Friday, April 20, 2012

WE'LL WORK ON CHEER LATER






















Check the video below.  It's Blue Cheer on American Bandstand.  What I find amusing, other than the fact that they were actually on the show, is that goddamn wall of Marshall stacks.  Five stacks for one guitar and one bass.  On American Bandstand.  Who needs to turn it up to eleven, when you can turn five amps up to ten?  Let's do the math.  That's a total of fifty volume increments, or twenty five per user, as opposed to Spinal Tap's mere eleven per user.  Forgetting the math for a moment, what do you think the chances are that the five stack statement, that they're clearly trying to make, was totally lost on the audience?
   


Full credit goes to Beware of the Blog for finding this gem, along with this amusing anecdote, from bass player Dickie Peterson: "At the time, we were being managed by 'Gut' Terkl, who'd been a Hell's Angel, and Gut and I were sitting in the dressing room smoking a bowl of hash, and Dick Clark walked in, and looked at us, and he says, 'PEOPLE LIKE YOU GIVE ROCK 'n' Roll A BAD NAME!' We looked back at him, and we said, "Thank you very much!" That was the last time we were ever on Bandstand."  Really.  No shit?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, along with Dick Clark (woefully inept volume increment rating four), Jim Marshall, the man who is probably responsible for more temporary and permanent hearing loss that any other single person, passed away recently as well.  The Adios Lounge has a nice post about him. 

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:
Blue Cheer - Come and Get It mp3 at The Cargo Culte
Blue Cheer - Summertime Blues mp3 at Beware of the Blog

2 comments:

AEC said...

You can never have too many amps to lip synch

Tom G. said...

I though it obvious.