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Blue Cheer
News . . . |
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BLUE CHEER Live
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Hosted By: Blue Cheer Music
When: Saturday Dec 10, 2005 at 10:00 PM
Where: Krug's Place, 906 N. East Street, Frederick, MD 21701, US
Opening Act: Internal Void
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New BLUE CHEER Album
Dickie Peterson, Duck MacDonald and Joe Hasselvander are in Virginia writing and recording a new album.
The return of DICKIE PETERSON & BLUE CHEER
It’s just a few months after the untimely demise of my friend Chet
Helms and the cloak of darkness and despair has been somewhat
alleviated by The Chet Fest at GAMH in San Francisco in July and the
subsequent all day Chet Helms Memorial in Speedway Meadow, i.e.,
Golden Gate Park on October 29th. Tribal Stomp indeed as aging icons
inclusive of Paul Kantner, Country Joe McDonald, Lydia Pense, Annie
Sampson, Barry Melton, Prairie Prince, Jerry Miller of Moby Grape,
Terry Haggerty, Merl Saunders, Dave & Linda LaFlamme, The Charlatans
David Freiberg, Pete Sears, Peter Kaukonen, Lee Michaels, Harvey
Mandel, Eric Burdon, the newer versions of Jefferson Airplane
chanteuse personalities, Darby Gould & the sultry Diana Mangano . . . and
the return of legendary bass player Dickie Peterson.
It was the late sixties and with the youth of America in search of
their own identity, the burgeoning political drama in a useless
struggle in Vietnam swirling through the air on a regimented basis,
the pilgrimage to the hippie capital of the world seemed imminent.
The "big five" had made their mark on the now embryonic genre known
as psychedelia and Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The
Charlatans, Big Brother & The Holding Company and Quicksilver
Messenger Service would forever be synonymous with the suburban area
adjacent to Golden Gate Park. The Matrix, The Ark, The Carasoul
Club, The Fillmore Auditorium, The Fillmore West, Winterland, and The
Avalon Ballroom would become a second home to these legendary bands
but there were others who established a definitive cult following
within the parameters of the counter culture and entrepreneurs like
Bill Graham & Chet Helms.
Sons Of Champlain, It’s A Beautiful Day, Moby Grape, Steve Miller
Blues Band, and . . . Blue Cheer. Chet often spoke about his admiration
for Dickie and as a youthful malcontent after the military; I saw the
band during the early days as a power trio.
Much like Jack Casady, Dickie was the prototypical musician/hippie of
the day with perfect hair, adorned with the correct attire for a
fledgling band amidst the backdrop of bare feet, flaxen haired women
and the rolling knolls of Hippie Hill and Haight Street.
How proud Chet would have been to see the masses come to celebrate
the life of one of the last true "hippies" on this planet.
After years in Europe the following for Dickie Peterson has not
drifted into the recesses of our minds and after his blistering
performance with Leigh Stephens and Prairie Prince on the 29th, and a
return to continental United States, we wait to see the second coming
of Blue Cheer. He’s a link to the glory of the sixties, The Golden
Age of "rock 'n' roll" and as he lives and breathes the ideology of the
day, we do the same. There are but precious few of his ilk left and
it is our responsibility to see that his name and impact on the genre
and culture is not forgotten.
As I promised Chet, I will do the same for Dickie; I think he
deserves that much from all of us.
As always, Cheers
Don Aters -
Haight Street Music News - 11/14/05
DICKIE PETERSON and LEIGH STEPHENS at CHET HELMS Tribal Stomp
Dickie Peterson, Leigh Stephens and Prairie Prince will play together at Chet Helms Tribal Stomp !
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Event: A Chet Helms Tribal Stomp
Produced by: Family Dog
Date: Sunday October 30th, 2005
Location: Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park
Time: 10:00am to 5:30pm
Admission: Free
Bands: Nick Gravenites, Harvey Mandel, Taj Mahal, Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks, The Charlatans, Terry Haggerty
and James Preston (Sons of Champlin), Zero II, Squid B. Vicious, Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airplane),
Barry Melton (Country Joe & The Fish), Blue Cheer (Dickie Peterson, Leigh Stephens, Prairie Prince), Jorge Santana,
George Michalski, Greg Errico (Sly & The Family Stone), Quicksilver Gold, Canned Heat, Narada Michael Walden, Natural
Act (Hal Wagenet and Mitchell Holman), Jeff Blackburn, Howard Wales, Richie Ray (Freedom Highway), Ray Manzarek (The Doors),
Vince Welnick (The Tubes, Grateful Dead), Prairie Prince (Tubes), David Denny (Steve Miller), Peter Kaukonen, Iron
Butterfly, Sammy Hagar, Herman Eberitzsch (Lee Oskar, War), Ross Valory (Journey), Ace of Cups, War, Judge Murphy,
Stephen Gaskin, David Freiberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service), Country Joe McDonald, Greg Douglass (Steve Miller),
Pete Sears (Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna), Bruce Latimer, David and Linda LaFlamme (It's A Beautiful Day), Rowan Brothers,
Lydia Pense (Cold Blood), Annie Sampson (Stoneground), Wavy Gravy.
Family Dog Presents
Contact: Boots Hughston
2b1 Multimedia Inc.
3057 17th ST. San Francisco CA 94110
(415) 861-1520 Fax (415) 861-1519
www.2b1records.com/chetmemorial/
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CHET HELMS :: 8.2.42 - 6.25.05 |
Chet Helms Dead From Stroke at 62
Born August 2nd, 1942
Died June 25th, 2005
San Francisco Impresario Chet Helms who was known at the "Father of the
Summer of Love" and was the manager & founder of "Big Brother & the Holding
Company" with Janis Joplin as well as the first to produce psychedelic light show
concerts at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium then later at his own Avalon
Ballrooms passed away at 12:35 AM, Saturday, June 25th at San Francisco's Pacific
Medical Center from complications due to a stroke Helms suffered on Tuesday,
June 21st. Helms was surrounded by his brother John Helms and six close
friends at the time of his death. Helms was born August 25th, 1942 in Santa Maria
California but lived much of his youth in Austin Texas.
No discussion involving the Sixties, the source of the "San Francisco sound"
or the "Summer of Love" can take place without mentioning Chet Helms, a
front-line contributor to the people, ideas and events surrounding the most dynamic
decade in American history.
Chet Helms and his production company, the Family Dog, turned small
get-togethers of local musicians and artists into a scene that eventually produced the
great, legendary gatherings of the Summer of Love. Rock promoter Bill Graham
first turned to Chet Helms and his well-connected family of artists and
audiences in San Francisco to build his own promotional empire, well after the local
"scene" had been established and nurtured in coffee houses all over the city.
Helms was born in Santa Maria, California, in 1942, and spent most of his
youth in Texas and Missouri. While attending the University of Texas in Austin,
he was drawn to the civil rights movement bubbling under in the South. A
stepchild from a mixed-race marriage, Helms became actively engaged in organizing
benefits for non-profit civil and human rights groups, all the while learning
and using the tools of the trade he would later apply to the world of rock
concert promotion.
Helms moved from Austin to San Francisco for the first time in the summer of
1962. He returned to Austin briefly in 1963 to beckon then-unknown folksinger
Janis Joplin to hitch-hike back with him, telling her he would help promote
her career in San Francisco.
In the basement of 1090 Page Street at the center of the colorful
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, Helms organized informal jam sessions, out
of which the band Big Brother and the Holding Company was formed. He
later added Joplin as the group's lead singer and managed the band
through its formative years.
Through his relationships with such celebrated figures as Ken Kesey and The
Grateful Dead, Helms found himself at the center of it all, a willing
coordinator of the era's new interpretation of music and youth culture. By February
1966, Helms started producing shows for many bands under the name Family Dog
Productions at the Fillmore Auditorium, on alternating weekends with Bill Graham
Presents. By April, Helms secured permits to run his own dance hall, The Avalon
Ballroom on Sutter Street.
For three years, Helms and the Family Dog hosted some of the most influential
events in San Francisco rock history, including free events in Golden Gate
Park in 1966 and during what has now become known as the "Summer of Love" in
1967. From The Doors to Bo Diddley, Helms created a unique atmosphere at the
Avalon which encouraged immersive experiences among the artists and audience.
Psychedelic light shows have evolved into what we now know as "multi-media." And
the trademark posters have skyrocketed in value over the years in the rock
memorabilia market. It was a formula duplicated by rock promoters all over the
country. Helms also opened up Family Dog dance halls in Denver and Portland
before deciding in 1969 to run his operations out of one ballroom in San
Francisco, on the Great Highway next to Playland-at-the-Beach.
By the end of 1970, the small local scene Helms helped create had grown into
a cultural phenomenon exploited globally by a wide variety of entrepreneurs,
for better or for worse. He decided to take a break, and would not return to
concert promoting until 1978, when Family Dog produced the 1st Annual Tribal
Stomp at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley.
After producing another Tribal Stomp in 1979 at the Monterey Fairgrounds -
highlighted by the first-ever California appearance of The Clash - Helms
retreated from active promotion. He came out of retirement briefly in October 1997 to
produce the 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Summer of Love in Golden Gate
Park, where 60,000 fans gathered for a day of free music, with no arrests and
no reports of incidents.
Since 1980, Helms has operated Atelier Dore, Inc., an art gallery in San
Francisco specializing in American and European art from 1850 to 1950.
Press release written By: Lee Houskeeper / San Francisco Stories
www.familydog.com
[Published on 6/25/2005]
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Chet Helms may be gone, but enough hippie rockers are left to throw a Final Tribal Stomp
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They're burying the last hippie tomorrow in Golden Gate Park.
In their youth, the hippies were just happily wasted. Nowadays, some
of them are thick-waisted - and maybe just a bit gray. But veterans
of Woodstock and Monterey will gather in Golden Gate Park Sunday for
a free concert in memory of Chet Helms, who died in June from a
stroke at age 62.
Inevitably described in his obituaries as the proprietor of the
Avalon Ballroom during the glory days of the San Francisco rock
scene, and the man who discovered Janis Joplin, Helms was so much more.
That Helms died penniless attests to his enduring honesty. That he
will be feted Sunday at Speedway Meadows by hundreds, if not
thousands, of friends and people whose lives he touched is a
testament to his character. Helms never was someone whose success
could be measured in material terms.
At the height of the exploding rock scene, Helms was the anti-Bill
Graham. While Graham quickly and correctly ascertained that there
were big bucks in the rock concert scene, Helms saw greater
possibilities than money. He saw the music's power to bring people
together. He understood the joy of dancing as a political statement.
He was trying to change the world, not sell hamburgers.
Raised by his Baptist minister grandfather in the Ozarks after his
father died when he was 9, Helms never lost his youthful dreams of a
missionary life. He brought that evangelical zeal to his life as a
hippie. His ceaseless energy, his drive to be part of the action,
made him one of the original engines of the scene, whether he was
rushing out to borrow a strobe light for the scene's first acid-rock
dance at Longshoreman's Hall or inviting his old pal from the
University of Texas, Janis Joplin, out to San Francisco to join the
band he was managing - and that had been named after him - Big
Brother and the Holding Company. But what's more important about Chet
was that he never lost his way. He lived by the code and his life
stood for something.
Plagued by major health problems for the past several years, he
remained an ever-present fixture on the sidelines at any truly
festive San Francisco rock scene event. He developed an interest in
digital photography and took a lot of snapshots when he went out. He
was a hugely cheerful man who always had some plan in motion, some
scene he was following, some philosophical undercurrent in the
firmament he was tracking.
The Avalon operation may have foundered under unworkable hippie
ideals, but Helms never gave up. He moved his operation to a former
slot car raceway near Playland-at-the-Beach, but that proved short-
lived. Many years later, he brought back a reunited Paul Butterfield
Blues Band - a group that figured prominently in his original
falling out with Bill Graham - for an immensely successful Tribal
Stomp at UC Berkeley's Greek Theatre in 1978, but his ambitious plans
for a second Tribal Stomp at the Monterey Country Fairgrounds -
featuring a lineup as diverse as British punk by the Clash and
Jamaican reggae by the Mighty Diamonds - failed miserably the
following year and he was out of business again.
His crowning achievement was the concert celebrating the 30th
anniversary of the Summer of Love he staged in Golden Gate Park in
1997, which drew a huge crowd to see old-timers such as Jefferson
Starship, Sons of Champlin and Country Joe McDonald at the Beach
Chalet Meadow. It was a free concert - Chet begged, pleaded,
wheedled and cajoled the budget out of God knows where - so he
didn't make dime one out of this deal, either. When City Hall sent
him a bill for $50,000 worth of police overtime, he told them he
didn't have any money, but they could have his jacket.
Helms spent most of the last 20 years of his life operating a tiny
Nob Hill art gallery called Atelier Dore, which he financed
originally by the sale of one of the few authentic assets he was able
to accumulate in his life, a huge painting by 19th century French
illustrator Gustav Doré - hence the gallery name - which he sold at
auction in the early '80s and celebrated in high-style that night
backstage at a Grateful Dead concert in New York. When he died, he
was years behind in his rent.
The Paul Butterfield story is instructive. Impresario Graham never
tired of telling it. Graham and Helms began throwing concerts at the
Fillmore Auditorium in January 1966 as partners. After a couple of
successful concerts, Helms told Graham the next band he wanted to
present was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The next morning, while
Helms slept late as per hippie custom, Graham got up early and called
the New York booking agency that represented Butterfield and cut a deal.
Graham loved telling this story. He thought it showed the rewards of
diligence, how the early bird gets the worm and the world belongs to
those with an alarm clock and some get-up-and-go, a little chutzpah.
To Helms, it was always about the betrayal of a partner. He could be
annoying, petulant about perceived slights and close-minded on
certain subjects. He did love the spotlight and the approbation that
came with it; he would have been pleased to see his obit so
prominently placed in the New York Times. But he guarded the lamp of
the '60s with steadfast devotion and as long as he lived, it would
never be extinguished.
"All-reety", Helms would say, an all-purpose affirmation he used to
punctuate conversation. All-reety to you, too, Chester. That model is
now permanently discontinued.
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Saturday, October 29, 2005
BLUE CHEER - LIVE BOOTLEG - LONDON HAMBURG (8/2005)
. . . CD Cover courtesy Eric Albronda
When talks about "stoner rock" come up, one
band that tends to get overlooked is Blue Cheer. While groups like
Black Sabbath are always given props, the San Francisco band led by
Dickie Peterson is usually left out in the cold, despite having scored
one of the genre's earliest anthems, a turbo-charged rendition of Eddie
Cochran's "Summertime Blues" (which was easily the heaviest song
released in 1968). Since their late-'60s peak, the group has been off
and on again, and by the early 21st century, they were rocking all over
the world once more, as evidenced by 2005's Live Bootleg: London -
Hamburg. While both Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath had blues roots, the
former was more "garage-minded," while the latter was more "metal
minded," and the point is proven once more by just about any selection
here. Included are explosive (in an MC5 vein) renditions of such Blue
Cheer classics as the aforementioned "Summertime Blues," "Out of
Focus," and Mose Allison's "Parchment Farm," as well as a reading of
the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues." While it doesn't top what it probably
would have been like to experience Blue Cheer at the Fillmore West back
in the late '60s, Live Bootleg: London - Hamburg shows that Peterson
and company can still lay down a sizzling groove.
Review courtesy Greg Prato, All Music Guide
All I can say is that when this CD comes out on August 9,
2005 FREAKIN' GO OUT & BUY IT !!! It really rocks out. At first
glance it may appear that it mostly consists of material that has
already been put on previous live albums but don't be fooled ! The jams
that these songs contain are completely different from what you've
heard prior and the band really cooks on them. Everything has a fresh
new twist to it. There is even a song included that has never been on
any official BC album. I personally got blown away by Doctor Please,
Parchment Farm, & Heart of the City but the performances on all
nine tracks are just right-on ! AND . . . considering these tapes came
from bootleg recordings made from the audience, whoever mixed this
really did a phenomenal job ! I'd love to bring my tape collection to
his studio . . .
Review courtesy Ken (FeedbackLord)
BLUE CHEER at LACONIA BIKE FESTIVAL, June 15 & 16, 2005
The line-up is:
| Dickie Peterson | - | bass, vocals |
| Andrew 'Duck' MacDonald | - | guitar |
| Joe Hasselvander | - | drums |
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| Andrew 'Duck' MacDonald (guitar) |
- Pentagram -
Bobby Liebling (vocals) & Joe Hasselvander (drums, guitar, bass) |
See also:
Laconia Motorcycle Week
&
Broken Spoke Saloon, Laconia
MOTHER OCEAN
MOTHER OCEAN
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April 27, 2005
THEE PARKSIDE
1600 17th Street @ Wisconsin, San Francisco, CA 94107, phone: 415.503.0393, web: www.theeparkside.com
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May 14, 2005
EL RIO
3158 Mission Street @ Cesar Chavez, San Francisco, CA 94110, phone: 415-282-3325, web: www.elriosf.com.
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| Dickie Peterson | - | bass, lead vocals |
| Tony Rainier | - | guitar, vocals |
| Tom Bischoff | - | drums, percussion |
Good doings going on with Dickie and the American Mother Ocean . . . Dickie
has joined forces with Tony Ranier on guitar, Walt Perkins on drums and
possibly a piano player later. Dickie is really happy about the line up.
This is not to take the place of Blue Cheer but somehow work together.
Back In The USA
Dickie is back in the USA (3/2005) to promote the band. He can be reached by:
lonewolf_555@hotmail.com
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