Author Topic: Blue Oyster Cult official thread (listening party late Oct/early Nov 2021)  (Read 17053 times)

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Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #35 on: June 11, 2013, 12:03:02 PM »
For anyone wanting to check out some B.O.C. songs with some killer guitar work:

Harvest Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vVU7MyK9fQ

Lips in the Hills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytBk-nvLsAQ

Buck's Boogie (instrumental): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjJ-rw76oVw

Take Me Away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxswoYHecfE

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #37 on: June 11, 2013, 01:07:52 PM »
Love BoC! Their first three albums are on permanent rotation in my music player. Singing along with She's As Beautiful As A Foot always gets a  :\ from Mrs. Podaar...which I just love!
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Offline ColdFireYYZ

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #38 on: June 11, 2013, 01:22:17 PM »
Heaven Forbid is still pretty great, especially considering it came out 26 years after their first album.  Rock radio around here played Harvest Moon like crazy when it came out, and for good reason as it is an awesome song with a great solo, and songs like Real World, Damaged, See You in Black, Live for Me, Still Burnin' and Cold Gray Light of Dawn are all great as well.
Harvest Moon is one of my favorite BOC songs.

Online jjrock88

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #39 on: June 11, 2013, 05:03:09 PM »
Holy Smokes.  I've never heard Harvest Moon before; that is killer guitar work!

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #40 on: June 11, 2013, 11:25:55 PM »
Buck Dharma is one helluva guitar player, and so often his playing is awesome, yet often not in an obvious way, if that makes sense.  He manages to kick ass without being showy really at all.

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #41 on: June 12, 2013, 12:00:10 AM »
I need to get back into these dudes - I remember my brother religiously waking me up with either Tyranny and Mutation or Secret Treaties (mainly TaM - he had a huge thing for that one, especially 7 SCREAMING DIZ-BUSTERS!!! :lol ).  He got up earlier at that point (he was in high school while I was in middle school) and would wait until our mother left for work then BOOOOM... on went the stereo at earth-shattering levels. :lol

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #42 on: June 12, 2013, 07:29:11 AM »
7 Screaming Diz-Busters is such a great song! 

Supposedly, the word "diz" in their circle had some sort of sexual connotation, so a diz-buster could be construed as a ball-buster or someone who makes you, well, bust. :lol :lol

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #43 on: June 12, 2013, 09:46:36 AM »
Buck Dharma is one helluva guitar player, and so often his playing is awesome, yet often not in an obvious way, if that makes sense.  He manages to kick ass without being showy really at all.

Very accurate description!  :tup

Also, Buck had rock and rolls most epic mustache!
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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #44 on: June 12, 2013, 10:49:35 AM »
I just tracked through Heaven Forbid on Spotify!  :omg: How is it possible that I'd never heard this album before?!

"I'm damaged...and I like it"

Off to Amazon to order.
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Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #45 on: June 12, 2013, 10:52:43 AM »
Yes!  That album really is great from start to finish; almost every track is a winner, and even the one that isn't - Hammer Back - is still pretty good.  I just think it gets the "it wasn't one of their early album, so I will ignore it" treatment from fans looking to check out more of the band's music.

Online jjrock88

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #46 on: June 12, 2013, 11:21:57 AM »
Kev, would you rank your top five or ten favorite BOC albums? I only have their greatest hits, which I think is awesome, but would like to get more from them

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #47 on: June 12, 2013, 11:32:44 AM »
Will do. I have to head out in a few, but I will do so later today! :)

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #48 on: June 12, 2013, 06:59:45 PM »
Okay, here goes.  Instead of ranking the albums, I will put them in tiers:

Very good/great albums
Cultosaurus Erectus - Song for song, I think this is their best album.  It has seven great tunes, one pretty good song (Fallen Angel) and only one clunker (Hungry Boys).  Songs like Black Blade, Monsters, Deadline, The Marshall Plan and Lips in the Hills are some of their best tunes over.  Great flow, too.

Fire of Unknown Origin - Very similar to the previous one mentioned, only it has no clunkers, but only a couple of songs I would call great.  It is consistently very good.

Imaginos - Some get hung up on this not being a true B.O.C. album - because it was written mostly by producer Sandy Pearlman and ex-drummer Albert Bouchard, plus tons of extra musicians are used (including, among others, Joe Satriani and Robby Krieger - but I don't care about that.  All I care about is that this album kicks ass, and has five legitimately great songs: Les Invisibles, In the Presence of Another World, The Siege and Investiture of Baron von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria, Astronomy (a rework of the original from Secret Treaties) and Blue Oyster Cult (a rework of Subhuman from Secret Treaties).  Plus, this is the most epic and adventurous B.O.C. has ever sounded.

Secret Treaties - Considered by many to be their best album.  Most of the songs on this album are B.O.C. classics that have been played live by the band non-stop over the last few decades.  The production is a tad off-putting - the sound is very clear, but the low end is, well, non-existent.  Once you get used to the sound, the greatness of most of the songs is impossible to deny.

Heaven Forbid - Like I said earlier, almost every track is a winner, and this is easily one of their best-sounding records (the rocking songs have balls thanks to the great sound).  Great record. 

Above average albums
Spectres - The first two and last two songs on this album are worth the price alone; four fantastic tunes.  Tracks 3-8 are a mixed bag, with some of them being good and some of them being somewhat average; I like tracks 5-8 quite a bit, while considering 3 and 4 pretty average.

Tyranny and Mutation - Similar in sound to Secret Treaties (them being released a year), this is nearly as good.  Every song ranges from good to very good, the majority leaning towards the latter.

The Revolution by Night - Long underrated by many fans, this has three of their best songs ever - Take Me Away, Shooting Shark and Feel the Thunder - and the rest, despite being more melodic and drenched in keyboards leads at times, is surprisingly solid.  This album definitely has a bit of an 80s feel, it being from 1983, but don't sleep on this record.

Good albums
Agents of Fortune - Don't Fear the Reaper and E.T.I. are both totally awesome, and the album is worth it just for those two songs (although in this day and age, where we can buy individual songs from iTunes, amazon, etc., I guess that is a moot point).  The rest is fairly inconsistent, ranging from good (Morning Final and This Ain't the Summer of Love) to interestingly strange (The Revenge of Vera Gemini and Tattoo Vampire) to just plain awful (True Confessions). 

Curse of the Hidden Mirror - Their last studio album, from 2001, has some great songs - Dance on Stilts, The Old Gods Return (which sounds like vintage B.O.C.) and the awesome Stone of Love - but it also has a bunch of forgettable songs.  Showtime, One Step Ahead of the Devil, I Just Like to Be Bad and Here Comes the Feeling are all songs I don't hate, but don't care if I ever hear them again.

Blue Öyster Cult - The self-titled debut is good, but the sound of it is very poor, marring the overall good first effort.  Think of it as being their When Dream and Day Unite from a sound standpoint, except this was 1972, not 1989. 

Do not buy these albums (only buy the songs individually that I recommend)
Mirrors - The Great Sun Jester, In Thee and The Vigil are all great.  Nothing else is essential or worthy.

Club Ninja - Perfect Water and Madness to the Method are great, Dancin' in the Ruins and White Flags are very enjoyable, and When the War Comes is oddly enjoyable on the right day.  The other four songs totally blow.

There ya go. :)

Offline ColdFireYYZ

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #49 on: June 12, 2013, 07:03:58 PM »
Nice to see some appreciation for Imaginos!  :tup

And I don't consider Mirrors to be that bad. I enjoyed it the few times I listened to it.

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #50 on: June 12, 2013, 08:45:25 PM »
There are a few other songs on Mirrors I kind of enjoy (Dr. Music, the title track and Lonely Teardrops), but I would never recommend them to a new fan, hence them not being essential or worthy, as I said. ;) 

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #51 on: June 12, 2013, 09:01:11 PM »
Saw them on the Imaginos tour.  Great album!
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Online jjrock88

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #52 on: June 12, 2013, 09:02:34 PM »
Thanks alot for that writeup!

Offline Orbert

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #53 on: June 12, 2013, 09:26:04 PM »
Hey, where's the love for "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll"?  That was the first single from the first album, the one that got it all started for them, and is still one of my favorites.

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #54 on: June 12, 2013, 09:43:52 PM »
Yeah!  A little Al Bouchard love for his vocals!
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Offline Jaq

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #55 on: June 13, 2013, 09:10:30 AM »
I clearly need to give Cultosaurus Erectus a re-listen, because I tend to think of that album as being Black Blade and The Marshall Plan and nothing else.   :lol

My god tier BOC albums are Secret Treaties, Fire of Unknown Origin, and Imaginos. Secret Treaties was the album that let me get earlier BOC, after ages of not getting them at all. Fire of Unknown Origin's just behind it, and, my god, Imaginos. Who cares that it started as Al Bouchard's solo album and really is only BOC because the record label insisted on it? It's pretty much the album the band was working towards throughout the 70s, since Al Bouchard and Sandy Pearlman were the masterminds behind a lot of BOC's music, it's an amazing collection of songs, and the bootlegs from that tour show the band, whatever the line up was, kicking serious ass. It's a brilliant album.

Glad to see you give Revolution By Night some love, Kev. Shooting Shark is otherworldly, though it always tickled me, for some reason, that Aldo Nova co-wrote Take Me Away.

We're gonna fight over Club Ninja, which I think is one of the band's most underrated efforts. I may say that because I saw BOC open for Rush on that tour, but really, to me, the only clunkers are Make Rock Not War, and Beat Em Up (because if you were an 80s hard rock act on Columbia, you were obligated to do at least one Bob Halligan Jr. song.)  Perfect Water is, honestly, a top 10 BOC song for me. Back then, Club Ninja was seen by some as a return to form after the far too commercial sounding Revolution By Night, though that album's pretty underrated too.

I won't argue over Mirrors though; that's pretty unessential. I'll just comment on their live albums: all of them are pretty damn good. My favorite live album of theirs used to be Extraterrestrial Live, because Some Enchanted Evening was only a single live album, but now that that's been reissued with a ton of bonus tracks AND a live DVD of a performance from that era, it's taken the lead. On Your Feet Or On Your Knees is pretty good too-it's kind of the All The World's A Stage of the BOC catalog, the live album that put a cap on their earlier, decidedly rawer and different era.

And yes, re-listening to Cultosaurus Erectus proves I've been underrating it for a LONG time.
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Mighty kingdoms rise, but they all will fall, no more than a breath on the wind.

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #56 on: June 13, 2013, 09:11:09 AM »
Thanks for the write-up Kev!!

I agree with you on the very good/great album category. Where I'd diverge from your recommendations is that I feel the albums B.Ö.C. and Spectres should swap places on your list. I consider every song on B.Ö.C. to be an excellent classic with the exception of Screams in the Night--which I still quite like when I'm in the mood. I realize that my taste is probably wildly different than someone just getting into their catalog since I'm a big fan of the sinister lyrics juxtaposed with eclectic music.
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Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #57 on: June 13, 2013, 09:25:51 AM »
No problem on the write-up, fellas. :)

Jaq, I don't hate Club Ninja.  In fact, I probably like it more than most, and even said I like five of the nine songs, which is pretty good for an album most think of as a dog.  Good to see you are enjoying Cultosaurus Erectus now. :tup :tup

Orbert, Cities on Flame is good, but it just stinks that the studio version is on an album with such poor quality.  What do you guys think is the best live version?  I don't have either of the 70s live albums (and I am not gonna get them, cause I would get them and then never listen to them), but I would get select tracks, if any of them are superior to the studio originals, especially Cities on Flame.

Podaar, the debut is good, but, damn it, that quality of it.  Then Came the Last Days of May is my favorite of it, and the live version of it from A Long Day's Night is my go-to version, as it has the extended guitar solo. :metal

Offline Jaq

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #58 on: June 13, 2013, 09:40:26 AM »
Well, you put Club Ninja in the Do Not Buy Section, and that was close enough to fighting words for me  :lol

Mirrors came on Spotify after Cultosaurus Erectus. Yep, my opinion hasn't changed on THAT.

My memory of the live versions of Cities On Flame is that the one on Extraterrestial Live is the best. It isn't actually on Some Enchanted Evening, and the version on ETI sounds better than the one on On Your Feet Or On Your Knees.
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Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #59 on: June 13, 2013, 09:47:52 AM »
I'll have to a comparison and see.  I have been checking out some of the tracks from On Your Feet Or On Your Knees on youtube, and wow, you are right...that album freaking smokes!  That live version of Before the Kiss, a Redcap is pretty badass.  I also love The Red and the Black on Then Came the Last Days of May on there.  Looks like I will be purchasing some of those individual tracks from amazon. :)

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #60 on: June 13, 2013, 10:13:07 AM »
No problem on the write-up, fellas. :)
Podaar, the debut is good, but, damn it, that quality of it.  Then Came the Last Days of May is my favorite of it, and the live version of it from A Long Day's Night is my go-to version, as it has the extended guitar solo. :metal

I kept scratching my head when you mention the quality then I realized my digital copy of B.Ö.C. is one I ripped into Adobe Audition some years ago from my vinyl record. I then I cleaned it up and remixed it with more bottom and brighter highs before I made my mp3s. What I've been listening to over the past 6 years or so is way more punchy than the original recording. Maybe that's why I like it more than most.

Edit: Also, who can't love these lyrics?

She's as beautiful as a foot
She's as beautiful as a foot
She heard somebody say, the other day

Didn't believe it when he bit into her face
Didn't believe it when he bit into her face
It tasted just like a fallen arch

She's as beautiful as a foot
She's as beautiful as a foot
She heard somebody say, the other day

Don't put your tongue on the bloody tooth mark place
Don't put your tongue on the bloody tooth mark place
Her face changing now, a guernsey cow

She's as beautiful, oh so beautiful, beautiful as a foot
She heard someone say, the other day


Richard Meltzer is a twisted mother!  :lol
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Offline Orbert

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #61 on: June 13, 2013, 11:16:33 AM »
I love those lyrics!  I still remember picking up the first album and just checking out the names of the songs on the back.  "She's as Beautiful as a Foot" cracked me up.  I always play albums straight through the first time, but I'll be honest, I don't remember anything from Side One, and still don't.  I couldn't wait to get to Side Two to hear "She's as Beautiful as a Foot" and of course "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll".

As for the sound quality, I have no issue.  I was 12 years old and still listening to records on the portable stereo I'd gotten for Christmas a few years back.  It sounded fine to me.

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #62 on: June 13, 2013, 11:25:11 AM »
That is a great song title, but I always thought that "I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" was a better song title.  Both are hilariously odd, though. 

And I still think that Transmaniacon MC is the overlooked gem on the first record.

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #63 on: June 13, 2013, 11:51:40 AM »
And I still think that Transmaniacon MC is the overlooked gem on the first record.

Not by this kid! I like your description "hilariously odd" but I think it still needs one more adjective to describe BÖC discography... creepy hilariously odd? Not quite...I'll need to think about it.

One of the fun parts about BÖC history is their collaborations with authors, poets and other (pseudo?) intellectuals for lyrics and other musical ideas. Sandy Pearlman, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith, Michael Moorcock, Eric Von Lustbader, Jim Carroll and John Shirley have all provided some of the spookier moments. I find John Shirley collaboration the most interesting. As a teenager he becomes inspired by the lyrics in Transmaniacon MC to write a book based on the imagery, he goes on to be a successful cyber-punk/sci-fi writer who then is asked to write lyrics for B.Ö.C. 25 or so years later. I know, I know, cool story bro.  :\
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Offline ytserush

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #64 on: June 13, 2013, 08:53:38 PM »
Heaven Forbid was actually in my hand and ready to play last night, but then my eyes spotted Chicago Overtime instead and that was the end of that for the time being.

Oh...and Club Ninja ia awesome....

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #65 on: June 14, 2013, 09:16:38 AM »
That might be the first time I have ever seen/heard someone call Club Ninja awesome. :lol :biggrin:  Hopefully, you'll get back around to listening to Heaven Forbid.  :coolio

Poodar, that is kind of a cool story, although I generally do not enjoy a lot of science fiction.  I like most of B.O.C.'s lyrics, for sure, though.

Offline Jaq

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #66 on: June 14, 2013, 09:51:37 AM »
Well I thought it was clear that I thought Club Ninja was awesome.  :rollin
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Mighty kingdoms rise, but they all will fall, no more than a breath on the wind.

Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #67 on: June 14, 2013, 09:52:46 AM »
Hmmm, you said it was underrated, but I didn't know that was to mean you thought it was awesome.  My bad.

And really?? :biggrin:

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #68 on: June 14, 2013, 10:01:39 AM »
Poodar,

 :'(

I thought we were bros? *sniff*
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Offline KevShmev

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Re: Blue Oyster Cult - The official thread
« Reply #69 on: June 14, 2013, 01:55:27 PM »
Oops. :facepalm: :lol