used to play with Johnny Winter), his drummer was Chris Layton.  The Texas blues guitarist died in a helicopter crash in 1990.  He was the younger brother of Jimmy Vaughan, guitarist in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.  His major hits were “Pride & Joy”. “The Sky Is Crying”, and his cover of Jimi Hendrix’ “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)”. 

 The Police.  I’ve never been a fan of this band, though I do like “Wrapped Around Your Finger”.  Sting (Gordon Sumner) (bass/vocals), Andy Summers (guitar), and Stuart Copeland (drums).  In high school they were the band to see, but I passed on the Synchronicity Tour.  I liked Sting in “Dune” as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.  Rik Emmett (as noted above) put it well, commenting on Andy Summers: “he was very much a Telecaster w/chorus kind of guitarist, and my preference was Les Paul through a Marshall.”  The Edge has a similar light and fluffy touch on the guitar – and they both make Mark Knopfler sound like Pete Townshend.

 Nirvana.  I’ve noted them already in my grunge blog: Kurt Cobain (guitar/vocals), Krist Novoselic (bass) and Dave Grohl (drums).  Grohl did a spell in the Queens of the Stone Age as well as his own band Foo Fighters.

Bootlegs

“I bought a Deep Purple bootleg in Germany and it cost me a fiver, so they’re making money out of me.”  Roger Glover.

 I saw the Grateful Dead at the Verizon Center in DC on April 14, 2009.  Their website indicates that the band will be recording the show to be made available as a download thereafter, making taping a Dead show, formerly ubiquitous, now obsolete.  Of course with the Dead, “bootleg” is almost redundant.  The amount of live material out there in various forms far exceeds the official studio recordings.  Since so much of the music they play live is improvised and not to be found on any studio album – including many covers – really the studio albums are just the tip of the iceberg.

 Let’s face it: for the die hard fans (the “1%-ers” as the Blue Cheer crowd calls themselves), the unattainable ideal is that literally every single concert the band has ever done, from university campuses, outdoor festivals, arenas, clubs, Woodstock, Altamont, etc. should be recorded, no matter how poorly the band was playing, or how bad the acoustics, or how Jerry was feeling that night, etc.  The mark of a die hard fan is to be able to identify “off nights” vs. “great shows” – but I always got the impression that Garcia was much harder on himself and his bandmates (e.g. his story of throwing Phil Lesh down the stairs for a performance which ended up on Anthem of the Sun) than the fans.  I came into the Dead far too late to consider myself any sort of expert on this, or even a Deadhead.  Ok, drifting here.  In theory you’d want to get all the shows, particularly for this band which plays so much which is not on albums.

 The quality of bootlegs varies considerably.  In fact, for a long time I resisted them for that reason.  I had several Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin bootlegs I ignored because the sound quality was so atrocious.  I eventually listened to them, and found that after a few minutes my brain filters out the noise and leaves me listening to the music, but it takes some time to get used to.

 King Crimson decided to co-opt the bootleg industry by releasing as many live recordings as they could lay their hands on, through their “King Crimson Collector Club” series, which is now up to 40 releases.  The sound quality varies, as it always does on bootlegs, but you hear many songs as works-in-progress, played before the albums they were released on as studio tracks – or a track may be listed under another name. 

 No matter how many live albums a band puts out, they will never put out enough to satisfy the fans.  So what draws us to bootlegs?

 1.  Songs which aren’t on any studio album.  The Grateful Dead and King Crimson are notorious for this.

 2.  Covers which don’t show up on studio albums.  I’m always intrigued to hear a famous band – with more than enough material of their own - play covers and put their own mark on the song.  Again, early on, King Crimson would play Holst’s “Mars”, but it’s never shown up on any studio album they’ve done.  Likewise “Sucking My Love”, my favorite Diamond Head song, only appears in Metallica format in a bootleg of the same name. 

 3.  Rare songs that the band almost never plays live.  “Trapped Under Ice” (Metallica) and “Into the Fire” (Deep Purple) only show up on bootlegs; and “Wheels of Confusion” (Black Sabbath) only shows up on the Hollywood Bowl bootleg. In some cases the bootleg may be of the ONLY show at which a song was ever played live.  For the Grateful Dead, the so-called “DeadBase” is the manual to determine which song was played when and where, if ever.

 4.  Guest stars.  At the Verizon Center, Tipper Gore was playing drums with the Dead.  I have a bootleg of the Beach Boys playing with the Dead, which includes “I Get Around” and “Good Vibrations” (Fillmore East 4/27/71). 

 5.  Weird stuff.  On a King Crimson bootleg, the band goes off on a brief tribute to Monty Python (mimicking the inarticulate grunting lowlives who periodically show up in “Flying Circus” episodes).  In another one, Robert Fripp apologizes to “those of you whose conversations we’re interrupting.” 

 Maybe deliberate attempts at humor don’t qualify as “weird stuff”, but certainly they add some charm and value to the bootlegs, and further explain the attraction fans have for this part of music. 

 Sources.  In the old days, it was trading tapes.  Sometimes we went into Greenwich Village in New York City, where we could find bootlegs on tape and CD – including “Rockin’ in the Parlour”/”Can I Sit Next To You Girl”, the AC/DC single with Dave Evans – the singer before Bon Scott - on vocals.  Eventually the Internet came along, which dramatically improved the ability to trade MP3s, through LimeWire, Bearshare, and of course, Napster.  [Nowadays, 2021, it’s eBay where I find them.]  Eventually bands themselves (e.g. King Crimson and Pearl Jam) jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak, and began selling music directly to the fans.

Stoner Rock 101

I suppose it started with Hawkwind…Pink Floyd….Blue Cheer…maybe even Captain Beyond. Up until the early 90s, heavy metal was alive and well, as we could see in “Heavy Metal Parking Lot”. Then Nirvana came around and ruined it all with grunge (see my grunge blog). Now we have “nu-metal”, Good Charlotte, A Simple Plan, Disturbed, etc. all the dazzlingly brilliant and original (ha!) bands on the Ozzfest. Hold on, where’s the real metal? And I don’t mean Manowar….


I’m talking about bands that know, understand, and live for riffs, guitars, guitar solos, old-school, old-style banging around like …Black Sabbath, who are probably the most important influence to many of these bands. But despite the name, you don’t have to smoke dope, or get stoned, to listen to this or enjoy it, although obviously many of these bands are probably chemically inspired in different ways, to various degrees. For some reason many of the bands come from California. Oddly, there’s little jamming and not much psychedelic (except for Gas Giant) – just straightforward heavy guitars and good fun.


So what passes for real metal these days is best known as “stoner rock” and will not be found opening for Ozzy or Black Sabbath. Maybe just as well, because it means we can see these bands at local clubs for $20 a ticket and maybe even meet the band members after the show. Who are these bands? Here are a few of the most important (i.e. these are not only the ones I’m most familiar with, but who are also the most popular and tour the most – with the exception of sHEavy, mentioned below - and the list is by no means exhaustive):


Kyuss. They are considered the first stoner rock band, if you leave out Hawkwind and Black Sabbath (precursor bands). I actually saw them in concert years ago and can’t remember a thing. D’oh!


Queens of the Stone Age. Derivative of Kyuss thanks to Josh Homme. Despite the name, none of the band members are female. This is one of these more original bands with its own sound that’s hard to describe, but it’s definitely heavy and definitely different. My favorite album is Rated R. I’ve been able to see them a few times, including with Dave Grohl of Nirvana on drums (Songs for the Deaf tour).


Fu Manchu. If Black Sabbath were surfers and into vans, cars, etc. you’d have Fu Manchu. Scott Hill is a bit smarter, and has a better voice, than Ozzy. IMHO, their best album is King of the Road. This is the band of these that I’ve probably seen the most.


Nebula. A three-piece that used to be ¾ of Fu Manchu, with Scott Hill being the 4^th who remained the core of Fu Manchu. Nebula sound almost the same, though with a more spacey riffing and losing the vans & surfing themes.


Monster Magnet. From New Jersey, and led by Dave Wyndorf, the closest thing to a rock personality that stoner rock has. They have several albums and are heavily influenced by Hawkwind – they even covered “Brainstorm” and “The Right Stuff.”


Atomic Bitchwax. This started out as a side project of Monster Magnet guitarist Ed Mundell, but now has a life of its own with replacement guitarist Finn Ryan, who looks like a blond version of Jason Lee. More riff-oriented than Monster Magnet; my favorite song is (surprise, surprise) “Black Trans Am.” They even cover Deep Purple’s “Maybe I’m A Leo.” I got to meet the band in Baltimore and talk to Chris Koznik, the bassist/singer.


Electric Wizard. From England, EW tune the guitars down to C and really, really drone on. Their album Dopethrone should be a dead giveaway (wizard w/bong) as to their inclinations. Imagine Black Sabbath slowed down half speed…and you have Electric Wizard.


Acid King. Now…substitute a female singer in EW and you have….Acid King. Pretty much the same deal. They do an excellent cover of BTO’s “Not Fragile.”


sHeavy. Of all these bands, sHeavy have by far the closest sound to Black Sabbath, thanks to the singer, Steve Hennessy, who does a dead on Ozzy impression. For some reason, this Canadian band doesn’t tour. I finally saw the DVD that comes with their latest album, The Machine That Won The War, and could see why: half the band (aside from Hennessy, who looks like he belongs in a band) look like they have day jobs, wife & kids, etc. and can’t go off on a money-losing tour of Canada or the US. Too bad, as they are damn good.


Fireball Ministry. These guys sound like 70’s Black Sabbath with 90’s-era Ozzy singing.


Pentagram. The DC area’s Black Sabbath. Remarkably, they’ve been around since the 70s yet only put out an album until the 80s. The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling, though their drummer, Joey Hasselvander, recently played drums for Blue Cheer, and I found out that Liebling was at the Blue Cheer show I saw at Krug’s Place in Frederick, Maryland (see the shot of me and Dickie Peterson on my Yahoo 360 album).


The Suplecs. A trio from New Orleans. Fortunately they’ve survived Katrina, but I haven’t seen them tour around this area yet. “Cities of the Dead” is my favorite song, and they do a knockout cover of the Beatles’ “She’s So Heavy.”


Gas Giant. These guys are from Denmark, not to be confused with an Arizona band called the Gas Giants. They have two albums, Mana and Pleasant Journey in Heavy Tunes, both of which are fantastic. They actually have some pretty psychedelic stuff going on, more so than even Hawkwind these days.


Orange Goblin. This was one of the first of these bands I heard, and I got to see them play in Baltimore. Pretty damn good. They are one of the more Sabbath-oriented groups, though the earlier material from the first three albums, Frequencies from Planet Ten, Time Travelling Blues, and The Big Black, are the trippiest.


Lowrider. Teleport Orange Goblin from England to Sweden and you have…Lowrider.


Valkyrie &The Sword. For some reason I put these two together and can’t pull them apart in my mind. They both sound the same. I suppose it’s because The Sword evoke a lot of Norse mythology, which matches up with the name of Valkyrie. They should definitely tour together.


Wolfmother. This new band from Australia gets lumped in with these other bands. They’ve been compared to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, but I hear more Grand Funk Railroad – but I seem to be the only one making that connection.


Even within this narrowly limited genre of rock music, there is much variety, but in addition to cool riffs, they share a remarkable talent for cool album covers, as you can see.

Blue Cheer

I saw this band for the second time on Tuesday night at the Black Cat, a club on 14^th Street in downtown DC.  A quality set, fantastic jamming, as I can expect from this band – including extremely loud volume.  I haven’t been disappointed by anything they’ve released or any show I’ve seen.

Intro.  This is a band my friend Ken turned me on to years ago.  He started collecting albums while we were still at University of Maryland, College Park; he managed to get me into them a few years after graduation, about the time I was in law school (early 90s).   I started off with The Beast Is Back, a comeback album from 1985, followed that with the compilation Good Times Are So Hard To Find, and then managed to get all six original studio albums on CD in short enough time to annoy Ken.  Of course, he’s now hanging out with the band on a regular basis, so he’s clearly not complaining anymore.

Style.  They started out as a loud, aggressive rock band, out of the 1967 San Francisco music scene, though shunned and ignored by the mainstream – which focuses on the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and other more aural-friendly acts.  If there was one thing early Blue Cheer was notorious for, it was being LOUD (“Louder Than God”), one of the first bands to line the back of their stages with a wall of Marshall stacks, cranked up to maximum volume.  “They turn the air into cottage cheese,” their Hell’s Angel manager Gut was reported to have claimed.  Iron Butterfly, often compared to Blue Cheer, have noted that they consider Blue Cheer “more of a vexation than an inspiration,” and it seems to the extent they get any attention at all, 80% of it is badmouthing, writing them off as obnoxious noise, using an excess of volume to conceal a lack of talent.  I have to disagree with this blanket assessment.

            Unfortunately, after three albums of fairly original material, they drifted off into commercial oblivion for the second three albums before disbanding in 1971.  Their last album of this era, Oh! Pleasant Hope, reads like a cover of each of the most popular bands at the time.  Not bad (I really like this album), just not original.

            When they reformed in 1985 with Dickie Peterson, Paul Whaley, and Tony Rainier for The Beast Is Back, the distortion was back on, the Marshalls cranked to 11, and they have continued to remain loud and proud since then.  They’re frequently cited as the “first heavy metal band” – before Black Sabbath – and compared to their contemporaries, especially such “heavy” ones as Cream and Iron Butterfly, they are certainly the heaviest of that era.   Likewise, they continue the heavy blues-based rock.  Of course by now, we have Metallica, death metal, etc., so Blue Cheer are no longer the heaviest act around – but they’re certainly competitive.  They clearly succeeded at making the transition from 60s rock to contemporary metal, without simply copying the hair, thrash, or New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands.  They have their own sound.

            I wouldn’t, however, call them psychedelic, even if they are named after an LSD variant, as they never dissolve into the kind of space jams we expect from Pink Floyd, Hawkwind or the Grateful Dead.  The closest to this is the extended jam song “Doctor Please”, from Vincebus. 

Albums.  The original six albums (1968-71), are Vincebus Eruptum, Outsideinside, New! Improved!, Blue Cheer, The Original Human Being, and Oh! Pleasant Hope.  Then modern era (1985-) is The Beast Is Back, Highlights and Lowlives, Blitzkrieg Over Nuremburg (live), Dining With The Sharks, Live In Japan ’99 (live), Bootleg: Live Hamburg-London (live), and their most recent studio album, What Doesn't Kill You. 

Lineups.  The focal character of all BC lineups to the present is bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson.  There would be no Blue Cheer without Dickie – he IS Blue Cheer.  He’s honest, down-to-earth, and very cool, considering who he is.  A remarkable survivor.  He sprinkles the concerts with thoughtful commentary between songs – it’s like he teleported here from San Francisco, 1967, but still knows exactly where he is.

            They’ve had various drummers, with Paul Whaley being the original and most consistent.  The popular legend was that they had to nail his drums down, he hit them so hard.  He’s more from the Keith Moon & John Bonham school of heavy drumming.  Lately Joe Hasselvander of Pentagram has been filling in for Whaley, though as of now Whaley is back in the group.

            The original guitarist was Leigh Stephens, who plays on the first two albums.  He was followed by Randy Holden (half of New! Improved!), Bruce Stephens (no relation to Leigh) (the other half of New! Improved!  and Blue Cheer), Gary Yoder (The Original Human Being and Oh! Pleasant Hope); Tony Rainier (The Beast Is Back) and Dieter Saller (Dining With The Sharks); and finally Duck McDonald, the current guitarist, who has now been with the band for over 20 years and can play Leigh Stephens’ material better than Leigh himself. He started off as a George Lynch kind of poser, but ended up more of a laid-back, blues-based guitarist.  He plays Stratocasters through Marshall amps, the classic combination.

 Again, what’s remarkable about this band is that they were the heaviest of their time originally – 1968-71 – yet have recaptured that throne even today, and still kick ass, one of the few bands to earn that distinction.