A lot of people will frustratingly inform you that the genius of Vincebus Eruptum lies in its overlapping of blues riffs and heavy metal guitars. A lot of people are also wrong. First, let's define the term:
Vincebus Eruptum (v.): to completely dispense with traditionally composed blues song by frantically bending every string on a guitar, strumming without playing any actual notes, ramming your head against the speakers, and generally inducing a psychotic thunderstorm of sound and fury signifying nothing.
There's only one reason anyone has ever been interested in Eruptuming: Leigh Stephens. In the summer of 1967, Stephens heard the accumulations of blues and rock inside his head, and formed Blue Cheer, situating himself between Cream's rhythmic tightness and Hendrix's flamboyant excess. Fortunately for us, Stephens was resolutely less experienced than either, and in the process of developing this incompetence, he inadvertently birthed punk, heavy metal, and the most primal version of the inexorable and inept guitar freak-out. Vincebus essentially acts as the juncture of the lethally lethargic, basement-murder morass of Sabbath and the vomit-spewing anxiety of early punk rock. There may be occasional blues passages, but trust me, there's no overlap. When Stephens solos, there is nothing but wind-howling terror.
Blue Cheer's signature song, "Summertime Blues", is a prime example of this bludgeoning. The band makes several attempts to get their instruments to sound like they're playing together, but whenever singer/bassist Dickie Peterson and drummer Paul Whaley accidentally forget that they're in the same band, Stephens rushes into the mix with a mind-expanding psychedelic gundown. Eddie Cochran's version actually sounded like summer; this sounds like whatever kind of season they have in a coal mine with skeleton scaffolds. The production is so lo-fi, it's practically transcendent. Whereas psychedelic used to be all about the Grateful Dead and Strawberry Alarm Clock (maybe "Tomorrow Never Knows" on a good day), Stephens was one of the progenitors of those gloriously nauseating spaz-outs we now know was to be the future of rock.
On "Doctor Please", a sort of less subtle "Doctor Robert", Peterson yelps, "I need your pain killers!" while Stephens unleashes undulations of deafening wreckage and turbulent reverb. The rhythm section is barely audible, and when it is, it can barely stay ahead of Stephens. This is the kind of music Lester Bangs must have loved and Spinal Tap and Tenacious D must have mocked: musicians who, like the bands on Nuggets, live not to perfect their technique, but to simply rock. And while Blue Cheer, at this early stage, have yet to work out their kinks, their songs are already stunning: "Out of Focus" croaks tales of "the magic madness" and "mystic dream," a prepubescent version of Zeppelin's bombast, while "Second Time Around" is a grimier and more explosive predecessor to Yes' "Heart of the Sunrise".
Only eight months later, on Outsideinside, the songs not only contained Stephens' paroxysms, but proved some of the best the 60s ever produced. The opening track, "Feathers from Your Tree", begins with a drowsy hush before escalating to a strikingly driving pop song, complete with tortured teenage vocals and backup singers. When I first listened to it, I had no idea Blue Cheer had written it. Then I realized the entire middle third is a direct duplication of "Pinball Wizard"-- or at least that's what I thought before I found out Tommy didn't come out till the next year. The Who ripped these guys off! Of course, once these acid queens get soloing, it's more like "Speedball Wizard" anyway: "Sun Cycle" is a slow rotating blues that reigns in fuzzed and tangled guitars. The version of Booker T.'s "The Hunter" begins as a bluesy hobble until strains of piercing guitar raze through the dinginess. "Just a Little Bit" and "Come and Get It" slow down the tempo and create the tense interaction between players that was sorely absent on Vincebus. The result is vastly more atmospheric and fulfilling, if not quite as stunningly anarchic. The one exception is the cover of "Satisfaction", perhaps the most exemplary version ever recorded, focused less on the music than the energy. It's as if Stephens is torturing the original.
I didn't notice any remastering on any of the tracks on this two-for-one reissue, and if you already have both, there's no reason to seek this out. Putting both albums side by side, however, does contrast the two sides of the band. Vincebus is all catharsis and psychedelic mayhem; Outsideinside converts their stylistic enthusiasm and leathery attitude into structured song. If it doesn't sound as influential as Vincebus's cataclysmic insanity, it's because it defines "classic" rock. Everyone else was just shooting for this.
