Good Times are so Hard to Find: The History of Blue Cheer [compilation]

Blue Cheer's massive contribution to the early evolution of American heavy metal exists entirely on their first two 1968 releases, Vincebus Eruptum and Outsideinside. While those initial releases charted admirably, critics largely ignored the band's loud, bluesy, psychedelic-tinged hard rock. The touchy-feely summer of love lasted a lot longer than three months and building heavy metal momentum in the States was a difficult affair. There resulted some lineup shifts, minor stylistic excursions, brief creative flourishes, more lineup changes, solo projects, half retirement, and reunion retreads. Some decent songs were recorded during that long descent and fortunately many of them were picked to grace the track list of Good Times Are So Hard to Find. Chief among them is the title cut and "Pilot" from 1970's Original Human Being. Other tracks from the group's eponymous release and 1971's Oh! Pleasant Hope have a boogie-down and MOR feel respectively that, while competent, contains hardly any of the group's original fire. Of course there are a few 1968 classics like the splendid "Out of Focus," "Parchment Farm," and the band's first (and only) big hit "Summertime Blues." Fans of '70s rock in its many forms might enjoy this 1990 retrospective, but metal historians need not worry about anything beyond Blue Cheer's first two offerings. — Vincent Jeffries