Go forth and multiply

RIP, Dickie Peterson:
Richard Allan “Dickie” Peterson, founding member of Blue Cheer and former Sacramentan, died on October 12 in Germany of liver cancer. He was 63.

Born in North Dakota, Peterson, a former Davis resident, was bassist and singer for the famous power trio, which first hit the charts in 1968, covering “Summertime Blues” on their album Vincebus Eruptum. A favorite of bikers and 1 percenters everywhere, Blue Cheer took their name from a local brand of LSD. The group’s earth-shaking blues sound, featuring Peterson’s booming voice and vibrating bass licks, punctuated the psychedelic era of Bay Area acid rock and created a template that later influenced an entire generation of heavy-metal bands.

Peterson moved to Sacramento in 1974, forming Peterbildt with his brother Jerre and playing numerous West Coast venues. In 1988, he reincarnated Blue Cheer again, with guitarist Andrew “Duck” MacDonald and original drummer Paul Whaley, and toured regularly throughout Europe. The group’s live DVD, Blue Cheer Rocks Europe, came out earlier this year.

“Dickie waits for the rest of us,” MacDonald told SN&R. “And then he will turn and face God and say, ‘We’re Blue Cheer, and this is what we do,’ and launch into ‘Babylon.’” (Ken Magri)

Take off your pants and stage-dive:
“It feels like you’re so close, you could kill me. But you know what: I could kill you!” joked the Streets frontman Mike Skinner to The Boardwalk’s intimate audience. Drinks and crowd surfing aren’t allowed at The Boardwalk, but Skinner doesn’t take well to rules: He slyly passed his beer cup to thirsty fans in the front and jumped into the arms of the small but energetic audience several times, all the while performing songs from his four albums.

The English rapper demanded that one shirtless fan take his trousers off and jump into the crowd. Unfortunately, fans were less supportive (literally) of a sweaty guy in cartoon boxers. The crowd jumped and punched the air to the danceable show, thanks in part to soul singer Kevin Mark Trail, who shared the stage with Skinner and added funk to the performance, especially on “Where My Heart Has Been,” which serious Streets fans recognized as one of the new songs released online this past summer. The Streets’ final album, Computers and Blues, will be out in February 2010. (Shannon Ander)

Victims of the power of the beat:
Irony was in no short supply when electro-dance guru Dan Deacon and a posse of equally bespectacled young Baltimoreans performed Monday night at Luigi’s Fun Garden—and consequently, the place collapsed under the weight of its own apathetic hipness.

Alexis Gideon warmed up the crowd with a series of projected videos of bizarre animal line drawings paired with some good beats. Next, Nuclear Power Pants proved to be pretty freaking awesome, but I’ll be honest: It doesn’t take much more than a band wearing felt, angular, glow-in-the-dark monster heads and a dude thrusting a mic into an amp, like he was imagining something else, to make me happy.

I had a hunch that Deacon would be great in a small setting, and I was right. Months ago, I had seen him at the Great American Music Hall, and, seriously, I couldn’t escape dudes with a crustaches knocking me into the dude in front of me (you know, the guy with the greasy mullet). At Luigi’s, this only happened once, but it didn’t last long, and people in Sacramento bathe more frequently.

Audience participation, interpretive dancing, hand holding, real dancing, profuse sweating—Deacon has an uncanny ability to force an audience to do whatever he pleases. If he instructed a crowd to “go forth and multiply” right there on the dance floor, good God, they probably would. And realizing this, I felt a great amount of respect toward Deacon in his saintlike restraint and good use of powers usually not fit for mortals. (Lindsey Walker)

Jamie Foxx’s how-to-be-a-playa advice:
Fellas, take a few cues from Jamie Foxx, who brought his Blame It! show to Arco Arena last Thursday. First, if there are drunk, scantily clad women near you, say that you love independent women. Repeat this a thousand times, because there was such a large response by the Arco crowd to this statement, I thought the audience was going to orgasm. Foxx also advises that, whenever you can’t tell if a woman is a hooker or not, say that she looks nice, then go hit up an afterparty with her. Got it? (Katie McMillin)