Blue Cheer: Lost and Found

There’s been a whole lot of bad buzz on all these bands getting back together.  Unwashed hip pencilnecks moon over twelve inches of obscure, now sixty year old dentists are hitting the scene trying to get all that love and groupie action that didn’t go down in 1974.  Stooges did it all wrong, Dolls even worse.  That shot of vitamin Hanoi Rocks didn’t help shit.  Boring is boring, even without the hair metal faceslap.  Blue Cheer made a slab of flaming awesome, a little bit of mediocre, maybe thirty years worth of horrible embarrassing.  Band I’ve heard the most the least sober, it’s a foggy influence.  Nearly two years ago I tried to get a face full of pure reunion fury.  My neverending inability to get my act together, speeding through Arkansas looking at the vast wasteland of abandonment and sadness.  In the end we could not come real close to pulling it off.  All day driving through the post-apocalyptic nothing of that five hour stretch of depression and failure, psych metal was too easy to pass up.  It’s nighttime, let’s just drift to that Motel 6.  Life is short and I’m lazy, lethal combo.  So here I’m thinking another unnecessary reunion is forever out of my sticky little fingers.  No no no, Blue Cheer came back last night.  Ten years coming, two years coming, hard to tell.  Two weeks thinking about pricking out the kicks to several hours of elderly man soloing.  The kids think its all high fives and synchronized waterfountains the life of the leisure class.  No money, lots of naps, but you can’t dance to it.  Old men with guitars are calling; let’s head on down to the big city.  It takes an hour to drive into the great wide nothing, only half of that spent tragically lost.  I just pointed the car, directions were in another pocket.  We get there in time for the mustache metal of Blood on the Sun.  West Texas groove rock?  One guy in a ZZ Top shirt, the other flashing Humble Pie?  That’s all kinds of promise.  But it’s all just noise.  I thought there would be like five more guitarists she says, I thought there’d be five more mustaches I say.  Stopping after five minutes can only help these guys.  All sorts of greasey posturing by a handful of dudes desperately channeling long rejected classic rock half-icons seen at so many ribs festivals so many summers ago.  An hour of my life tailor made for the phrase “featuring former Molly Hatchet drummer.”  They keep going; all I see is a guy wearing chaps.  She’s less impressed than me, I go to the bar to stop looking.