Blue Cheer New Improved Blue Cheer 1969 UK LP 1st Press PHILIPS SBL7896

	£		31
	$		41

Blue Cheer New! Improved! Blue Cheer 1969 UK LP 1st Press PHILIPS SBL7896

1969 UK release on Philips SBL.7896. Record is in very good (possibly excellent) condition with no significant marks – it has been kept in a poly-lined inner. The sleeve is also very good to excellent, with only the slightest signs of wear.

This is a first pressing. Matrix numbers on the runout grooves are:

Side 1:            852136 1Y//1 420 1 1

Side 2:            852136 2Y//1 420 1 1

Tracks are:

Side 1

1.         "When It All Gets Old"         Burns Kellogg          2:51

2.         "West Coast Child of Sunshine"  Bruce Stephens       2:35

3.         "I Want My Baby Back"       Stephens       3:12

4.         "Aces 'n' Eights"       Kellogg, Dickie Peterson, Stephens        2:43

5.         "As Long as I Live"  Peterson, Stephens 2:18

6.         "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry"            Bob Dylan     3:13

Side 2

1.         "Peace of Mind"       Randy Holden          7:17

2.         "Fruit & Iceburgs"     Holden           6:05

3.         "Honey Butter Lover"          Holden           1:21

AMG says:

Guitarist Leigh Stephens quit Blue Cheer after touring in support of their second album, Outsideinside, but he may have been amused by the fact it took three men to replace him when the band cut their next LP. There are two different and distinct bands at work on New! Improved! Blue Cheer; on the album's first six tunes, founding members Dickie Peterson (bass and vocals) and Paul Whaley (drums) are joined by Bruce Stephens on guitar and Ralph Burns Kellogg on keyboards, and this lineup bears little musical resemblance to the wildly over-amped power trio that cut Vincebus Eruptum less than two years before. This new edition of Blue Cheer was still strongly influenced by the blues, but the raw physical impact of the band had been significantly buffered, and Bruce Stephens' rootsy guitar work was in a completely different league from the old band's bone-crushing onslaught. The gentle country-rock of "As Long as I Live" and the dynamic, percussive boogie of "When It All Gets Old" would have been inconceivable coming from Blue Cheer Mk. One, and while the notion of comparing them brings to mind that old cliché about apples and oranges, Peterson's vocals do reveal a lot more nuance on these recordings, and Whaley's more tightly controlled drumming gives the band a lean groove they didn't have before. On side two, Blue Cheer return to power trio format with Randy Holden (formerly of the Other Half) on guitar, and while his style is also considerably different from Leigh Stephens', his fondness for overwhelming volume and fierce, extended solos makes his contributions feel a lot more like the group's formative work; Peterson and Whaley also sound a lot more like their old selves here, calling up a thunderous report to match Holden's thick but graceful leads, and if Blue Cheer are a more subtle and artful band with Holden on guitar, his contributions suggest an evolution from the towering proto-metal of Vincebus Eruptum and Outsideinside, rather than the dramatic stylistic departure of the album's first half. Unfortunately, the possibilities suggested by Holden's material went unrealized when he quit the band shortly after making New! Improved! Blue Cheer; with him they might have made another album that, unlike this mixed bag, would have lived up to the boast of the title.

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Buyers from New Zealand, Oceania, Singapore and Laos - please disregared shipping price quoted by eBay and refer to the table below.

Weight (g)

UK

Euro

Rest of the World

 Australia, NZ, Singapore, Oceania,  Laos  etc

USA

Standard

Tracked

Standard

Tracked

Standard

Tracked

Standard

Tracked

Standard

Tracked

<100

£1.40

£2.90

£3.90

£10.50

£4.75

£11.20

£5.30

£12.00

£4.80

£11.25

100-250

£2.00

£3.50

£5.40

£11.00

£7.00

£12.50

£8.20

£13.75

£7.10

£12.75

251-500

£2.50 (LL)
£4.00 (SP)

£4.00 (LL)
£5.10 (SP)

£6.30 (LL)
£8.70 (SP)

£11.00 (LL)
£12.00 (SP)

£9.50 (LL)£13.50 (SP)

£14.50 (LL)£18.75 (SP)

£11.75 (LL)£15.75 (SP)

£16.60 (LL)£20.75 (SP)

£10.00 (LL)£18.10 (SP)

£15.00 (LL)£22.10 (SP)

501-750

£4.00

£5.10

£10.25

£15.10

£16.75

£21.50

£19.25

£24.20

£21.00

£25.10

751-1000

£4.00

£5.10

£11.75

£16.20

£20.00

£24.60

£23.50

£28.10

£25.50

£29.10

Also note I do not sell to Brazil, Mexico, Macao, China or Thailand due to previous problems with mail to those countries. Sorry about that.I will advise cost of shipping items over £50 at close of auction.