I'm in Stockholm, Sweden for a couple of days on a guitar gig, and am having a blast. I had no idea of the fact that Sweden exports the third-most amount of music (behind the U.S. and the U.K.) until today, but it's not surprising when you consider the amount of talent that has come from this country of merely nine million: ABBA, Refused, Ace of Base, Fireside, Entombed, The Cardigans, pop guru Max Martin, the list goes on and on.

My personal favorite: the recently defunct Hellacopters. The band started as an Entombed/Backyard Babies side project and turned into one of the best and most-loved garage revival acts, though that pigeonholing does a disservice to their complex Blue Cheer meets Cheap Trick romp. The Hellacopters weren't doing anything new, but I can't think of anyone in the past decade-and-a-half that did frill-free hard rock as consistently well as these guys.

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(Blue Cheer - Dickie Peterson, right - R.I.P.)

A few months ago I did a post on Blue Cheer, playing their 1967 demo version of Summertime Blues. It only seems fitting tonight, after hearing the sad news that Blue Cheer bassist and lead singer Dickie Peterson lost his battle with cancer and passed away at his home in Germany yesterday (Monday).

Anyone who grew up in the 60s and hit the concerts has their own Blue Cheer story to tell - most all of them ending with the fact that their ears rang for days after.

As I said in my earlier post, there really wasn't anyone like them at the time. In many ways they were the prototype for Heavy Metal in the 1970s. They were relentless raw energy that completely emersed you in their wall of sound. At a time when P.A. systems were crude and only beginning to become what they are today, Blue Cheer did stand out as the epitome of loud.

As a tribute to Dickie Peterson and a thank you for the indelible impression he and his band mates made on so many audiences over so many nights, I'm playing the second cut from the 1967 demo session, this one, the demo for Doctor Please.

Just seems fitting.

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(Being Louder Than God did have certain drawbacks)

Demo's tonight. This by way of a friend who religiously recorded KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco from his dorm room in Berkeley in 1968. During summer break he would come down to L.A. and share his discoveries, stacks of reel to reel tapes of all that was happening in the Bay Area.

One of those discoveries was a group of demo tapes recorded by Blue Cheer, who came out with their first album "Vincebus Eruptum" a few weeks earlier. Summertime Blues was the single getting the most airplay at the time, but this demo sounded a lot better - the album was a disappointment by comparison. The demo was raw and loud and it was everything I remembered, hearing the band live months earlier.

I read a review recently saying their reputation as being "louder than god" was all hype.

Um . . . not so. As someone who saw them no less than a dozen times over a two year period, I can probably attest to some of my hearing damage to being caused by them. They were loud and nothing compared to them for a time. Of course, P.A. systems were pretty crude back then with no stage monitors to speak of and feedback all over the place. There was no such thing as 11 in 1968.

But as time went on, live music performance sound got perfected and soon everyone could boast being the loudest - but Blue Cheer were the barre to which most other bands live performances were judged, as least in my ears.

And there is ample evidence to indicate Blue Cheer were actually the very first Heavy Metal band.

Another patch in the Psychedelic quilt.