DreamTheaterForums.org Dream Theater Fan Site
General => General Music Discussion => Topic started by: Podaar on May 23, 2014, 02:19:49 PM
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Blue Öyster Cult (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1810980#msg1810980)
Tyranny and Mutation (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1812449#msg1812449)
Secret Treaties (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1813712#msg1813712)
Agents of Fortune (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1815978#msg1815978)
Spectres (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1819766#msg1819766)
Mirrors (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1821793#msg1821793)
Cultösaurus Erectus (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1822273#msg1822273)
Fire of Unknown Origin (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1823755#msg1823755)
The Revölution by Night (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1824725#msg1824725)
Club Ninja (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1826278#msg1826278)
Imaginos (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1827783#msg1827783)
Heaven Forbid (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1830135#msg1830135)
Curse of the Hidden Mirror (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1832208#msg1832208)
The Symbol Remains (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg2711396#msg2711396)
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Introduction
I’m going to start out with a little different method than the other discography threads. To appreciate where BÖC was coming from, I feel it is crucial to understand the importance of their manager/producer first. In 1967, Sandy Pearlman was a philosophy grad who was also a New School Fellow in sociology and was part of the progressive scene around Greenwich Village. He’d also been writing articles for Crawdaddy! magazine, the pioneers of rock criticism.
His immersion into the New York rock scene gave him access to musicians as well as the connections to help bands get signed. He began to develop ideas for a band based on what he was writing about. During his college days he’d written a series of poems called The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos or just Imaginos. These poems detailed a fictional history of a secret alien society behind two world wars. They were thick with Lovecraftian flavored themes of paranoia and the occult. He also imagined rock n’ roll as a vehicle for right-wing propaganda to control the unwashed masses (or conversely, as a defense against control) so, it was in his mind to find musicians with the talent to put his artistic vision to music.
When a good friend of his, Richard Meltzer (another rock critic), started hanging out with and writing lyrics for a band in Long Island, Pearlman was introduced to the core members of what would become BÖC. Pearlman sold his vision to the group and over the next several years they worked on refining the idea while playing clubs in and around N.Y. They struggled to get a record deal and had multiple false starts all with Pearlman at the helm as manager. With the success of Black Sabbath’s debut album and follow-up Paranoid, Pearlman and Murray Krugman saw a market for Sandy’s ideas and pushed the band to become the U.S. answer to Black Sabbath.
In 1971 the band got a record deal with Columbia, largely through Krugman’s efforts, and a brand new name; Blue Oyster Cult (the umlaut was suggested later by Allen Lanier). The name comes from Pearlman’s earlier mentioned Imaginos poetry.
Another interesting thing about Pearlman, and the band itself, is they largely saw the enterprise as a collaboration effort. People outside the band, that happened to be in their collective orbit, were involved in writing lyrics, music and even playing in the studio at times. From my point of view as a fan, this implies that egos were in short supply. Expect this topic to pop up as we go through the discography.
This brings us to:
Blue Öyster Cult (1972)
(https://i.imgur.com/N3Wkcvu.jpg)
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser - lead guitar, vocals
Eric Bloom - lead vocals, stun guitar, keyboards
Albert Bouchard - drums, vocals
Joe Bouchard - bass, vocals
Allen Lanier - rhythm guitar, keyboards
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Transmaniacon MC 3:21
I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep 3:10
Then Came the Last Days of May 3:31
Stairway to the Stars 3:43
Before the Kiss, a Redcap 4:59
Screams 3:10
She's As Beautiful as a Foot 2:58
Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll 4:03
Workshop of the Telescopes 4:01
Redeemed 3:51
Total length: 36:48
While the band was being promoted as heavy metal it’s probably more appropriate, in retrospect, to characterize the sound as hard rock. Buck Dharma has been quoted as jokingly describing the sound as light metal. The presence of distorted guitars is certainly prominent but more with nod to Steppenwolf and MC5 rather than the angular, doom heavy riffing of Black Sabbath. The compositions are firmly rooted in blues-based rock and at times Haight-Ashbury brand of psychedelica--genres that the band members cut their teeth on while touring around New York.
Right out of the gate, “Transmaniacon MC” sets the tone perfectly for BÖC ‘s signature sound and atmosphere. The guitars and organ explode with a sunny, almost welcoming, intro that declares the show has begun. Then almost immediately, it steps back into a restrained groove for the verses. Bloom snarls out Pearlman’s creepy lyrics, sung from the point of view of a secret cabal of bikers who deliberately brought about the horror of Altamont for their own obscure purposes: A beer-soaked, anthem for alien-illuminati in sleeveless leather jackets. The Bouchard brothers, jointly keep the rhythm on the back end of the beat, while Buck Dharma adds his fire-breathing lead in the middle section. A funky piece of trivia about this song is, it inspired 26 year old science fiction writer John Shirley to pen his first novel in 1979. Years later, he would write lyrics for BÖC on their Heaven Forbid album.
With tongue firmly in cheek, “I’m on the Lamb, but I Ain’t No Sheep” is an Al Bouchard written song that was popular with fans when the band toured as Soft White Underbelly. The original lyrics were reworked by Sandy, along with Al, to provide a pseudo-sadomasochistic sexual overtone. Buck’s soloing throughout the middle refrain of “ride, mush you huskies” is a highlight for me.
Next up is a haunting, soulful ballad penned by Buck. He also sings the lead vocal and his voice is so much softer than Bloom's that it really provides a nice contrast to the previous rockers. “Then Came the Last Days of May” details the tragic shooting death of two young men after a drug deal goes wrong in an Arizona desert. This song is a nice showcase for Buck’s softer, bluesy, lead sound and has always been a favorite with me.
“Stairway to the Stars” seems to be a dismissive swipe at autograph seekers. This is strange, because I’m sure no one in the band was being swamped by groupies or anything. :biggrin: Richard Meltzer wrote the lyrics and I can only assume he was imagining the annoyance...and the resulting dreams of violence. My favorite line is, “You can drive my motorcar, it’s insured to thirty-thou, kill them all if you wish.” Anyway, it’s a poppy tune, played to distorted guitars, with a nice hook chorus. Albert and Buck wrote the music, and it once again features some great leads by Buck.
Finishing out side 1, of the original album, is the bizarre and completely awesome “Before the Kiss, a Redcap.” Allen, and presumably Eric, chug out some pretty gritty guitar work, while Buck sprinkles accent leads at the end of each line of the plodding verses that bookend this song. Buck takes the lead vocals on this one, and frantically spits out the completely strange lyrics during the sinister, cartoonish, boogie of the middle section. I can’t be sure what’s going here, but there seems to be some organized effort, in a bar, to distribute “redcaps”, via tongue, between the fascist owners and their patrons?! The song ends with a big climax that allows Lanier the opportunity to exchange short lead runs with Buck.
I distinctly remember sitting there stunned the first time I listened to this record. I was eager, yet a little scared, to find out what was on the other side. :lol
“Screams”, that’s what’s on the other side! A rare writing contribution by Joe, this song is a spacey, psychedelic, drug-addled nightmare, in the tradition of the Doors or Jefferson Airplane. The song slowly builds through some tasty keyboards and wailing guitar, to end with a frantic drum roll that tumbles down the basement stairs, into one of the great moments of the record…
…a haunting guitar slowly cries the disturbing hook for “She’s as Beautiful as a Foot”. Another lyrical contribution by Meltzer with music by Albert and Allen, this is a voyeuristic love song for a cannibal with a foot fetish. I kid you not! Do you think this is relevant? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Brudos) I’ve always had a difficult time deciding if the band, and by extension Meltzer, intended this song to be funny. On the surface it would seem so, but Eric’s vocal delivery is disturbing enough that the comedy gets drowned by the horror.
Now we come to the BÖC’s signature song from this record. The record’s only single “Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll” was played frequently on FM radio in my town and thus this was the only song I was familiar with prior to getting the album. Buck and Albert are credited with writing this song, but while researching this album, I found out that, to a man, the entire band admits that the riff was directly lifted from “The Wizard” by Black Sabbath, since that’s who they were being pressured to sound like. It’s obvious now, and I’m amazed that it never occurred to me before. Anyway, it’s certainly the heaviest song on the album, with sludgy guitars and a thunderous staccato rhythm. Even though he didn't write the lyrics, Pearlman’s influence is on display--with imagery of an apocalyptic war fought with “three-thousand guitars” opposing each other in partisan camps devoted to Marshall and Fender. Rock n’ roll as a weapon, baby. The lead vocal is provided by Albert and his warbling voice provides a perfectly subtle menace.
“Workshop of the Telescopes”, is medium-light rocker, with a mystic vibe that seems to pack eight minutes of material into 3-1/2 minutes. Pearlman made an interesting choice when mixing this song, in that he placed the guitars directly over Eric’s vocals, and even cranked up their volume, on the last verse, effectively blurring them into incomprehensibility. I've read Sandy’s explanation of the lyrics, but the explanation seems as cryptic as the actual words. The gist is, the song describes an alchemical method to gain superior awareness to penetrate the lies of the political establishment. Pretty trippy, eh?
The album closer, “Redeemed”, is an upbeat, countrified folk tune, in the tradition of the Grateful Dead and was also a holdover from the Soft White Underbelly days. Writing credits go to Albert and Allen along with Harry Farcas. Farcas was a folk guitarist, and roadie, who worked for the band and helped them work out this song. See what I mean about their collaborative spirit? The song is deceptively light-hearted--disguising a sinister story by Pearlman of a man imprisoned in ice, tortured by an evil group, and his eventual redemption by teaching their children a country song. But was he released or did they just speed along his death to release him from pain? The ending seems to infer the latter. Blue Öyster Cult would revisit this particular motif throughout their career and this is the aesthetic of theirs that I love the most. In my mind this is the spiritual forbearer of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and its ilk.
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A note on credits: Eric Bloom is credited on nearly every album as playing “stun guitar”. As near as I can tell this is an inside joke with the band about his playing ability (or lack thereof) and possibly the amount of fuzz he uses in his distortion. Also, the album credits list him as co-song writer on Transmaniacon MC, I’m on the Lamb, and Workshop of the Telescopes but he admits that the band was pretty free with credits and that he only helped smooth out vocal melodies.
A happy accident for the band came in the form of their album art and the now famous “hook and cross”. Bill Gawlik (I laugh every time I read that name) was an eccentric designer that Sandy Pearlman knew from Stony Brook University. According to Sandy, Gawlik was designing a future America on a scroll that was long enough to encompass the school. Some of the designs on this scroll appealed to Sandy as potential album covers. The hook and cross was just part of Gawlik’s drawing but not long after the album came out the band members and their friends started seeing the emblem showing up at concerts and around Long Island. It added to the mystery and ominous overtones they were hoping to inspire. They adopted it permanently.
The album was well received by the U.S. east coast press. It gathered in some glowing reviews and even a positive review by Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone! Lester hates everything! It sold pretty well too, got some radio play and the band embarked on long nationwide tour for nearly two years to promote the album.
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So what do you think? Did they accomplish what they set out to do? Did Columbia finally have their answer to Atlantic’s Black Sabbath and Warner Bros’ Alice Cooper? In my mind, yes…but not, perhaps, in the way they intended. Sabbath was a scary music act in the vein of gothic monster movies and Cooper was a psychotic slasher gore-fest. BÖC was more akin to a psychological thriller, paranoid conspiracy theory or alien invasion. You may need to listen closer to get your chills. The musicianship and songwriting was top notch but there was also an overlaying mood that they maybe hadn’t quite bought into the heavy metal scene completely. In some ways they were seriously executing a parody, or so it seems to me. Insincere? That being said, I love this debut album and in my mind it’s right up there with the greatest debuts ever. When I want a fix of BÖC, this album is generally the one I reach for along with a couple others that we'll get to later.
In 1972 I turned 11 years old and wouldn't buy my first stereo until later that same autumn (I saved my money from working on a neighboring farm all summer to buy it). I heard “Cities on Flame” during the Skinny Johnny Mitchell show on Stereo X FM many times but I would not buy my first BÖC album for few years yet. I backed into this album, along with their sophomore and junior efforts, several years later.
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Yes!! Definitely will be following and contributing heavily in this thread. :)
Don't have time now, but I'll post my thoughts on the debut later today or tomorrow... :hat
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Yes!! Definitely will be following and contributing heavily in this thread. :)
Don't have time now, but I'll post my thoughts on the debut later today or tomorrow... :hat
Yeah, I maybe should have waited until Tuesday to post this but I'm curious to see who will be interested other than us! :lol I'm not sure how often I'll be able to check in over the long weekend but I'll see what I can do.
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When I've got a couple of hours of downtime, I'll read the OP. ;D I'm not sure what'll take longer... reading it, or listening to the album.
But, following and shit.
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I just got the box set!! I need to download but I'm in!
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Thats one hell of an OP, Pod! Very interesteing. As DTF's biggest Alice Cooper fan, i appreciate the references.
I didnt realize Cities On Flame was a track from 1972!
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Thats one hell of an OP, Pod! Very interesteing. As DTF's biggest Alice Cooper fan, i appreciate the references.
I didnt realize Cities On Flame was a track from 1972!
Alice was a big influence to them. After the release of their album, they did like an eleven city tour (if I'm remembering correctly) as the opening act for Alice Cooper (the band) and Eric Bloom has been quoted as saying it was really important for their development as stage act. Until then they had only played bars and smaller venues so learning the ropes of "arena shows" from AC was a big deal.
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Thats very interesting. Those early Alice Cooper albums are incredible, especially for the years they were released. There is some incredible and thoughtful spngwriting.
I still maintain that the original Alice Cooper band is the most underrated American rock band.
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I still maintain that the original Alice Cooper band is the most underrated American rock band.
Frank Zappa agreed with you!
I'd love to get into that with you sometime TAC! I was a big fan up until around '75 or so (although my collection was hit and miss) there just always seemed to be other music I wanted more.
Is there a AC thread here?
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Following. Not heard anything from this other that Cities On Flame.
Not the biggest fan up to now - will this change? Of to Spotify I go.
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I still maintain that the original Alice Cooper band is the most underrated American rock band.
Frank Zappa agreed with you!
I'd love to get into that with you sometime TAC! I was a big fan up until around '75 or so (although my collection was hit and miss) there just always seemed to be other music I wanted more.
Is there a AC thread here?
Things got a little sketchy after 75. I thought there was an AC thread a few years ago. Yeah, we'll have to take it there sometime!
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My only experience with BOC came with the Don't Fear the Reaper greatest hits set, and I love every song on that album. I only explored the self-titled recently, but it's a really nice debut. Some of the songs are kind of forgettable, but I absolutely love Transmaniacon, Last Days of May, and Cities on Flame. Cities in particular sticks out for its brilliant structural choices. The keyboard lead-in to Buck's solo sets it up so wonderfully.
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Wait, is this an Alice Cooper thread, or a B.O.C. one? :lol
Anyway, I didn't get any of the first three B.O.C. albums for several years after becoming a fan. My friends Matt and Mike, both of whom got me into the band, were both very high on the band, but only from Agents of Fortune forward. Mike, in particular, talked about how horrible he remembered the earliest CDs sounded, sound quality-wise, when he originally checked them out, so being that he was sort of my music guide back then, and I wasn't rolling in cash then and couldn't just buy any CD I wanted at the drop of a hat, like I can now, I took his word for it. However, after seeing the band several times over the years, I noticed that they always played tons of songs I didn't know, and I knew everything from Agents of Fortune through Imaginos (their most recent album at the time), so I figured those songs had to be from the first three albums. At some point, we saw them at Riverport, the outdoor venue here in St. Louis, and we had 2nd row center, and at some point, nearly everyone in the first two rows was in the front row and the area in front of the stage, and nearly everyone was getting high, literally except me and a few others. However, there was some so much smoke, that I am pretty sure I got a second hand high, it was awesome, and it enhanced the awesomeness of this fairly long song the band played that had one of the most awesome guitar solos I had ever heard. I had no idea what the song was, but I knew it was awesome. Assuming it had to be from one of those early albums, weeks later I stumbled across one of those 3 CD-packs that Columbia records used to sell back in the day for like $15 or so, and it was the first three B.O.C. albums, so I finally figured, what the hell, and got them. It didn't take me long to figure out that that song I was in search of was Then Came the Last Days of May.
Now, the fact that the studio version was only 3 1/2 minutes long was slightly disappointing, but that vocal melody had been stuck in my head since the concert, so I was thrilled to finally have it. And it's still a favorite of mine. As for the rest, I, of course, recognized the Cities on Flame riff, as that gets played at every B.O.C. show, but everything else was pretty much new to me. I can't say I like every song from it, but I have always loved Before the Kiss, a Redcap and Redeemed a ton, and I think Transmaniacon MC is a pretty kicking track 1 off album 1 song. Even though it's a live favorite of the band's, Stairway to the Stars has always been just an okay song for me, and while I like the creepy vibe of She's As Beautiful..., the song falls a bit flat. Fortunately, that is a vibe the band would not only revisit quite often, but do way more justice to in the future at letting the songwriting match the coolness of the vibe. I have no use for Screams, and while I like I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep, especially cause the title is awesome, they improved it drastically when they reworked it for the second album.
Overall, this is a very solid first album, despite the rather dreadful sound quality, even by 1972 standards. I am not sure I would recommend this to someone who isn't familiar with the band, as I can see many not wanting to explore any further after hearing this, but I think it's interesting to go back to after hearing almost everything else and seeing what they sounded like at the start. I usually don't take that stance, but with this band, I do.
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Listening now, this opening track is outta sight! And for a 1972 album, I am not noticing any glaring sound issues.
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Just finished listening. Nice album. I guess Then Came the Last Days of May would have been considered a ballad back then, but it feels like more of a blues track imo. The nod to The Wizard from Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll is pretty obvious when you're listening for it.
Not nearly as heavy as Paranoid, but I can totally have seen that being the comparison. I could also totally have seen me going all in with BOC 25 years ago. Absolutely nothing bad about this album, it's just a few degrees off what I prefer to explore nowadays. I'm sure if I gave it multiple listens, I'd be all over it like a cougar on a wounded chicken. I just don't have the disposable time to do so - considering I still have a few TFK albums to absorb.
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Just finished this. I love exploring older albums, you can dig fairly deep without taking all day to do so :lol
At any rate, my first time ever hearing this album. Absolutely fantastic, I can easily see myself returning to this again and again.
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So I had all the albums except for Imaginos which was my only CD so I haven't listened for years. I'm loading all the box set disks now and I'll delve into the self titled today!
BTW, I saw them in April and here was the setlist.
This Ain't the Summer of Love
Golden Age of Leather
Burnin' for You
Dancin' in the Ruins
Harvest Moon
The Vigil
ME 262
Then Came the Last Days of May
Godzilla
(with Bass and Drum Sllos)
Guitar Solo
(Don't Fear) The Reaper
Encore:
Hot Rails to Hell
Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll
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I'll definitely be following this thread. I've only heard the greatest hits, and would love to check out more of the back catalogue. I love the cover art.
That sounds like quite the show, Kev!
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A Blue Oyster Cult thread, oh yes. :metal
It is significant that you started with Sandy Pearlman, since he truly was the driving force behind the band throughout its heyday-which wound up being problematic later, as only Martin Birch really understood how to produce them other than Pearlman-but it was his vision that guided the band in the early years. I mentioned this in my write up of Secret Treaties in my top 50 thread, but time has dulled how dangerous a band early BoC were-they produced peerless high octane rock that owed musically as much to Steppenwolf and the Doors as the early metal bands they were positioned as the answer to-but the lyrics tended to be unsettling and bizarre.
The debut suffers from sound, and BoC doesn't quite exist yet-Secret Treaties is arguably when the BoC we recognize today finally snapped into focus-but I'm trying to imagine how people reacted to it when it came out, and the likely reaction was "what the fuck is THIS?" Strong debut, though I'm fonder of Tyranny & Mutation and Secret Treaties out of the first three.
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And for a 1972 album, I am not noticing any glaring sound issues.
For me, it's especially glaring whenever I listen to B.O.C. on random play. Whenever anything from the first album plays, the drop-off in sound quality, compared to almost everything else, is severe. However, unlike some of the next few albums, at least the debut does have some low end in the mix.
I guess Then Came the Last Days of May would have been considered a ballad back then, but it feels like more of a blues track imo.
That is how I see it, too. Definitely more bluesy than balladry. :lol
That sounds like quite the show, Kev!
Oh, it was. :hat :metal
A Blue Oyster Cult thread, oh yes. :metal
It is significant that you started with Sandy Pearlman, since he truly was the driving force behind the band throughout its heyday-which wound up being problematic later, as only Martin Birch really understood how to produce them other than Pearlman-but it was his vision that guided the band in the early years. I mentioned this in my write up of Secret Treaties in my top 50 thread, but time has dulled how dangerous a band early BoC were-they produced peerless high octane rock that owed musically as much to Steppenwolf and the Doors as the early metal bands they were positioned as the answer to-but the lyrics tended to be unsettling and bizarre.
The debut suffers from sound, and BoC doesn't quite exist yet-Secret Treaties is arguably when the BoC we recognize today finally snapped into focus-but I'm trying to imagine how people reacted to it when it came out, and the likely reaction was "what the fuck is THIS?" Strong debut, though I'm fonder of Tyranny & Mutation and Secret Treaties out of the first three.
Me too, but we'll get to those soon enough. :coolio
I do wonder what the reaction was to B.O.C. at the time back then as well, although who knows how much radio airplay those early albums got, if any. Even when our classic rock stations would play some deeper B.O.C. cuts back in the day, they were never ones from the earliest albums.
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I'm gonna follow and listen to the album later this evening, but man, the OP is making me feel better about the post I'm writing to start the Pink Floyd discography thread.
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Just finished listening. Nice album. I guess Then Came the Last Days of May would have been considered a ballad back then, but it feels like more of a blues track imo. The nod to The Wizard from Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll is pretty obvious when you're listening for it.
Not nearly as heavy as Paranoid, but I can totally have seen that being the comparison. I could also totally have seen me going all in with BOC 25 years ago. Absolutely nothing bad about this album, it's just a few degrees off what I prefer to explore nowadays. I'm sure if I gave it multiple listens, I'd be all over it like a cougar on a wounded chicken. I just don't have the disposable time to do so - considering I still have a few TFK albums to absorb.
Yup, Chad is spot on. Enjoyed my listen. Some good stuff. Would have been a fan if I'd heard this back in the day (had I not been 4 years old). Some nice guitar. Production sounds solid for the time.
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I think they accomplished what they set out to do.
I really have a fondness for those first three albums. That's your blueprint right there.
Oddly enough I was listening to Cult Classic a few days ago (The one were they rerecorded everything) and it's interesting to notice the difference from the original recordings. I don't think they quite caught the spirit on that.
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I'm taking a break from my weekend activities to respond to a few things that have come up.
First of all, I think we are getting conflicting comments about the quality of the recording because the 2001 reissue sounds so much better than the previous releases. Although there is no mention of remixing or remastering something was done because if you compare my vinyl to the 2001 reissue there is a marked difference in volume and treble. The original vinyl is quiet and very thick sounding. On the reissue you can hear some upright piano in spots where none existed previously. I didn't think to bring up the sound of the original recording in the OP because I just plain forgot.
Speaking of the OP, I get the feeling that some folks have a little heartburn with the length of the write-up?! :lol Trust me, I paired that sucker down tremendously compared to what could have been in it. The mountains of text that have been written about the origins and the people surrounding BÖC could fill an entire thread by itself. I also took a clue from the excellent Chicago discography thread of Orbert's. So, if there are no real objections I'll stick with the format I'm inspired to use.
I guess Then Came the Last Days of May would have been considered a ballad back then, but it feels like more of a blues track imo.
That is how I see it, too. Definitely more bluesy than balladry. :lol
My bad. I was thinking ballad in the tradition of blues storytelling, i.e. The Ballad of John Henry.
Overall, this is a very solid first album, despite the rather dreadful sound quality, even by 1972 standards. I am not sure I would recommend this to someone who isn't familiar with the band, as I can see many not wanting to explore any further after hearing this, but I think it's interesting to go back to after hearing almost everything else and seeing what they sounded like at the start. I usually don't take that stance, but with this band, I do.
Are you saying that you don't recommend this album or not to listen to it first?
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I gave this a listen yesterday and I must have the remastered or remixed version as the sound wasn't bad at all. Was very similar to a lot of early 70's/late 60's recordings that I've listened to honestly. I'm only vaguely familiar with BoC. I know some hits, some deeper cuts and I love Fire of Unknown Origin (the album) which is just packed to the gills with goodness, but I've never really been able to truly get in to any of their other albums. They've always seemed a bit uneven in quality, some great songs and some that are forgettable. It's hard to judge an album after just one listen, but some songs definitely stood out a lot more than others. Transmaniacon, Stairway to the Stars, Cities on Flame..., and Before The Kiss, A Redcap immediately stood out to me. I also liked Then Came The Last Days of May, but after it was over I couldn't remember a single thing. You're As Beautiful As A Foot has a really cool, creepy atmosphere, but the lyrics do not compliment that at all being more comedic in tone.
Overall, this was actually a pretty good debut. BoC's bizarreness is on full display here, although it's fairly unpolished at this point, they do get better at incorporating that heavy rock groove with weird lyrical subject matter later on. Also, I'm not sure if anyone else thought this but Eric Bloom (I think it was Bloom) sounded a lot like Joe Strummer on some songs. He didn't quite have that untempered, punk energy but I immediately thought of Strummer right as the vocals kick in on Transmaniacon.
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Overall, this is a very solid first album, despite the rather dreadful sound quality, even by 1972 standards. I am not sure I would recommend this to someone who isn't familiar with the band, as I can see many not wanting to explore any further after hearing this, but I think it's interesting to go back to after hearing almost everything else and seeing what they sounded like at the start. I usually don't take that stance, but with this band, I do.
Are you saying that you don't recommend this album or not to listen to it first?
I was saying that I think it'd be better to start elsewhere, but given that some here listened and liked already, I could very well be wrong. :lol I am probably just going off my experience of not hearing it until years after becoming a fan.
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Pod, just listened to Trans MC. I see what you are saying about the Alice Cooper influence. That song could have easily been lifted from Love It To Death or Killer.
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I think the self-titled is a fine place to start for BOC newbies. There's a lot of great stuff on that record. Probably a bit more consistent than most of the albums the hits came off of as well.
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As someone who has heard the original vinyl version-get off my yard, ya whippersnappers-even by the standards of 1971 the debut sounded awful. Subsequent releases have helped, but the vinyl version was kind of bleh.
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As someone who has heard the original vinyl version-get off my yard, ya whippersnappers-even by the standards of 1971 the debut sounded awful. Subsequent releases have helped, but the vinyl version was kind of bleh.
Thank god for Spotify then!
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I think the self-titled is a fine place to start for BOC newbies. There's a lot of great stuff on that record. Probably a bit more consistent than most of the albums the hits came off of as well.
That might be true for Don't Fear the Reaper and Agents of Fortune (which has their most hideous song ever, which we'll get to...), but definitely not of the others.
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As someone who has heard the original vinyl version-get off my yard, ya whippersnappers-even by the standards of 1971 the debut sounded awful. Subsequent releases have helped, but the vinyl version was kind of bleh.
Thank god for Spotify then!
Almost any number of unsavory gods have been thanked!
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While we are on the subject of reissues. The 2001 reissue has four bonus songs that are from the Soft White Underbelly demos.
Donovan's Monkey Meltzer, A. Bouchard 3:50
What Is Quicksand Meltzer, Lanier 3:40
A Fact About Sneakers Meltzer, A. Bouchard 2:50
Betty Lou's Got a New Pair of Shoes Bobby Freeman 2:34
In my opinion every one is an automatic skip and not relevant to their catalog. Buck Dharma has mentioned that he really liked Donovan's Monkey but even he admitted that it's not really a BÖC song. I bring this up because some of the other reissues do have rare song's and B-sides that may be interesting to discuss. I'll bring them up as we go get to each one.
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Figuring that I might as well join in and do this chronologically, the debut is now officially the first BÖC album that I have heard - not counting (Don't Fear) The Reaper, which I am passingly familiar with.
I liked it. It as nothing mindblowing, at least for the most part, but I definitely like their style - very groovy, with a weird vibe going on. My favourites are the opening three tracks and the closing three tracks - I don't much care for the middle part of the album, oddly enough. While they are nice enough to listen to and have some cool stuff going on, they are all ultimately quite forgettable. We'll see if this changes on repeated listens.
Buck Dharma's guitar playing is pretty much all kinds of awesome, especially on Then Came the Last Days of May and Cities on Flame. He's not really shredding, but there's no denying that he's a skilled guitar player and what he does on the whole album is completely awesome. Love the vocals as well, in almost every song, though I have no idea who does which vocal part.
I have a feeling that this band might turn out to be my next big discovery. Will give this album a few more spins over the week and then advance to the next album as this thread advances as well.
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Very cool Scorpion! :tup
Let us know if the middle of the album grows on you. It does with most people but as always, results may vary.
Buck Dharma's guitar playing is pretty much all kinds of awesome, especially on Then Came the Last Days of May and Cities on Flame. He's not really shredding, but there's no denying that he's a skilled guitar player and what he does on the whole album is completely awesome. Love the vocals as well, in almost every song, though I have no idea who does which vocal part.
Buck is largely the virtuoso of the band although some argument could be made for Albert as well. The first album he pretty well sticks with blues licks but "Cities" does foreshadow some of the pyrotechnics that are yet to come. I don't want to get ahead of the game just yet though--I need fodder for my next wall of text. :lol
I truly hope you enjoy the discography. BÖC may not be my favorite band, nor have they ever really been, but their music has been an important and enjoyable part of my life. Of course, us fans always want others to feel the same way!
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Let us know if the middle of the album grows on you. It does with most people but as always, results may vary.
It's already growing. On my second listen, I have to say I'm enjoying Before the Kiss and Stairway to the Stars a lot more, and Screams is quite cool now that I'm paying closer attention. The only track I really don't care for is She's As Beautiful as a Foot. The vibe is nice, and the lyrics are hilarious, but it just doesn't really work, even though I like the main guitar melody. I dunno, it's just not very memorable.
I'd say that Cities on Flame is my tentative favourite, but really, most of this album is great. A very consistent debut. :tup
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BÖC may not be my favorite band, nor have they ever really been, but their music has been an important and enjoyable part of my life. Of course, us fans always want others to feel the same way!
This sums it up for me, too! They were a borderline top 5 band for me for a bit of time in the late 90s, and they will always be a nostalgic favorite of mine. :hat
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Also, I'm not sure if anyone else thought this but Eric Bloom (I think it was Bloom) sounded a lot like Joe Strummer on some songs. He didn't quite have that untempered, punk energy but I immediately thought of Strummer right as the vocals kick in on Transmaniacon.
Holy shit! I just looked up who Joe Strummer is and my jaw dropped when I saw he is in the Clash! King, you do realize who produced Give 'Em Enough Rope? The above oft mentioned Sandy Pearlman! Do you suppose the vocal similarities are calculated? BÖC has been mentioned as an influence by many punk and proto-punk artists.
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BOC , like most bands of the 60's and 70's, didn't really play a big part in my life and I'm gradually working my way back to many of them. For the most part the further back I go the less I like but after hearing a few tracks off this debut I can see potential for further interest.........sounds like a more interesting, ballsier Stones at first bite. Will be sure to get onto them shortly.
So much music, so little time.
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So much music, so little time.
Amen
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Also, I'm not sure if anyone else thought this but Eric Bloom (I think it was Bloom) sounded a lot like Joe Strummer on some songs. He didn't quite have that untempered, punk energy but I immediately thought of Strummer right as the vocals kick in on Transmaniacon.
Holy shit! I just looked up who Joe Strummer is and my jaw dropped when I saw he is in the Clash! King, you do realize who produced Give 'Em Enough Rope? The above oft mentioned Sandy Pearlman! Do you suppose the vocal similarities are calculated? BÖC has been mentioned as an influence by many punk and proto-punk artists.
I guess I should've said that Strummer sounds like Bloom, and not the other way around as BoC predates The Clash.
I did not know that Sandy Pearlman produced that Clash album but I think Strummer sounding like Bloom was something that predated Sandy's involvement. The wikipedia entry on Give 'Em Enough Rope actually mentions that Sandy attempted to drown out Strummer in the mix because he hated his voice. I don't know how true that is, but that's pretty funny. :lol
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Tyranny and Mutation (1973)
(https://i.imgur.com/uh76iVP.jpg)
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser - guitar, vocals
Eric Bloom - lead vocals, stun guitar, all synthesizers
Joseph Bouchard - bass, vocals and keyboards
Albert Bouchard - drums, vocals
Allen Lanier - keyboards, rhythm guitar
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Side one - The Black
The Red & The Black 4:20
O.D.'d On Life Itself 4:47
Hot Rails To Hell 5:12
7 Screaming Diz-Busters 7:01
Side two - The Red
Baby Ice Dog 3:29
Wings Wetted Down 4:12
Teen Archer 3:57
Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl) 5:08
Total length: 38:11
2001 CD reissue bonus tracks
Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (live; originally from the promo-only Blue Öyster Cult Bootleg EP) 4:44
Buck's Boogie (studio version) 5:22
7 Screaming Diz-Busters (live; from the band's personal archives) 14:01
O.D.'d on Life Itself (live; from the band's personal archives) 4:52
Nearly constant touring since the release of their eponymous album had a huge effect on this second installment of BÖC’s “black and white period”. While most of the effect is positive in the sense that the musicianship tightened up, the band’s confidence grew, and their enthusiasm for their chosen genre became apparent. The negative is they didn't have much time to write and completely flesh out these song ideas. This album produced a couple of live favorites that were featured for decades but the studio arrangements feel unfinished in some way. Perhaps the fact that they only spent three days recording the album had some effect?
Krugman and Pearlman were again at the helm of production. The sound of the original recording, curiously, is a polar opposite from the first record. Gone is the muffled, cloudy vibe to be replaced with a harsh, bright treble and understated low end. When asked about the sound, Albert commented, “There was a train of thought in those days that this trebly sound was good. And there wasn't so much concern with ‘How is this going to translate to a home system?’” Still, he did say that in spite of the thin sound he still thought the aggression came through. The 2001 reissue has a little more bottom end, but still, if you crank the reissue up in my truck until the subwoofer gives you a nice thump the symbols and vocals might gouge your eardrums out.
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Side 1: The Black
Wow, this first tune sounds familiar!? The Red and The Black is a sped up, heavier, version of I’m on the Lamb, But I Ain't No Sheep. It also has been extended with a jam in the middle in place of ‘mush you huskies’. While the band was touring they felt they needed an opening number that would ‘knock people over’ so Lamb was reworked…to great effect I might add. This song graphically shows what the band could do given the time necessary to perfect a composition. Eric’s vocal performance just oozes swagger while Buck displays his typical virtuosity, but the Bouchard brothers really steal this number. The bass and drums are the highlight in my view. A truly great concert tune and the undisputed signature song of Tyranny and Mutation.
O.D.’d On Life Itself is a bouncy little blues number with a brooding chorus. Albert and Joe wrote the music presumably with help from Eric to smooth out the vocals. Some sumptuous guitar leads and bluesy piano are the highlights here. The tight performance and catchy tune still can’t save this song from the odd Pearlman lyrics and meandering ending. In my mind it’s a short song that sticks around for too long and is my least favorite from the ‘black side’.
Hot Rails To Hell is a metal showcase written and sung by Joe. This song would become a concert favorite on level with Cities On Flame and while it’s a great little number, again, I think it suffers from being unfinished. It’s almost like the band couldn't figure out how to end it so they just opted for, “Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVlTeIATBs&feature=kp)
Now this is what I'm talkin’ ‘bout! 7 Screaming Diz-Busters is a terrific realization of the ultimate BÖC sound--brash lead vocals belting out dangerous lyrics to fast heavy metal riffs that are contrasted nicely with great vocal harmonies in the chorus. Add in a fun jam toward the end where everyone gets a chance to show off you start to get a feel for the band live. Albert, Joe and Buck get the writing credits with Pearlman providing the lyrics again. I always got a ‘bikers from hell’ vibe from this song but I recently read that when asked about the meaning of this song, Albert laughingly explained that a “diz” is the cleft of a penis and “duster’s dust” is sperm. I’m not really sure how to feel about that. :lol I’ll let everyone make up their own minds about the lyrics.
On to side 2: The Red
When the band was writing Cities On Flame, they were hanging out at Johnny Winter’s apartment in New York and were introduced to his friend Patti Smith who was loft-sitting at the time. Over the next several years Patti became good friends with the band and at some point began a relationship with Allen Lanier. Prior to the first album she gave some lyrics to Albert to put to music but he was never able to make it work. The band liked her lyrics and it would still be several years before she donned her tarnished crown as the high-priestess of punk. For this album he was determined to do her poetry justice and the result is Baby Ice Dog. Howling dogs bookend this jazzy-blues track and Eric struggles mightily to make Patti’s lyrics fit to the music. I don't know, the music isn't bad, and the evocative lyrics are cool but the two never seem to gel.
Joe again takes the vocal lead on Wings Wetted Down. He and Albert wrote the music and Joe penned the lyrics. Joe admits to the song being somewhat of a word salad but to me it works better than the previous track in evoking a troubling aesthetic and fits the rhythm much better. As usual for a Joe song, the music takes on a Doorsy (or early Pink Floyd) feel of the darker tradition. Buck plays a pretty cool lead in the bridge with some odd distortion. I know a lot of fans like this song but it’s pretty forgettable to me.
Speaking of forgettable…Teen Archer. Ok it has some terrific keys by Allen and even though it seems light-weight on first listen it gets heavier the more times you hear it. Buck sings this song and his voice just doesn't fit well…I think Eric or even Albert should have taken the lead vocal. They lyrics are the least imaginative ones produced by Meltzer.
I'm sure I'll get some flack for this but I really like Mistress Of The Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl). To me this is another black comedy classic by the band. The evil music fits in superbly with the story of a woman who fertilizes her precious plants with the decomposed remains of her (or others) murder victims. I love the creepy wailing guitar work and twisted fun of the organ and synth sounds.
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The bonus songs on the 2001 release are all great. In fact, I'd spin the live versions of Diz-Busters and O.D.’d On Life Itself over the studio any day of the week, even if Diz-B does have a clichéd ‘sold-my-soul-for-rock-n-roll’ moment in it.
Buck’s Boogie is a instrumental jam that has been played thousands of times live but this is the only studio recording I know of.
The live Cities On Flame must be heard! Albert pounds the crap out of his kit while venomously spitting out the vocals.
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The album cover is once again supplied by Gawlik and this is the only cover in their catalog styled as The Blue Öyster Cult. Gawlik also provided the album title during a visit to the studio, using the words to describe the cramped working environment.
I like this album, but that’s not particularly surprising is it. I love that Buck trades in some of his blues leads™ for some napalm flavored metal leads. I really feel that all of the performances are tight and everyone sounds confident, even enthusiastic, about what they're doing--particularly Albert and Joe.
Still I don't find it as satisfying as the debut. I'd even say it’s not really an essential record unless you're already a big enough fan that you'd still enjoy the more scattered moments. What is essential on this record is available on other volumes, whether they be live albums or compilations like Workshop Of The Telescopes.
Again, I didn't really delve into this release until later in the ‘70’s. By the time I did get it, I’d already heard the signature numbers many times live and off the live albums. When we all started switching to CD’s I put off buying Tyranny and Mutation for many a year and currently I only own the 2001 release. Somehow, over the decades, I misplaced my vinyl. For shame.
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The album artwork so far reminds me of MC Escher.
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Yep, this is the CD where the low end disappeared on their albums for a while. Fortunately, most of the songs are all really good. The vibe on this record is pretty killer, and I love both sides for what they are. Oddly, when I got into this one, I fell in love with Side 1 immediately, while Side 2 was very much of an afterthought for a bit of time, but I eventually came around to liking it a lot as well, although Baby Ice Dog kind of stands out as the weakest of the bunch. Still an enjoyable tune when listening to the whole record, but not one I ever seek out on its own. 7 Screaming Dizbusters was an instant favorite, and Mistress of the Salmon Salt and Teen Archer were sneaky sleepers that I've grown to really dig a lot. Seeing Teen Archer live in the late 90s definitely helped its cause. :metal
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Just had a listen. It was ok. Similar to the first one but didn't impress as much. Prefer the sound of this one maybe.
Track 2 was poor. Diz Busters was good.
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Honestly, I think their middle era (later 70s- early 80s) is their most consistent and has most of their best stuff, so don't fret if this really early stuff isn't doing it for ya.
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I've got to get on the horse and load all the disks onto I-Tunes so I can play catch up on this thread.
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I like Tyranny and Mutation well enough, but Red and Black and 7 Screaming Diz-busters so utterly destroy the rest of the album that I seldom listen to the rest of it.
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I like Tyranny and Mutation well enough, but Red and Black and 7 Screaming Diz-busters so utterly destroy the rest of the album that I seldom listen to the rest of it.
Agreed. Like I said in my write-up the fact that both those tunes are available elsewhere makes it easy to see why this album isn't still selling like the other discs coming up.
Still, I encourage BÖC fence-sitters to give it a few listens on Spotify and such. You never know what might grab you! Maybe not you specifically Ultimate, but other readers. :)
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Christ, I looked everywhere on Spotify and can't find Tyranny and Mvtation anywhere. Must be the hardcore original vinyl release. :biggrin:
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Try searching for Blve Öyster Cvlt. It may help! :lol
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I bought Tyranny and Mutation at, of all things, a yard sale in the neighborhood for something like a dollar back in around 1982-83 or so, and as such, the only songs I knew on it were The Red and the Black and Hot Rails To Hell, and both of those from Extraterrestial Live. As the early days of BOC don't resemble much the band out at the time-at least in the studio, live BOC was always a different beast-my initial reaction to it was "What. The. Fuck?" Later on, I grew to appreciate side one somewhat, but side two never clicked for me and I set early BOC aside.
About ten years ago I bought Secret Treaties largely on a whim, and that CD made early BOC click for me in a way listening to it as a teenager who had been sold the bill of goods that BOC was a full out metal band would never have. I went back and listened to Tyranny and Mutation and wow, did that motherfucker JUMP out at me this time. Side 1 is brilliant, side two is utterly underrated, okay Teen Archer is still disposable but its early days, and even BOC's flat out masterpieces have songs that work less well (why, hello there, Cagey Cretins), so why not their second. Good to great album, though it's odd these days listening to all the songs sung by others that later wound up being sung by Eric Bloom on later tours. I'd flat out forgotten until now Joe sang anything in the band's discography. Next one is when it gets interesting for me. :metal
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Hmmm, I am not getting Teen Archer being forgettable or disposable. Okay, it's not that great, but it's certainly better than Baby Ice Dog, no?
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Just had a listen. It was ok. Similar to the first one but didn't impress as much. Prefer the sound of this one maybe.
Track 2 was poor. Diz Busters was good.
Lowdz, did you try the live version of O.D.'d from the 2001 reissue? You can find it on Spotify...it's much better.
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Hmmm, I am not getting Teen Archer being forgettable or disposable. Okay, it's not that great, but it's certainly better than Baby Ice Dog, no?
Not really. I think the music of Ice Dog is just as good and the lyrics are way better than Archer. My biggest problem with Ice Dog is the rhythm of the words don't match the music well.
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Hmmm, I am not getting Teen Archer being forgettable or disposable. Okay, it's not that great, but it's certainly better than Baby Ice Dog, no?
Not really. I think the music of Ice Dog is just as good and the lyrics are way better than Archer. My biggest problem with Ice Dog is the rhythm of the words don't match the music well.
What Podaar said. :lol
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Just had a listen. It was ok. Similar to the first one but didn't impress as much. Prefer the sound of this one maybe.
Track 2 was poor. Diz Busters was good.
Lowdz, did you try the live version of O.D.'d from the 2001 reissue? You can find it on Spotify...it's much better.
It was on the album I listened to I believe, but I just listened to the regular tracks.
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The first time I sang along with seven screaming diz busters -"lucifer the light"- my inner repressed Catholic was shocked. This album isn't as essential to me as Secret Treaties which for a few years now has been one of my favorite albums ever but holds my respect as ST's predecessor. In its own right -the red side with the rock and groove; the black with the mythology and spaciness - it is the earliest BOC album that I love.
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The first time I sang along with seven screaming diz busters -"lucifer the light"- my inner repressed Catholic was shocked.
Yeah, my long-repressed Mormon boy is chuckling nervously.
That does bring up an interesting aspect of the music and BÖC's overall image. I'm sure that Sandy Pearlman was serious about his artistic vision of the whole evil, alien, alchemical, secret cabal of fascists bikers sowing strife through rock 'n roll but it's also obvious that the band members thought it was just a lark. While they always maintained they were serious about making the best music they could it was increasingly obvious that some members were uncomfortable with their fans taking the stage act too seriously. Listen to the way Eric delivers the line "and the joke's on you" from Flaming Telepaths during live performances. Also, I think it's interesting that Buck resisted the leather costumes that Helen Wheels was producing for their stage act.
But none of that was new. All the scary-for-the-fun-of-it acts were constantly being labeled Satanic, thus, Ozzie's words, "People think I'm crazy but I'm in demand. Never heard a thing I said."
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I like Tyranny and Mutation well enough, but Red and Black and 7 Screaming Diz-busters so utterly destroy the rest of the album that I seldom listen to the rest of it.
When I read this yesterday, I thought you were suggesting that these two songs destroy the album (ie, they suck, so they bring the album down). So, in my head I was expecting these two to be bad-to-mediocre (I hadn't read Pod's post... did that while listening to the album). So as I'm listening to these two tracks, I'm thinking "what the fuck was UMH talking about? These are awesome".
I think I actually prefer this to the s/t. Sure, the sound is kinda 'tinny' with the treble so prominent, but I enjoy it overall. Nice little guitar solo in WWD.
Cool album.
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I like Tyranny and Mutation well enough, but Red and Black and 7 Screaming Diz-busters so utterly destroy the rest of the album that I seldom listen to the rest of it.
When I read this yesterday, I thought you were suggesting that these two songs destroy the album (ie, they suck, so they bring the album down). So, in my head I was expecting these two to be bad-to-mediocre (I hadn't read Pod's post... did that while listening to the album). So as I'm listening to these two tracks, I'm thinking "what the fuck was UMH talking about? These are awesome".
I think I actually prefer this to the s/t. Sure, the sound is kinda 'tinny' with the treble so prominent, but I enjoy it overall. Nice little guitar solo in WWD.
Cool album.
You've really made me a happy man! I'm going to continue to allow my son to keep the name Chad.
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Nice little guitar solo in WWD.
Buck Dharma is a terrific guitar player, so if you keep listening as we go along in this thread, be prepared to hear a shit ton of great guitar solos. :hefdaddy
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I'm trying to decide if today is the right time to post the next album. What do you think folks--have we listened to Tyranny and Mutation enough? Would Monday be better?
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The sooner, the better. :biggrin:
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I'm on going on a vacation-conference-vacation trip next week, so I'm gonna be out of the loop, catching up on the 10th. Knock yourself out.
I'm trying to stay away from the posts about each album until I have a chance to listen to them - I want to digest the writeup and the listening experience at the same time. So fear not Gregg ... I'm reading.
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Alrighty then. Without further ado.
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“Rossignol’s curious, albeit simply titled book, the Origins of a World War, spoke in terms of secret treaties, drawn up between the Ambassadors from Plutonia and Desdinova the foreign minister. These treaties founded a secret science from the stars. Astronomy. The career of evil.”
Secret Treaties (1973)
(https://i.imgur.com/rkWt4RE.jpg)
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser - lead guitar, vocals
Eric Bloom - lead vocals, keyboards, stun guitar
Albert Bouchard - drums, vocals
Joe Bouchard - bass, vocals
Allen Lanier - keyboards, rhythm guitar, all synthesizers
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Career of Evil 3:59
Subhuman 4:39
Dominance and Submission 5:23
ME 262 4:48
Cagey Cretins 3:16
Harvester of Eyes 4:42
Flaming Telepaths 5:20
Astronomy 6:28
Total length: 38:35
2001 CD remaster bonus tracks
Boorman the Chauffer 3:13
Mommy 3:32
Mes Dames Sarat 4:07
Born to Be Wild 3:40
Career of Evil (single version) 3:00
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“…an endless cycle of write the album, record the album, tour the album.” That, my friends, is a direct quote from Eric Bloom in regards to the ‘black and white period’ of the band. Albert Bouchard has said that the first three albums are all one big blur to him. When asked, Buck Dharma opined that they are all part of the same book and Secret Treaties is the final chapter. So the formula remained the same: Write while on tour, rehearse in hotels, go back to NY and record, head back out on the road, rinse and repeat. Pearlman and Krugman mixed the album while the band was on tour using the same techniques as previously and the thin sound really upset the band. They vowed to always be in studio for the mixing from here on out.
Something had changed though. The guitars were still aggressive but what would become the signature, smooth Blue Öyster Cult tone began to surface. The humor and horror were right out front but perhaps with a bit more flair. Instead of pounding you in the face with the opening tracks and then going out with a whimper, the album builds up to the heavy rockers and then goes out in a climactic epic fashion not explored previously. Besides, read the song titles above. In order. That’s the coolest set of song titles that ever existed, Mang!
The album got rave reviews all over the music industry and sold very well hitting number 53 on the Billboard 200 in 1974 eventually being certified gold in 1992.
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Albert and Patti got together on Career of Evil and finally created a perfect realization of her vision. This laid-back, jazzy number catalogs the musings of a villain as he plots a life of mayhem and terror. Eric sneers out equal parts ominous nonsense and direct threats that bounce along happily with Allen’s Hammond organ and Buck’s soaring atmospheric guitar. Columbia wanted to release this as a single but made the band change one of the lines for the single. The album version is unedited. This is a true BÖC classic that still sounds fresh to me after all these years.
Without pause--ladies, fish and gentlemen--Subhuman gradually picks up the pace with this Pearlman imagined anthem to the Blue Oyster Cult themselves. The chugging guitars during the verses showcase the ‘smooth but heavy’ signature tone I mentioned earlier and they compliment Buck’s lead sound perfectly. Eric dials back on the vocals enough that he even sounds a little like Buck. There are some progressive elements to this song that I think many of the forum members could really sink their teeth into. A great song and it translates very well to a live setting. Many years later, the song will get lengthened and re-imagined on Imaginos.
A ticking clock at the end of the previous track sets the pace for Dominance and Submission. For many fans, me included, this is where the dagger spiked rubber hits the fuckin’ road. The strange lyrics (about the onset of world domination by rock and roll, beginning with the arrival The Beatles in America) are belted out by Albert. There’s a completely awesome call and respond section where the other members of the band mechanically harmonize ‘dominance’ while Albert’s ‘submission’ gets increasingly intense and insane. The big, heavy metal finish with Buck ripping out some smokin’ leads abruptly ends this awesome biker tune.
ME 262, in my mind, is a send-up of the Beatles Back in the U.S.S.R: It has that traditional Chuck Berry-ish rock n’ roll vibe but with some heavier guitars. Think of it as a kind of Beach Boy rockin’ homage to Nazi pride. The juxtaposition of the warlike lyrics and the happy rocker is hilariously inappropriate and I never really come to the end of this song feeling as clean as when I started. “Hitler's on the phone from Berlin, Say's I'm gonna make you a star!” Seriously?! :lol The band got in a bit of trouble for this one, being labeled anti-Semitic. Hello? Sandy Pearlman? Murray Krugman? Folks just weren’t paying attention.
Ok, on to side 2.
Cagey Cretins is a short, cartoonish, Albert written hard rocker to a Meltzer lyric. Presumably it’s a tribute to idiots who somehow cause mayhem and get away with it. Many fans are annoyed with the “ooo, cagey” backing vocals feeling that it makes the song unnecessarily silly. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t want it any other way! Again, funny and ominous is a vibe I love and is part of what keeps me coming back to BÖC year after year. This is one of the few songs that have co-lead vocals with Eric taking the verses and Albert the chorus. They should have used this combination more, IMO. It rocks.
It’s difficult to describe the Harvester of Eyes; Part Motown, part metal, part funk, part Silence of the Lambs, with a seriously heavy blues ending. Yup, that about does it!
A music box opens up the quasi-progressive piece Flaming Telepaths. With music written by Eric, Albert and Buck that brilliantly captures the darkly spiritual mood of Pearlman’s lyrics. There are more twists, turns and rhythmic changes than one normally finds with this band but ones that you always felt were waiting to be explored. There’s an elegant maturity to the music that gives the lyric more weight and beauty. It also segues perfectly into…
…another piece of the Imaginos puzzle that is Astronomy. Building on the mood of the previous track, a soft symbol counts out a tense rhythm while a jazz piano quietly paints a dark canvas for the verses. There’s a palpable mood here that invokes a moonlight stroll beside a nearly silent beach. The clock strikes twelve and moon-drops burst, Out at you from their hiding place, Like acid and oil on a madman's face, His reason tends to fly away. Sublime! The song traverses a few hills and valleys before triumphantly soaring to the finish. It really is, basically, a simple song but executed in such a way that it became BÖC’s epic. Now, from the viewpoint of a prog-forum like DTF that’s nearly laughable but there is no denying the epic feel of this seven minute album closer. Let’s call it a mini-epic.
When the band began rehearsing Astronomy and playing it live prior to recording Albert would sing it from behind the kit. When they got in the studio he attempted to sing it, “about a hundred times and got worse and worse each time. Finally Sandy asked Eric to sing it and he did it perfectly in one take.” I can’t imagine that, the voice of Cities on Flame and Dominance and Submission singing this gorgeous tune? Na.
With all due respect to Stephen King, Buck Dharma, Albert Bouchard, Sandy Pearlman and Metallica, This is THE arrangement.
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I’ll leave the 2001 bonus songs from the remastered CD to the discussion since this post has already gone on too long. If anyone is interested in my take on them let me know.
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The artwork for this album is nothing special in my book. It was produced by the CBS/Columbia art department and depicts the band posing in front of an ME 262 fighter jet. A skeletal pilot is in the cockpit. Eric is holding the leash of several German Shepherds that are aggressively menacing the camera. The back cover shows the jet in motion (taking off?) with the dogs slaughtered on the tarmac. The band didn’t really like the cover and I don’t blame them.
This is a go-to album for me and many fans of the band. I find no weaknesses in the song selection and the 2001 remaster fixed many of the glaring sound issues of the original LP. Not only do I think this is an essential part of a BÖC fan’s collection I’d even stress that it’s an essential part of any rock music fan’s collection.
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Per my story about the debut, I got this at the same time as the first two albums, and I have to admit that songs like Subhuman and Astronomy were difficult for me at first since I had known the Imaginos versions of both (where Subhuman became a song actually called Blue Oyster Cult), and these "new to me" old versions seemed to lack the enthusiasm, fire and energy of the versions I already knew. I eventually came around to liking both, though I still prefer the later versions of both. However, Harvester of Eyes and Flaming Telepaths were immediate grabbers; I loved both of those pretty much right away. The rest of Side 1 was to my liking as well (I recognized Dominance and Submission from having seen it live several times). While Career of Evil seems so simple and laid back, it just works. ME262 is a great rocker, featuring some great vocal harmonies, an underrated strength of the band.
Overall, damn fine record; a definite top 5 B.O.C. album in my book. :tup :tup
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Isn't it funny how our perceptions are so different. When I heard Imaginos with its...well, we'll get to that later, but these are the definitive versions to my ears. I'm certain that if I'd done it back to front like you have I'd feel differently.
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This is what I said about Secret Treaties in my top 50 list, where it ranked #32:
Blue Oyster Cult are known mainly these days for a couple of radio friendly singles in (Don’t Fear) The Reaper and Burnin’ For You (if they’re even known for the latter these days) and maybe for being the band that did the song about Godzilla. They’re a safe classic rock band. And anyone who has heard Secret Treaties knows that BOC is about as far from safe as you can get. BOC at their best fueled high octane straight up rock via the MC5 and Steppenwolf with a downright bizarre lyrical sense. Blue Oyster Cult didn’t sing about sex and drugs and rock and roll, they sang about piloting German jet fighters and bizarre alien conspiracies and seemed to be a rock band from the Twilight Zone. Anything who thinks they know BOC and haven’t heard Secret Treaties needs to hear it and find out just how little they really know about BOC.
Goes without saying then that this is, by far, my favorite Blue Oyster Cult album. It's not quite perfect-I'm one of the ones that finds Cagey Cretins to be silly-and like Kev, I find later versions of songs on this to be occasionally better. (Dominance and Submission is better when Eric Bloom sings it, not a knock on this version, which has a kind of charming, early punk charm to it) but this is when Blue Oyster Cult finally figured out who they were. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant album.
For what it's worth, the later version of Astronomy I like is the one on Some Enchanted Evening; though the Imaginos version has its charms and is pretty catchy at times, it just loses the mystical sense of menace in the original arrangement.
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Isn't it funny how our perceptions are so different. When I heard Imaginos with its...well, we'll get to that later, but these are the definitive versions to my ears. I'm certain that if I'd done it back to front like you have I'd feel differently.
Probably, and the crazy thing is, it's not like I heard the original versions a few weeks or months after hearing the Imaginos versions; it was literally YEARS! So, to say those later versions were ingrained in my head would be an understatement, hence the Secret Treaties versions throwing me for a major curveball.
Dominance and Submission is better when Eric Bloom sings it, not a knock on this version, which has a kind of charming, early punk charm to it
I definitely agree with this. It's a very fun live song, with the way Bloom gets the audience involved during the chorus. :hat
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Good album overall. The bookends are the runaway highlights (Career, Subhuman, Flaming Telepaths, and Astronomy), and the mid-section of the album isn't too shabby either. The closing salvos are probably two of my favorite BOC songs by miles and miles. They play off each other so well.
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Dominance and Submission is better when Eric Bloom sings it, not a knock on this version, which has a kind of charming, early punk charm to it
I definitely agree with this. It's a very fun live song, with the way Bloom gets the audience involved during the chorus. :hat
I admit to being biased since Dominance and Submission was BOC's first song when I saw them open for Rush on the Power Windows tour, but it did do an amazing job of getting 13,000 people going. :metal
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So since downloading the remastered CD's I can say there is a great progression in the first 3 albums. Secret Treaties is by far, leaps and bound for BOC. I was lucky enough to see them in 83 and taped all the albums off my buddy who was a nut for them so I'm glad to dive into these albums after decades of not listening to them.
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Just finished Tyranny and Mutation. Enjoyable, but I liked the first album more.
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...and just finished Secret Treaties. Best one so far. Fantastic listen.
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So since downloading the remastered CD's I can say there is a great progression in the first 3 albums. Secret Treaties is by far, leaps and bound for BOC. I was lucky enough to see them in 83 and taped all the albums off my buddy who was a nut for them so I'm glad to dive into these albums after decades of not listening to them.
That's how I look at it. There's a lot o growth there and Some Enchanted evening is icing on the cake.
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Bump just to say that I am happy to see them getting some new fans and getting older fans interested again. :hat
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Bump just to say that I am happy to see them getting some new fans and getting older fans interested again. :hat
Yes, I echo Kev's remark, I'm quite pleased with the interest. I really appreciate everyone's contributions and comments. Thank you.
Good album overall. The bookends are the runaway highlights (Career, Subhuman, Flaming Telepaths, and Astronomy), and the mid-section of the album isn't too shabby either. The closing salvos are probably two of my favorite BOC songs by miles and miles. They play off each other so well.
I agree completely, Ultimetal! Great comment.
I admit to being biased since Dominance and Submission was BOC's first song when I saw them open for Rush on the Power Windows tour, but it did do an amazing job of getting 13,000 people going. :metal
In 1974 Rush and Mott The Hoople were opening acts for BÖC. Events would vary wildly for all three of them over the next few years!
So since downloading the remastered CD's I can say there is a great progression in the first 3 albums. Secret Treaties is by far, leaps and bound for BOC. I was lucky enough to see them in 83 and taped all the albums off my buddy who was a nut for them so I'm glad to dive into these albums after decades of not listening to them.
What did yo think of Mommy off the Secret Treaties remaster? :rollin
Just finished Tyranny and Mutation. Enjoyable, but I liked the first album more.
...and just finished Secret Treaties. Best one so far. Fantastic listen.
I couldn't be more pleased that you are enjoying these so far. :hefdaddy
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Yeah, this is really my first time exploring them in depth. I knew the radio hits, and I knew they were a successful band with lots of fans, but I just never got around to them like this before.
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On Your Feet or on Your Knees (1975)
(https://i.imgur.com/fUw5uFb.jpg)
Eric Bloom - vocals, stun guitar, synthesizer
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser - lead guitar, lead vocals on "Before the Kiss" and "Last Days of May"
Allen Lanier - rhythm guitar, keyboards
Joe Bouchard - bass, lead vocals on "Hot Rails to Hell"
Albert Bouchard - drums, guitar, lead vocals on "Cities on Flame"
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Subhuman 7:30
Harvester of Eyes 4:55
Hot Rails to Hell 5:55
The Red and the Black 4:33
7 Screaming Diz-Busters 8:27
Buck's Boogie 7:40
(Then Came The) Last Days of May 4:35
Cities on Flame 4:08
ME 262 8:47
Before the Kiss (A Redcap) 5:05
Maserati GT (I Ain't Got You) 8:59
Born to Be Wild 6:36
Total length: 78:13
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This is a very important album for Blue Öyster Cult for several reasons. First, it provides a kind of postmortem on the first three albums while giving fans an opportunity to experience the energy and atmosphere of their live act. Let’s face it, up to this point BÖC was not a significant studio band but as a performing act they were unrivaled. Second it sold well—better even than their studio albums and hit number 22 on the Billboard 200, eventually being certified gold in 1977. This provided them with enough riches to approach their next album differently: Which we will get to. Third, once it was recorded it fulfilled their obligations to CBS/Columbia for a record which gave them a break from the studio for an extra year—affording them more time to write new songs.
There’s no reason to do a blow-by-blow commentary on each song since we’ve covered them pretty well already so I’ll stick with impressions of the performances.
The previous albums are represented by three songs each. In addition there is Buck’s Boogie, a not so subtle homage to Beck’s Boogie, written as a live instrumental by the band to showcase Buck’s guitar prowess. There are two covers as well; a reimagined version of The Yardbirds I Ain’t Got You with different lyrics referring to a Murray Krugman’s dream car; and a pretty faithful rendition of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild. In my mind the song selection suffers from the curious omission of Transmaniacon MC.
A notable difference in the tone of the live guitars when compared to the studio gives this album a much heavier feel than you’ve gotten previously. I can bear witness that this was the case since I saw them many times from 1976 up through the 1980’s. BÖC was a completely different animal at their shows and their ominous overtones were exchanged for a high energy metal vibe. Even the creepy Subhuman and Harvester of Eyes take on a less threatening and more rocking tone on this record.
The band wasn’t completely happy with the performances, or recording for that matter, and during interviews they expressed frustration that stage monitors were commonly poor during the tour. They frequently played without being able to hear themselves or their band-mates clearly. Still, they resisted the temptation to over-dub in the studio and I’m certainly glad they didn’t. I think the performances are amazing. Sure, there are little hitches during solos or minor miscues but that’s part of the charm and excitement of a live performance, right?
Eric Bloom is terrific and clearly shows why he was one of the premier front men in rock. You’ll note a severe drop off in lead vocals when Joe sings Hot Rail to Hell and I’d love to see what it sounds like if Eric were to sing it. Albert is terrific throughout the album—you simply must hear how fast he plays The Red and The Black. While Joe isn’t a standout on the bass he isn’t a distraction either…he was really fun to watch though. Allen’s signature honky-tonk piano playing makes few appearances due to the song selection but he always did prefer playing guitar anyway. One of the great surprises with this band is that live harmony and background vocals are pretty consistent with the albums! I feel this is a greatly underrated talent of BÖC. Buck is Buck…just one jaw dropping lead run after another. His skill and feel are off the charts no matter what jazz, blues, country or rock style he’s playing any given time.
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I’m not exactly sure why live albums were so popular in the ‘70’s but they certainly were. Maybe because of the party atmosphere…you know, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. If you didn’t live through it, it’s a little hard to describe. Whatever the reason, it was difficult to find a kegger on a Friday or Saturday night that wasn’t playing this album or Live In Japan or Another Band from L.A., or Frampton Comes Alive or, well you get the idea. I, of course, was familiar with this record during those times as a kind of soundtrack to trying to get laid but it wasn’t until a few years later that I actually bought it for my own collection. Only in the context of my familiarity with the ‘Black and White’ era of BÖC did this album become mandatory.
As for a modern forumcentric side note: OYFooYK is fun to say!
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Live albums were very popular in the 1970s, and I suspect it was because they came closer to capturing the essence of bands in an era where touring your ass off and playing live was immensely important than studio albums did. They also tended to be released strategically, usually at the point in a career where a band had put out a few albums and had a fanbase in a wide variety of regions. The commonly accepted version of the 1970s generally is "live albums didn't sell until Kiss did it" (which, to be fair, is something largely Gene Simmons says a lot) but the success of this one proves that a lie very quickly.
Of the three live albums of the early days of BOC (I am not sure how many they've done since Extraterrestial Live if any, to be honest), this one is arguably the least of the three, but that doesn't mean it isn't very good. The live album did also seem to stand as a dividing line in eras of a band-Rush is perhaps the finest example of this-and On Your Feet Or On Your Knees is a great capstone for the black and white era of BOC.
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Not being a big live album guy, I never bought this, but after checking out a bit of it on YT a while back, I did buy the individual mp3s of The Last Days of May and Before the Kiss... from amazon, as I think both are a little better than the originals. I haven't updated my B.O.C. car mp3 CD in years, but the next time I do, I will likely include those live versions instead of the originals from the debut (or both, if room permits).
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Before we move on I'd like to point out this isn't an appreciation thread and I enthusiastically invite all comments readers might have that are critical of the albums, the band aesthetic or the songs themselves. The number of views compared with the number posts suggests there may be some opinions not being expressed. I'm genuinely curious!
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Before we move on I'd like to point out this isn't an appreciation thread and I enthusiastically invite all comments readers might have that are critical of the albums, the band aesthetic or the songs themselves. The number of views compared with the number posts suggests there may be some opinions not being expressed. I'm genuinely curious!
I've been following the thread, but I just haven't had the time to sample as we go. But when I eventually do, this thread will be my guide.
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Before we move on I'd like to point out this isn't an appreciation thread and I enthusiastically invite all comments readers might have that are critical of the albums, the band aesthetic or the songs themselves. The number of views compared with the number posts suggests there may be some opinions not being expressed. I'm genuinely curious!
I've been following the thread, but I just haven't had the time to sample as we go. But when I eventually do, this thread will be my guide.
I'm sure that's true of some other folks as well. I should also point out that, for personal reasons, I've been deliberately moving a bit fast with the updates. There may be a week or two when I can't update and I'd like to supply enough fodder for conversation during my potential absence.
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I cherrypicked a few songs from this live album to see how I liked them, and was quite impressed. Buck's Boogie was awesome, and Red and Black seriously cooks on this disc.
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I cherrypicked a few songs from this live album to see how I liked them, and was quite impressed. Buck's Boogie was awesome, and Red and Black seriously cooks on this disc.
Indeed! :tup
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“Your boned like a saint, with the consciousness of a snake.”
Agents of Fortune (1976)
(https://i.imgur.com/j1m3sZE.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion
Albert Bouchard – drums, vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion, harmonica
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser – guitar, vocals, synthesizer, percussion
Joe Bouchard – bass, vocals, piano
Allen Lanier – keyboards, vocals, guitar, bass
Additional musicians
Patti Smith – vocals on "The Revenge of Vera Gemini"
Randy Brecker – horns
Michael Brecker – horns
David Lucas – vocals, keyboards, percussion
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This Ain't the Summer of Love 2:21
True Confessions 2:57
(Don't Fear) The Reaper 5:08
E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) 3:43
The Revenge of Vera Gemini 3:52
Sinful Love 3:29
Tattoo Vampire 2:41
Morning Final 4:30
Tenderloin 3:40
Debbie Denise 4:13
Total length: 36:35
2001 CD reissue bonus tracks
Fire of Unknown Origin (original version) 3:30
Sally (demo version) 2:40
(Don't Fear) The Reaper (demo version) 6:20
Dance the Night Away (demo version) 2:37
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With more time on their hands and some cash in their pockets everyone in the band purchased four or eight track recorder that they could demo their song ideas on. Even though individual credits had been doled out on previous albums all the members agreed that songs were largely a group effort and credit was given only to the originators. Up until recently the band had mostly lived together in a ‘band house’. They rehearsed there, partied there, and wrote their songs together there. But now, with the influx of girl friends and wives they were starting to spread out. Still, the band attracted an ever increasing circle of friends, poets and assorted intellectuals. The collaborative spirit was still intact. For now.
Driving the recording of a new album was a desire to get a higher fidelity studio recording with all the (cow?) bells and whistles, plenty of overdubs and layers they previously hadn’t had access to or could afford. The CBS/Columbia studios were deemed unfit so they moved into The Record Plant armed with demos from each of the song writers.
Pearlman, and Krugman were still at the producer helm but the band was pushing back on their vision somewhat. They were more willing to advocate for their own songs, lyrics and ideas and the producers relented some. Since David Lucas was more receptive to the bands ideas they leaned on him the most for production and engineering, ushering in a new era for the band.
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Out of the gate is the curiously simple and short metal anthem This Ain’t the Summer of Love. Obviously a statement piece announcing that flower power is dead and the hippie generation is over. The lyric was provided by a friend of Krugman’s one Don Waller but Murray didn’t like it in its original state and sliced it up. Albert put it to music and an uncharacteristically abrasive distortion was selected for the guitars. It’s a decent opening piece with a catchy chorus and nice harmonies. Not the greatest or most original of guitar solos by Buck though.
So the summer of love is gone, now we go back to the early ‘60’s for an R&B piano and drums piece? WTF? True Confessions is a faithfully executed pop tune by Allen Lanier in the tradition of Chubby Checkers. About the only thing that recommends it an awesome sax solo by Randy Brecker.
There isn’t much reason for me to describe (Don’t Fear) The Reaper but I would like to point out that Buck has vehemently denied the song is an endorsement of suicide pacts and would be horrified to think someone would ever use it as justification for such. I don’t doubt that is true but given BÖC’s historical ‘pleasure from fear’ modus operandi, and Buck’s intelligence, I do think it’s unlikely that he didn’t expect the song to be misconstrued. Just listen to the bridge section with its doom laden vibe that conjures images of menacing shadows and approaching death. That part wouldn’t be out of place on any of the earlier Opeth albums. A triumph of song writing and a true rock classic that probably still provides the band with monthly royalty checks as well as nightmares of trying to reach its level of success.
E.T.I. is classic Cult at it’s finest. Heavy, catchy, spooky and delivered with a menacing bravado that is tailor made for their live shows. This is the second Buck written tune in a row and the only one from this album using a Pearlman lyric. A tale of aliens, abductions and men in black (long before a movie was ever imagined) it’s predictably suitable for the whole Imaginos saga. For those who’ve seen the HBO series True Detective you may understand the brand new chill I recently got from this song during, “The King in yellow, Queen in red” from the second verse. *shudder*
Speaking of chills, holy shit, the first time I heard the intro to The Revenge of Vera Gemini I nearly pissed my britches. Not only are words disturbingly compelling but Patti Smith’s delivery and the way the recording is so…in your ear…it’s startling. Memorable. This is another fantastic pairing of Patti and Albert. His music and voice is very fitting for her poetry and adds a predatory layer I don’t believe she intended. I like the way the bass has this expansive effect that calls to mind a soundtrack from a spaghetti western or something. The atmospheric keyboards are layered nicely and paint a fine background canvas for Patti’s vocal duet with Albert. Not always, but at times this is my favorite song from the album.
Side two starts with Sinful Love another Albert song but this time written to go along with a Helen Robbins lyric. Helen (a.k.a. Helen Wheels) had been hanging with the band for years, designing and sewing costumes and at some point in the early ‘70s was Albert’s girlfriend. She was something of a poet herself and actually wrote Sinful Love about her unhealthy fascination with Patti Smith. The song is kind of a jumpy rocker that Albert says never turned out to be as heavy as he intended. Buck busts out a nice, plucky guitar solo in the middle. I find the backing vocals a little grating and out of place. It’s a catchy little tune but could have been much better.
Tattoo Vampire starts out with a palm-muted scratching that heralds the most metal song on the record. Another Helen/Albert collaboration but this time with a terrific vocal by Eric. I think this is a fun song but pretty pared-down and perhaps a little too comical. It is trademark BÖC humor but without enough pyrotechnics to make it truly interesting.
Joe’s contribution to the album is Morning Final with his typical lyrics about the horrors of New York City and the subways (see also Hot Rails to Hell). For good measure he sings about a murder victim that may or may not be a reference to a friend of the band who was shot dead a few years earlier. The music is a macabre sort of keyboard driven piece with a nice guitar intro that never really comes back around so the guitar solo in the bridge seems a bit misplaced.
Tenderloin is a really cool Allen Lanier tune sung terrifically by Eric. It’s a smooth jazzy number with some intriguing instrumentation both by keyboards and guitar. The bass plods along interestingly while the sparse drums give the rhythm section a disjointed feeling. There’s no heaviness here but it still feels like an appropriate addition to the spooky BÖC canon. To me the song can be seen as a caustic condemnation of the whole hippie scene of the sixties and the destructive realities of the drug culture and free love.
Lastly we have probably the weakest album closer in BÖC’s catalog Debbie Denise. I don’t know what to say! The music and vocals are just…not very good to my ears. I get the feeling the Patti Smith lyrics deserved a much better treatment. She seems to be lamenting having ill-used a loved one. A very rare Albert train-wreck that may have actually been a deliberate swipe at pop ballads.(?) Listen to the very end as it fades out…are the background ‘la-la-la-la’s intentionally snide or are they just bad? If it is intentional, as a fan that spent good money I feel a bit cheated.
Okay, it’s a little funny. :)
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I heard The Reaper on the radio just prior to getting out of school for the summer of ’76 and was blown away. I remember calling the DJ a couple of dozen times before I could get through to ask who it was. About 10 minutes later he came on the air and told people to stop calling: He would play the new song by Blue Öyster Cult again! :lol
I was still obsessed with 2112 that I’d picked up just a month before and I wouldn’t start my summer job for a few weeks yet. So a combination of necessity (I was saving money for a car) and contentment kept me from buying AoF until later that summer when I picked up Rocks, Boston (I hadn’t heard Boston and only grabbed it on the recommendation of the record-store clerk) and Rainbow Rising at the same time. Ah, what a time for music!
The album cover freaked the hell out of me and some of the songs confused my fledgling musical tastes so Agents of Fortune didn’t really sink in with me until I saw the band live that same winter. Holy shit, the laser show was the coolest thing ever and the music was liquid energy. I went back and picked up the ‘black and white’ era albums and really loved them even more. Agents isn’t a bad album and it certainly has some certifiable classics but it’s not my favorite for sure. I definitely rate the self-titled and Secret Treaties much higher. Some yet to come, even higher still.
[edit]
Agents of Fortune peaked on the Billboard album 200 at 29, was number 26 in the UK and 28 in Canada. The album was certified Gold in Canada in 1977 and Platinum in the U.S. in 1978. The single (Don't Fear) The Reaper was number 12 on the Billboard 100 and number 7 on the RPM 100 in Canada in 1976. Strangely the single didn't chart in the UK until 1978 where it reached number 16.
[/edit]
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1976: the best year in rock and roll history?
Yes. :biggrin:
For better or worse (Don't Fear) The Reaper changed the game for Blue Oyster Cult. For better is obvious: it was a hit, broke the band on a wider scale, and is a legitimately legendary rock song. The worse? It also, forever, made Blue Oyster Cult "the band that did (Don't Fear) The Reaper." It defined expectations for the band, made them a band that was supposed to do that again, when Blue Oyster Cult always had more tricks up their sleeves than that, and certainly hadn't set out to write a hit single when they made Agents of Fortune, it had just sort of happened. Still I guess it's better to be known for a legendary song than nothing at all.
Agents of Fortune is actually, believe it or not, my least favorite of the first five studio albums from BoC. I always liked side one, and never really had much time for the rest of the album. It's by no means bad, it's good, but given that it follows a personal all time favorite in Secret Treaties, it's going to come up short.
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Agents of Fortune is such a mixed bag for me.
Don't Fear the Reaper and E.T.I. are the two obvious monster classics, and for good reason; both are most awesome.
I have a fondness for Morning Final, and Tattoo Vampire and The Revenge of Vera Gemini are both really nice, as well.
True Confessions is the worst shit the band has ever put on a record. It's laughable how bad this song is.
Tenderloin and Debbie Denise both have nice melodies in there somewhere, but in both cases are buried underneath a massive amount of cheese. :lol
This Ain't the Summer of Love and Sinful Love are both solid tunes, but nothing I go out of my way for.
So, even though I like most of the songs on this, I do not rate it very high in the B.O.C. catalogue. For one, the flow is not very good, and for two, it just seems like they bounce from style to style, with no rhyme or reason, and it comes off sounding like a collection of songs that were just thrown on the album in no discernible order, and since there are, IMO, only several essential tracks, the album, as a whole, suffers for it.
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1976: the best year in rock and roll history?
Yes. :biggrin:
*nods*
Agents of Fortune is actually, believe it or not, my least favorite of the first five studio albums from BoC. I always liked side one, and never really had much time for the rest of the album. It's by no means bad, it's good, but given that it follows a personal all time favorite in Secret Treaties, it's going to come up short.
I totally get that and I agree completely.
True Confessions is the worst shit the band has ever put on a record. It's laughable how bad this song is.
You'd mentioned earlier that AoF contained the worst BÖC song so I was very interested to find out if it was True Confessions or Debbie Denise because honestly it could have been either one. :lol
So, even though I like most of the songs on this, I do not rate it very high in the B.O.C. catalogue. For one, the flow is not very good, and for two, it just seems like they bounce from style to style, with no rhyme or reason, and it comes off sounding like a collection of songs that were just thrown on the album in no discernible order, and since there are, IMO, only several essential tracks, the album, as a whole, suffers for it.
That's the thing right there isn't it? It's actually quite jarring when the ethereal (and now quite famous) guitar starts for Reaper after having been bludgeoned with the Limburger that is True Confessions. It was so confusing as a young music lover.
I get that the band had played many styles of music over the years and loved a wide variety of genres but someone, anyone, should have tried to mold a little more cohesion out of them. Maybe True Confessions could have been cool if they had made Allen come up with a more ironic lyric and thrown some heavy rhythm guitar in with the piano. Maybe Debbie Denise could have been sung by Eric and added some nice bluesy guitar leads. Who knows?
And speaking of guitar leads; where is the famous Buck Dharma during this record? It seems awfully sparse in the virtuosity department. Why was there no blistering extended solo section in This Ain't the Summer of Love? It seems like a perfect place for one. In fact, if they had a nice instrumental section during the opener and then added another verse afterword they could have done away with track two entirely! :biggrin:
We're probably all completely wrong in our assessment anyway. The record did sell a million copies...ooo, I forgot the sales and certifications in the post. I should probably go back and edit it.
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I would give Don't Fear the Reaper most of the credit for this selling a million copies, since most of those sales likely happened long before you could buy individual songs from places like amazon and iTunes, so if you wanted that song, you had to buy the album.
Debbie Denise at least has a few nice things going on, even if several not-so good things make it all fall apart; True Confessions is nothing but awfulness all-around. :lol :lol
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It's the whole Albert warbling, "Debbie Denise was true to, MEEEEeeeeEEEEeeeeeeeeee, She waited by the window so patient, LLEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeeeeee"
Aaaaak!
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Didin't get around to commenting on the last album but I guess I would be saying the same thing about both - there's some great stuff on both but a fair amount of filler too.
I really liked This Ain't The summer, DFTR (duh), ETI, Tatto Vampire and Morning Final. The rest is ok but nothing I would go back to. Enoyed the production more on this one, seemed a bit more balanced. Enough nice touches and left turns to keep things interesting.
I keep coming back to the thought that had I heard these albums in '81-82 I would probably have become a huge fan of these guys. As it is I only heard DFTR, Godzilla and I did buy Cultosaurus but don't remember much about it other than The Marshall PLan (which was the reason I bought it back in the vinyl days).
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Lowdz, and anybody else for that matter, please feel free to refer back to previous albums at any time. I realize I'm cranking these out a bit fast but there will be a lul next week so please discuss any album we've presented.
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Yeah, this is really my first time exploring them in depth. I knew the radio hits, and I knew they were a successful band with lots of fans, but I just never got around to them like this before.
...and just finished Secret Treaties. Best one so far. Fantastic listen.
I'm a tad behind having been on vacation this week. Just got home at 11am this morning, and Secret Treaties was first on the listening docket. Very glad. Great listen. More than a couple of songs wow'd the fuck out of me. I do believe this will be purchase worthy when all is said and done.
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Listened to Agents of Fortune. Interesting to see some long-time fans give a few negatives about it. It was my favorite so far, probably due to the sound, and finally getting to something I already knew and loved from the band (Reaper). I thought it was a fantastic album.
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It's easy to just mention (Don't Fear) the Reaper in passing, since nearly everyone probably knows it already, but it really is a totally awesome song, and definitely worthy of the popularity it has always had (even long before the cowbell skit). And you won't find many guitar solos better than that one in it. :metal
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It's easy to just mention (Don't Fear) the Reaper in passing, since nearly everyone probably knows it already, but it really is a totally awesome song, and definitely worthy of the popularity it has always had (even long before the cowbell skit). And you won't find many guitar solos better than that one in it. :metal
Yes.
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What's funny to me, is that when I saw the Will Ferrell skit, I thought the original had cowbell. Turns out the original recording DOES NOT have cowbell. But, it good humor, they have started adding it at live shows. (and even had Will guest star on cowbell at a live show, I believe)
Feel free to correct me if any or part of this is not true. I'm going from memory.
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it's definitely there, it's just not up in the mix as high as the skit would lead you to believe.
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it's definitely there, it's just not up in the mix as high as the skit would lead you to believe.
Oh drat...now I have to go check again.
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1976: the best year in rock and roll history?
You and I (and Kev) will continue to debate, but 1971 would like a word with you.
Agents of Fortune was pretty mediocre - notwithstanding the brilliance of The Reaper.
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Well, I'm still alive (yes) and slowly working on the next update but I'm having difficulty sitting at the computer for very long. You see, my prostate decided that it wanted to kill me so on Monday I evicted it, as a bad tenant. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
While I work on the next write up I'd love to ask those of you who were fans of the band at the time what you thought the effect of BÖC's reputation had on their popularity? Once they got a bit of notoriety for Reaper people started to ask, who exactly is Blue Öyster Cult and the music media often responded with unfortunate descriptors like, "Metal for intellectuals," or "Intellectual metal", or worse "metal for people who hate metal". I knew one kid my age (a Black Sabbath freak) that refused to listen to them because they are "pretentious fu**ers." He had the same problem with Zappa so needless to say I didn't party much with him. :lol
Gene Simmons once told Eric Bloom, while BÖC and Kiss were simultaneously recording at the Record Plant that, "The kids don't want to buy poetry!" I think Gene was a bit miffed that Rolling Stone kept comparing the two bands and not favorably in Kiss' direction. Was he right? Should they have dumped the poets among them and just gone for a straight forward image and message?
I think it's an interesting question. I may be wrong.
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Well, I'm still alive (yes) and slowly working on the next update but I'm having difficulty sitting at the computer for very long. You see, my prostate decided that it wanted to kill me so on Monday I evicted it, as a bad tenant. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Hope all is good.
While I work on the next write up I'd love to ask those of you who were fans of the band at the time what you thought the effect of BÖC's reputation had on their popularity? Once they got a bit of notoriety for Reaper people started to ask, who exactly is Blue Öyster Cult and the music media often responded with unfortunate descriptors like, "Metal for intellectuals," or "Intellectual metal", or worse "metal for people who hate metal".
This might actually be a question that I am NOT old enough to answer. :lol
I have no recollection of them being touted as intellectual metal I just looked at them as a rock band.
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The term I remember Blue Oyster Cult getting hit with by magazines was "thinking man's metal"-Circus appeared fairly fond of that one-so Blue Oyster Cult had a reputation for being weird and brainy and intellectual music, which for once was a fair summary, because they WERE weird and brainy and intellectual. Was it unfortunate that they were described in terms that made other bands look bad? Yes. It was, in part, a side effect of the band being marketed as the American answer to bands like Black Sabbath-"hey these guys are a metal band, but they're kind of weird, uhm, yeah, they're thinking man's metal!"-but my memory at the time was it didn't really effect BOC so much. Just made guys like me chuckle at critics. There was a simple litmus test for me back then: does this band rock? And BOC certainly did.
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Thanks Jaq, I knew I was screwing up the term in some way. Yes, "thinking man's metal" is kind of insulting to fans of other bands and was probably detrimental to their image or so it seems to me. Good post.
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I am admittedly coming at this from a bias of being a hard rock and metal fan, so I imagine there were people who could look at BOC and think them pretentious, but most of the people I knew just ran with it. They rocked, end of story. :lol
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Considering the nature of Kiss, I am not surprised that Gene Simmons would feel that way, but considering that B.O.C. did pretty well for themselves for a long time, it shows how dead wrong he was. No, I am not saying B.O.C. was bigger than Kiss (they weren't), but they were still plenty popular for many years. Like Jaq said, they rocked, and for most people it ultimately comes down to the music. And besides, you'd have to be a fool to not recognize how well their lyrics went with their music. :metal
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I too am not quite old enough to address this. And given I didn't really get into rock music until the mid-80s, I can't comment.
Hope recovery is going well Gregg. Now quit your whining and give us an update, old-timer! :lol
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I think at the time, Cream and Circus started to use that term Heavy Metal with bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and BOC since some of their music was heavy. I just looked at them as a heavy hard rock band. They had diversity in their music. I think of metal bands as all the time metal songs.
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I too am not quite old enough to address this. And given I didn't really get into rock music until the mid-80s, I can't comment.
Hope recovery is going well Gregg. Now quit your whining and give us an update, old-timer! :lol
Me neither. Started getting into Metal/hard rock in about 1980-81. I just wasn't exposed to BOC at the time and never went back there. Guess they just weren't very big in the UK, DFTR apart.
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Me neither. Started getting into Metal/hard rock in about 1980-81. I just wasn't exposed to BOC at the time and never went back there. Guess they just weren't very big in the UK, DFTR apart.
Interesting that you should say that. The UK media has always loved BÖC.
The New Musical Express ranked Secret Treaties as the 13th best album of 1974. In 1975, a poll of critics in Melody Maker voted Secret Treaties as "The Top Rock Album of All Time". Agents of Fortune hit number 6 in the 1976 "Album of the Year" ranking on NME and Kerrang! has listed both Secret Treaties and Agents of Fortune on their list of the 100 Best Metal Albums of All Time.
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I had the issue of Kerrang that reviewed Club Ninja and they gave it a glowing, near five star review and claimed it was their best album since the 70s. The UK press loved Blue Oyster Cult.
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The term I remember Blue Oyster Cult getting hit with by magazines was "thinking man's metal"
Wasn't that exact same term used to describe Queensryche in the 80s?
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The term I remember Blue Oyster Cult getting hit with by magazines was "thinking man's metal"
Wasn't that exact same term used to describe Queensryche in the 80s?
Yes. "Thinking man's metal" was one of the forerunners for the term progressive metal. Alongside the cheery and generally inaccurate "they sound like Rush." :lol
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Hope recovery is going well Gregg. Now quit your whining and give us an update, old-timer! :lol
:lol (that hurts)
I'm getting there green-horn, keep your panties on and...get off my lawn! Update should be this afternoon.
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Ain't nothing about my horn that is green!
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“ And passed from man to man, a wanton child too dead to care
That each would find his pleasure as he might
For this fantastic night was billed as nothing less than the end of an age
A last crusade, a final outrage, in this day of flaccid plumage”
Spectres (1977)
(https://i.imgur.com/7PvullL.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom — guitar, vocals
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser — lead and rhythm guitars, vocals
Allen Lanier — keyboards, guitar, vocals
Joe Bouchard — bass guitar, guitar, vocals
Albert Bouchard — drums, harmonica, vocals
Additional musicians
Newark Boys Chorus — vocals on “Golden Age of Leather”
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Godzilla 3:41
Golden Age of Leather 5:53
Death Valley Nights 4:07
Searchin’ for Celine 3:35
Fireworks 3:14
R.U. Ready 2 Rock 3:45
Celestial the Queen 3:24
Goin’ Through the Motions 3:12
I Love the Night 4:23
Nosferatu 5:23
Total length: 40:29
2007 CD reissue bonus tracks
Night Flyer 3:48
Dial M for Murder 3:11
Please Hold 2:47
Be My Baby (The Ronettes cover) 3:01
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Well, the pressure was really on now. Pressure from within the band and from management. It was obvious that money was to be made and all concerned wanted to cash in on the success of The Reaper. Spectres was to be the follow up that would make them all rich. Or was it?
They went back to the Record Plant to rub elbows with other contemporary bands and produce a slicker, hit laden behemoth. One of the more obvious changes was that Buck was seen as the hit maker and the voice of BÖC’s hit song so his music and voice was featured more than any previous record. To a man, the band felt confident in their recording and writing skills and continued their push away from Pearlman’s influence musically if not image wise.
The original 10 songs they arrived with were paired down to six, dropping the 4 most unrelated songs. They went on tour for a while and returned in the late-summer of ‘77 with four more songs to fill out the record.
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The only single, against the band’s wishes, was to become the FM rock staple Godzilla--an uncharacteristically heavy, riff-laden, tribute to the 50’s monster B-movie series. Buck had been working on this concept with Patti Smith off and on for a few years but in the end was able to finish the song without her assistance. Buck made good use of his soloing skills to punctuate the verses and chorus’ to give casual music fans a taste of his prowess. Eric took some intensive language courses in Japanese to get the vocal bridge correct. Partially because of the band’s sense of humor, Godzilla is widely seen as a novelty song but I feel that’s a bit unfair because of the great writing and performances!
The Golden Age of Leather, at long last, revisits the legend that is Transmaniacon MC in the biker story written by Buck’s college mate Bruce Abbott. At the end of their long run of chaos and dissension the members of this alien leather cult choose opposing sides (Red and Black) to bring about their own destruction through battle. The song starts out with a great vocal harmony—a kind of drinking song for the gang—that transitions into the first section of light riffage with Bucks vocal giving a soft, happy feel. Then the third section gets a little faster and darker with an odd vocal section that has always felt like either a tribute to the Beach Boys Good Vibrations or even a direct rip-off. The song fades away with the Newark Boys Choir singing the refrain of ‘golden age’ over and over. Chilling.
It’s worth noting that Golden Age of Leather became the live vehicle for BÖC’s famous ‘5-guitar attack’ after this album. This was one of the more fun features of their concerts and if you don’t know what I’m referring to, here is a sample (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHJDjjjxXrE). Previously this had been a feature of ME 262.
The schizophrenic song writing from the previous album continues with the next couple of songs. Death Valley Nights is a melancholy piano-bar ballad (this time in the tradition of the modern vernacular) that morbidly compares a relationship with desert thirst. There are some trademark Buck leads toward the end and I think it’s quite a good song. Searchin’ for Celine is a quasi-funk, disco tune by Allen Lanier that brilliantly merges with BÖC’s trademark spooky vibe and lyrics. The guitar effect on the closing solo is very soothing and underused in the discography.
Finishing up side one is a deliberately poppy song by Albert titled Fireworks with the curious lyrics of a woman escaping from imprisonment by a sadistic captor. With overt sexual overtones giving the whole song a repellent aesthetic it’s a wonder that the band thought this was a good inclusion. Legend has it that Bruce Springstein happened by while Albert was mixing the song and exclaimed that it would be a giant hit. Maybe they believed him. :lol
R.U. Ready 2 Rock is a deceptively typical rock anthem with futuristic space religious overtones, “I ain’t gonna catch those countdown blues, I only live to be born again.” Another rocker tailored to be a concert staple. :metal
Next up is another deliberate stab at a pop tune, Celestial The Queen this time written by Joe to a Helen Wheels lyric. A nicely crafted but obscure chorus gives rise to another bouncy performance by the band. Great piano work by Allen is the highlight on this one.
Eric Bloom had been good friends with the members of Mott the Hoople back when they toured together prior to Mott’s breakup. Ian Hunter ended up moving to Connecticut near Eric’s home. During a wine fueled visit, Eric asked Ian if he wanted to go down to his basement studio and write a song just for fun. The result is the ‘50s rocker Going Through the Motions. Both men claim that it’s a true 50/50 collaboration for both the music and lyrics but the Hoople influence is quite prevalent. If the song sounds familiar to you it may be that you’ve heard Bonnie Tyler’s cover from her album “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”.
Everyone in the band truly felt that Buck’s I Love The Night was to be Spectres answer to “Reaper”. I happen to agree with them and it’s quite a shame the record company wouldn’t get behind it as a single. The new management at Columbia didn’t get the song or BÖC’s fans. It’s such a disturbingly beautiful love song to dark immortality that I can’t help but describe it as a brilliant anticipation of the goth/emo movement some 15 years later. It probably would have resonated with a largely untapped audience and certainly would have kept the current one. It also has the best use of Buck’s vocal style and his gorgeous guitar work. Deceptively simple in arrangement but impeccably crafted, this, to me, is the absolute highlight of this record!
Still, the album finishes on a strong note with the traditional monster tale of Nosferatu. It really captures the feel of the classic silent movie, and even uses some of the original text, “Rats in the hold. My crew is dead—I fear the plague.” Allen really captures the cinema piano accompaniment while Joe warbles the Helen Wheels lyric that details pure Lucy and her nightmare encounter. The whole band has some really fun penny-dreadful moments of bombastic instrumentation that fit well with the title. Prog fans may find some enjoyment here. This is a criminally underappreciated BÖC classic in my mind.
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Spectres initially sold well in the U.S. reaching number 43 on the Billboard 200 album chart in 1978. It was certified Gold in 1978 as well—the fourth album in a row to reach at least gold status.
When the album first came out, I, of course, immediately snapped it up and came away underwhelmed. I can only attribute that to the band going the opposite direction of my other favorites at the time. Rush, Judas, Styx, and even Kansas were all getting progressively heavier (Sabbath was kind of busted just then) and I didn’t understand what BÖC were trying to do by going so “mainstream”. The years have been kind to this record though and I can confidently say I like it more that Agents of Fortune. Sure, the highs aren’t quite as high, yet the lows aren’t anywhere close to the basement of AoF. To me, this is an overall consistently good record where the lows take on the role of contrast-in-flavor.
The band’s obsession with getting another “Reaper” really started to show with this album. The overuse of Buck’s questionable vocals and the shelving of Eric was a poor choice, IMO. Both Godzilla and Golden Age of Leather would have been awesome with Eric’s sinister sneer. Also, Albert was getting discouraged with the infighting about song credits that began with Spectres and the resistance to their management/producing team would really make them rudderless very soon. The albums low sales (comparatively) confused and upset everyone.
Still, as a touring band they had few equals. Their laser show expanded after the release of Spectres (until the expense got the better of their pocket books) and they sold out arenas wherever they went.
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Despite not being overly wild about tracks 3 or 4, I like this album a ton. It is probably in my 2nd tier of albums by them, but at the top of that tier. Probably around my 5th favorite by the band.
I Love the Night was an instant favorite of mine when I first got into the band, and once I got this CD, Golden Age of Leather and Nosferatu were instant grabbers, and remain favorites of mine. Fireworks, Goin' Through the Motions and R.U. Ready to Rock are all enjoyable, catchy rock tunes. And of course, Godzilla always rocks. Yep, this is a damn fine album
:hat :hat :hat
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BTW, Podaar, what do you mean by Buck's questionable vocals? I've always liked his vocals a lot. Not a great singer technically or anything like that, but he always does a fine job for what their songs require. I can't imagine anyone else singing Golden Age of Leather. ???
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Looking forward to this one!
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Despite not being overly wild about tracks 3 or 4, I like this album a ton.
Imagine if you will, the Fall of 1977 and a 16 year old Podaar is sitting in his bedroom half-baked with a black light illuminating his poster of Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy while he pops the newly released Blue Öyster Cult album onto his Garrard turntable. Keep in mind that I only got into the band 18 months before but have since bought all the 'black and white' albums in the interim. Imagine my excitement at track one and two then imagine what I felt by the time side one was finished! :rollin
BTW, Podaar, what do you mean by Buck's questionable vocals? I've always liked his vocals a lot. Not a great singer technically or anything like that, but he always does a fine job for what their songs require. I can't imagine anyone else singing Golden Age of Leather. ???
To me he just tends to have a bored delivery. He doesn't sing bad, or off key, it just lacks confidence...passion...which is perfect for some songs like "Then Came the Last Days of May", "The Reaper", "I Love the Night", and "Harvest Moon." I just think Eric is so much more dynamic that some of these songs would be beyond killer if he laid claim to them.
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I've always thought that the perfect album to introduce someone to 70s BOC would be Spectres, and not just because it was my introduction to their 70s work. It is a consistent album with arguably lower highs than any of their other 70s albums to date, but it's far more consistent than Agents of Fortune and far easier to work your way into than the first three albums. It's a solid, dependable album with no real glaring missteps, but only a few truly glorious songs. Might be fonder than most of this since Golden Age of Leather is one of my favorite BOC songs. If it had a little more, for lack of a better term, edge to it we're talking top tier BOC right here.
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Just had a listen. I was familiar with Godzilla - think it was on an Axe Attack K Tel compilation when I was young? This album was as good as any of the others I've listened to so far. Some weaker tracks as usual but you'll get that when everyone writes - styles will vary across an album. Th Reaper-esque song is excellent, really liked it.
Yeah, should have been a fan for years.
Looking ahead a little, I realise I had a clear vinyl single of Mirrors. Wonder if I still have it?
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Found this to be enjoyable, but nothing too overwhelming. Much the same as the s/t. If I'd snapped it up when I was exploring 70s hard rock, I'm sure it would've stuck. Now, it's just 'good' music for my tastes. Too much 'great' music out there to occupy my listening habits. I'll revisit this one (and others) again to see if it's like a glass of fine wine ... the first sip just gets you ready for the second sip - where the real taste is.
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Just finished. I liked it a lot, probably my third favorite thus far. The sound is really great, and lots of great melodies.
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The first 2 songs are such a great start to this album.
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Some Enchanted Evening (1978)
(https://i.imgur.com/wG23UCX.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – lead vocals, stun guitar, keyboards
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser – lead guitar, vocals
Allen Lanier – keyboards, guitar, mixing
Joe Bouchard – bass, vocals
Albert Bouchard – drums, guitar, vocals
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R.U. Ready 2 Rock 5:29
E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) 5:04
Astronomy 8:18
Kick Out The Jams (MC5 cover) 3:03
Godzilla 4:10
(Don't Fear) The Reaper 5:51
We Gotta Get Out of This Place (The Animals cover) 4:09
Total length: 36:04
2007 CD re-issue bonus tracks
ME 262 3:24
Harvester of Eyes 4:35
Hot Rails to Hell 5:01
This Ain't the Summer of Love 2:48
5 Guitars 8:34
Born to Be Wild (Steppenwolf cover) 6:30
We Gotta Get Out of This Place (alternate version) 4:36
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This, right here, is the last platinum album in Blue Öyster Cult's history. If you’ve been waiting for the discography thread to reach the pinnacle of their commercial success you need go no further. It reached number 44 on the Billboard 200, number 18 on the UK Album Chart, and number 43 on RPM100 Albums (Canada). The album was certified Gold in July of 1980 and Platinum by 1988.
It seemed to be an odd time in a band’s career to release a live album: They’d just had a major live release two albums ago, they still were trying to get a studio album right, and they were all incredibly disappointed with the sales of Spectres. But, Pearlman still had enough influence over the band as manager (if not producer) to insist on a live album—and boy, was he right.
This was at the height of their laser shows (and subsequent demise) so they had plenty of enthusiastic audiences. The Spectres tour had over 200 sold out shows so their live performances were honed to razor sharpness. They were still hungry for over-the-top success so the urgency in their performances was still there. The Reaper and Godzilla were still frequently on the radio and weren’t available on the previous live album. So, I suppose these are the things that added up to the albums success when you factor in the consumer’s appetite for live records during the 70’s.
I’m not a fan of this record, nor do I own it. I don’t dislike it, the sound is good and performances are tight (impressively, still no over-dubs) but I find nothing compelling about the performances compared to the studio albums and I absolutely despise, that for such a short record, it has two cover songs…and not very good ones at that!
I heard this plenty, back in the day, but it was always just background noise and over very quickly.
The 2007 extended release only has one thing to recommend it, in my opinion, and that’s a cool, bouncy rendition of This Ain’t the Summer of Love
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Not listened to this yet so not commenting on the music, but so many covers after 5 albums of their own is worrying. Were they saying they didn't have the songs?
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Good question! There were several songs that could have made the live album more interesting. Where is Tattoo Vampire? Golden Age of Leather or almost any number of other songs from Agents and Spectres...
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Good question! There were several songs that could have made the live album more interesting. Where is Tattoo Vampire? Golden Age of Leather or almost any number of other songs from Agents and Spectres...
It was the age of the live album I guess, but they had enough material I would have thought, especially as you say the initial version was only 36 mins. Has "contractual obligation" written all over it. Did they change labels after this?
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Nope. They were still with Columbia on the next record.
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Their own tracks were good - although surprisingly I enjoyed The Reaper least of the bunch. As far as live 70s albums goes, this is a good (albeit brief) one. When it's up against stalwarts like Frampton Comes Alive, Kiss Alive, All the World's a Stage, Live at Leeds, Strangers in the Night, Made in Japan.... well, it gets lost in the shuffle I suppose.
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Great point, Jingle. I would go to parties and people would rave about this album and I'd just roll my eyes and say, "Oh yea? Next party I'll bring Strangers In The Night and you'll see what a real live album can be!" :biggrin:
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Great point, Jingle. I would go to parties and people would rave about this album and I'd just roll my eyes and say, "Oh yea? Next party I'll bring Strangers In The Night and you'll see what a real live album can be!" :biggrin:
Amen, brother!
Strangers :metal
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“ And the madness they have driven out
They've left him cold and sane.”
Mirrors (1979)
(https://i.imgur.com/lgOMdxU.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom - stun guitar, vocals
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser - lead guitar, vocals
Allen Lanier - keyboards, guitar
Joe Bouchard - bass, vocals
Albert Bouchard - drums, vocals
Additional musicians
Mickey Raphael - harmonica on "Dr. Music"
Jai Winding - strings on "In Thee"
Ellen Foley, Genya Ravan, Wendy Webb - background vocals
Production
Tom Werman - producer
Gary Ladinsky - engineer, mixing
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Dr. Music 3:10
The Great Sun Jester 4:48
In Thee 3:48
Mirrors 3:44
Moon Crazy 4:06
The Vigil 6:25
I Am the Storm 3:42
You're Not the One (I Was Looking For) 3:14
Lonely Teardrops 3:37
Total length: 36:34
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The distance between the band and Pearlman had reached a new level at this point. If they felt resentment at being forced to put out a live album and chagrin that it actually worked is up for speculation. One thing for certain, based on interviews, they all felt they’d become a lower priority for Sandy since the success of The Clash and Pearlman’s subsequent focus on that project…among others. The goal this time around was to write and produce a pop record: one that would give them greater wealth and more freedom for the future. Pearlman has gone on record as being against the idea because their greatest success had always come when they weren’t really catering to the whims of fashion and only when they were just themselves.
So they hired Tom Werman, a producer who had lead Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick and Molly Hatchet to radio success and would later achieve even greater success with other bands. Werman insisted on precision, driving rhythms, layered keyboards and crystal clear recordings. He wasn’t fond of Eric’s voice and was completely enamored with Buck’s, thus, Buck wound up with four lead vocals to Eric’s three: A first for a BÖC record. Eric was also deemed a subpar musician so all of his guitar parts were performed by Buck as well. You can imagine how Eric felt about this project.
Albert Bouchard was against the whole idea behind this record but got voted out. Albert had been the primary music writer through the band’s history but wound up only contributing one song to this record and as you will see it was a petulant, passive-aggressive attempt to sabotage the record and poke fun at Werman.
They left the comfort of their New York home base and went out to the California to work at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.
WARNING: If you’ve never heard this album and are listening for the first time to follow this thread, EARWORMS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN!
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We start off with Dr. Music a swaggering hard rocker--if a bit pedestrian--written by Joe to a Meltzer lyric sprinkled with deviant sexual innuendo. The female backup vocals give this song a (unintentional?) comical feel. Even though the song is obviously crafted for radio it doesn’t really feel out of place in the BÖC discography. It turned out to be a better than decent concert tune.
Next up is very interesting song written by Eric and John Trivers to a lyric by Michael Moorcock. Now if you’re a fan of fantasy/science fiction literature (or even Dungeons and Dragons) you probably know who Moorcock is. Eric had written a fan letter to Moorcock telling him how much his books had effected him over the years. Moorcock wrote back saying he was a big fan of BÖC and would be interested in meeting him for dinner the next time he was in New York. The two met and developed a friendship that resulted in Eric being provided the lyric for The Great Sun Jester and additional lyrics for the next two albums. This song is a great addition to the BÖC canon! Even though it’s light on edginess the tune has a nice mini-epic, story-telling feel that really captures the outer space mysticism that is such an integral part of the band’s vibe.
The only single from the album, In Thee is a light, sappy, radio-friendly lament with an obvious Beach Boys sound. Buck’s layered vocal harmonies croon this tune by Allen Lanier that is heartbreaking when you realize it was written about his breakup with Patti Smith. The only electric guitar is an unthreatening western Telecasterish whine. Mrs. Podaar absolutely hates the use of the word ‘thee’ in the lyrics and will roll her eyes every time I play it.
The title song Mirrors is a social commentary on women’s image as provided them by popular media: A relevant subject still today. Much like the first song on the album the song tries to walk a tightrope between hard rock and melodic pop. It’s very hard to take it seriously and whatever may have been intended as such just comes off as snide. There is some great guitar work by Buck but the rest of the band’s contribution is unremarkable. The backup chorus is very hard to get out of your head once you’ve heard it a few times.
Finishing off side one is a tune that I seriously hope Donald Fagen has never heard. Moon Crazy is a Joe Bouchard song that is so derivative of Steely Dan that it’s practically a parity. It does have a nice instrumental bridge that features a solid Buck lead solo. It wraps up with a boogie guitar section that seems out of place with the rest of the tune.
The Vigil is more of a traditional BÖC composition. It comes off as a prayer to an alien race to come save earth from our own folly. The music was originally written to go with a Patti Smith poem that was deemed too harsh for the goals of a pop album. Buck’s wife Sandra ended up writing the lyrics that made it on the record. There are a couple of gorgeous bluesy moments when the song isn’t trotting, effectively I might add, through the verses. This is probably the most interesting performance on the record by the rhythm section. Albert and Joe do some great work and the production really allows you to hear the bass well.
The second track on side two is a heavy rocker I Am The Storm provided by Joe to a lyric written by the band’s roadie Ronald Binder. I don’t imagine there are a lot of other bands that would give writing credits to a roadie! This is a excellent song with a lot of attitude that’s been missing from the album so far and following The Vigil provides the best extended moment on the album.
Okay, if you’ve never heard the next song You’re Not the One (I Was Looking For) I’d like you to pause the album and by any means available play Just What I Needed by The Cars. When it’s finished, return to Mirrors and now hit play. :lol
Albert had been listening to The Cars but none of the other band members or Werman had heard them. In a snide attempt to make fun of Tom Werman, he took their catchy tune, barely rearranged it, and had his wife (another stab at the current band dynamic) write some lyrics to say the exact opposite of The Cars song. Get it? You’re not the one I was looking for. After they rehearsed and recorded it, everyone liked it, much to Albert’s surprise. He figured they’d trash it and use a different song. So, he decided to tell them where he got the song from. Their only response was that since it wasn’t exactly like it they would keep it. That left him in the awful position of begging them not to use the song but it was left on anyway. When Just What I Needed became a smash hit they were all a bit pissed with Albert.
There you go; a goofy and tawdry slice of BÖC history.
The album wraps up with a really cool Lanier tune titled Lonely Teardrops. Allen’s past contributions had been typically kind of poppy anyway but this time the writing is frosty and sincere: Almost urgent. For once the female backup vocals are used to great effect giving a haunting contrast to Buck’s smooth vocals. To my mind, this is the best pop song on the record because it does it effortlessly.
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The album charted number 44 in 1979 on the Billboard 200. “In Thee” charted at 74 in 1979 on the Billboard Hot 100. Mirrors didn’t chart for very long and if memory serves it barely reached 300,000 units sold. Not only did it not bring them legions of adoring new fans, as they’d hoped, it pretty well alienated many of their longtime loyal fans.
I’m sure I heard this album not long after release. I had a friend who would buy anything BÖC regardless and I’m positive he played it for me. But, when it came to music, I was in a different headspace in 1979 and Blue Öyster Cult wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I craved heavy tunes and my precious music budget couldn’t be bothered to buy Mirrors.
Not long ago, KevShmev encouraged me to check out Heaven Forbid which I did and promptly bought. Afterward, I decided to go back through the band’s recordings to see if there were any other gems I may be missing. That’s when I bought Mirrors. I found my modern tastes were more in line with this record and I thought the sound of the recording was very headphone friendly. Just for The Great Sun Jester, The Vigil, and I Am The Storm the price of the download is well worth it. Add in that I dig (about) every other song and you have what I consider a very enjoyable middle tier BÖC album.
I’m glad I discovered it.
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Mirrors was the last album of theirs I checked out (at the time...the last album had yet to come out), mainly because I had always heard how crappy it was, but after enjoying In Thee live on Heaven Forbid, I was curious, so on a whim, I bought it and was pleasantly surprised.
The Vigil and The Great Sun Jester are definitely killer tunes; they alone made the purchase worthwhile.
Despite sounding rather un-BOC, Lonely Teardrops is a fun little tune. They don't have many songs like that, and it has nice melodies. I like it.
The title track and Dr. Music are both solid, if not unspectacular, and the studio version of In Thee is good.
The other three songs, from what I remember, aren't worth a darn.
Overall, this is still probably one of their two or three least best albums, but it was not a total failure.
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Huh, I would have thought you'd like "I Am The Storm"...although now that I think about it, it's pretty much BÖC by the numbers. Maybe I initially liked it just as a relief from the cheese-fest at the end of side one! :lol :lol
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You say the only single is In Thee, but I have (had?) a clear vinyl single of Mirrors. Cool little song. Not heard the rest of the album but heading to Spotify nnow.
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You say the only single is In Thee, but I have (had?) a clear vinyl single of Mirrors. Cool little song. Not heard the rest of the album but heading to Spotify nnow.
Interesting. I was only going by what I've read or can find on their official website...yet you are correct!
I wonder if this was only a Europe thing? If anyone wants to buy what Lowdz is talking about, here you go! (https://www.etsy.com/listing/190346670/blue-oyster-cult-mirrors-vinyl-record?ref=market)
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Some guys I knew in high school had a cover band, and they learned the entirety of BOC's Extraterrestial Live once, minus the doors cover and that album's version of Veteran of the Psychic Wars, because the guitarist didn't have the chops yet to play it. Hilariously, they took it to a stage of total irony, because the singer learned the things Eric Bloom yelled at the crowd-which meant at the one party I saw them play at, when they played Dr. Music, the singer at one point yelled "HELLO POUGHKEEPSIE!" to a chorus of confused boos.
That's the closest thing I have to a memory about Mirrors. Easily the least best BOC album by my estimation.
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Finished listening and enjoyed it on the whole. The usual couple of less good tracks. Production is the best so far but the songs lack anything to make them stand out. Decent enough.
Going to have tosee if I still have that single. Traded alot back in the day and not sure what I still have tbh. Never did play many singles - always been an album junkie. If I did buy them it was usually for extra tracks or special editions.
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I didn't think about that before, Lowdz, regarding the production, but you are right; it was by far their best-sounding album to date, even if the quality of the songs was very uneven. The drums, in particular, finally had some punch to them.
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Well, this thread is really starting to draw flies now. :lol
In the interest of making way for potentially more popular Discographies, I'll try to post more frequently for those of us still interested. Update coming soon!
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“ How long you think that I can sharpen my knife
I’ve got better things to do with my life”
Cultösaurus Erectus (1980)
(https://i.imgur.com/1h2Og6u.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom - guitar, keyboards, lead vocals
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser - lead guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals
Allen Lanier - keyboards, guitar
Joe Bouchard - bass, vocals
Albert Bouchard - drums, vocals
Additional musicians
Don Kirshner - introduction for "The Marshall Plan"
Mark Rivera - saxophone
Production
Martin Birch - producer, engineer, mixing
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Black Blade 6:34
Monsters 5:10
Divine Wind 5:07
Deadline 4:27
The Marshall Plan 5:24
Hungry Boys 3:38
Fallen Angel 3:11
Lips in the Hills 4:24
Unknown Tongue 3:55
Total length: 41:10
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After the commercial and critical failure of Mirrors the band was looking for some answers and ultimately decided to return to an edgier sound. In the words of Albert, “That’s when we thought, we’ve turned off all these people, and we have to get them turned on again. We have to show them that our hearts are pure and that we’re going to stick with our image and that we can do a scary mysterioso, and just be odd and quirky, make the kind of music that would make you think. And I guess after the disaster that was Mirrors, one of the first steps was getting somebody heavier in to produce.”
Sandy Pearlman had signed on to be the manager of Black Sabbath and through that association, gained access to Martin Birch, fresh from producing Heaven and Hell. Sandy arranged to have Birch produce and by the time he signed on, the band had about 12 demos ready. They sent the lot to Birch prior to entering the studio and through a lot of give and take, they trimmed down the list.
Birch’s style was so laid back, and his engineering talent so good, that the creativity in the studio really added to the end product. He would sit back and let the band hash out ideas, to be themselves, and when they would reach a point that he thought would work he’d jump on the board and say, “Let’s do that.”
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First up is Black Blade, another musical collaboration between Eric and John Trivers, set to the second lyric by Michael Moorcock. The subject this time is Stormbringer, Elric of Melniboné’s sentient, life-steeling sword from Moorcock’s most popular and famous book series. This is an awesome album opener that really kicks you in the teeth from the first moments. Filled with ominous musical imagery, expansive production, huge moments with enough progressive instrumentation that I think this song should appeal to many members of this forum. Oh, and it fooking rocks! Besides, what could possibly be more metal than the White Wolf and his demon haunted sword?
The second track is Monsters by Albert and Caryn Bouchard. To my mind, a very interesting tune. It jumps back and forth from a rapid, clownish riff, to a slow heavy metal riff during the verses to finally be punctuated with a jazz club sax at the end each section. The end of the second set takes a weird turn into an odd rhythm piece reminiscent of the Monsters! section of La Villa Strangiato (just without Neil’s flair). The song pulls you in with a soft atmospheric bit that builds up to, what feels like, a repeated refrain to end the tune, and just when it reaches a climax…it returns to the odd verse construction one last time.
Divine Wind is a slow paced rocker with a bluesy bent but still seems to maintain the tension built up from the previous tracks. Written by Buck as a middle finger to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and those who think like him, the song is initially very effective through Eric’s calm delivery of, “Then let’s send him to hell.” Buck’s lead tone has some real bite to it that wails ominously.
Side one finishes with the scary Deadline: A title full of double meaning when weighed against the lyrics. This is a deceptively light tune by Buck with my favorite vocal performance by him since The Reaper. Again he balances the acoustic arrangement with plenty of searing leads sprinkled at the end of each line. There are these really cool, heart stopping sections that are comprised of pauses interrupted by volume swells that crash back down into the pause again. When the jumpy acoustic guitar pops back in, it’s quite a contrast. Birch really captures the juxtaposition that is the BÖC motif, showing he really gets it.
We open side two with the cleverly titled rock ‘n roll fable The Marsall Plan which may be the only BÖC song in their history that is credited to the entire band. It is chock full of their sense of humor as well as their skill with writing and performing. I heard this song on the radio before hearing the rest of the album and was instantly hooked when I heard the section that comes in right after Eric shouts, “It’s gonna sound like, it’s gonna sound LIKE!” I rushed out and bought the cassette (remember those) the next day. This was a minor MTV hit and treated as a sort of novelty song. Bloom has mentioned that if they would have known Foreigner would score a huge hit with Jukebox Hero they probably wouldn’t have made the song so comical. :lol I know a lot of the troo BÖC fans hate this song as gimmicky and a betrayal to intellectualism but I think it’s fantastic!
Essentially a carousing song for drug addicts, Hungry Boys sarcastically hops along through the verses sounding like a diminutive band of Hell’s imps to eventually swell into the rockin’, arm-in-arm choruses. There is a huge boogie bridge section and another to wrap up the song. I like way Birch layered Albert’s vocals which softened them some and provides a real confident sound.
Fallen Angel is a BÖC signature light-metal tune by Joe to a Helen Wheels lyric. The fallen angel, Satan, sings of his struggle to shake feelings of love for a entrancing woman. Stuffed with biker imagery the song is a fitting chapter in BÖC’s dangerous Motorcycle Club catalog. Joe sings in his highest register making him sound a lot like Roger Daltrey…in fact the whole song comes off as quasi-The Who; although I really doubt that’s what they were going for.
Now we get into, arguably, the most metal song in BÖC’s history Lips in the Hills. Bombastic and ultra heavy, it was penned by Eric and Buck to a bizarre but fitting lyric by Meltzer. It’s impossible to say what it’s about other than the overall imagery makes one feel like a horror story protagonist desperate to escape an obscure threat. Buck’s leads really propel the instrumental break forward, seemingly dragging the rhythm along. It’s about as close as Buck gets to shredding and it’s awesome.
We end the album with Unknown Tongue, a voyeuristic, fever-dream about a young girl’s self-exploration and attempt to reconcile the good feelings with her Catholic faith. The whole package is wrapped up in blood fascination and angelic invocation. Another Albert song but this time the lyric was provided by a longtime friend of the band but first time contributor David Roter. The music is a shadowy, pop-laced tune with a great honky-tonk piano centerpiece. It has a nice hook chorus--sung marvelously by Eric--that quite frankly is a little disturbing. Classic!
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If you bothered to read the above, it should come as no surprise that this is my favorite BÖC album. Admittedly, it’s a hodgepodge of musical styles and lacks anything remotely like an overarching theme. All of the songs easily stand alone but they all do it very well and I don’t find anything inconsistent with earlier albums. Except, perhaps, that it’s done better!
It’s all here; the chills, the humor, the thought-provoking, the quirky fun and most importantly, the rock. To me, this is what the admission price is for when you sign up for Blue Öyster Cult. A terrific return to form that wouldn't last...unfortunately.
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I said earlier that this is the only BOC album I own (on vinyl). All I remember about it is The Marshall Plan but I love it. Love the Smoke On The Water riff n the middle when the kid is learning to play guitar. Nice moment. Cool story in the lyrics.
Will revisit the album later.
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Well, this thread is really starting to draw flies now. :lol
In the interest of making way for potentially more popular Discographies, I'll try to post more frequently for those of us still interested. Update coming soon!
I'm still following. Just had a chance to spin Mirrors, and I'll have to echo Lowdz. Handful of really nice tracks, couple of meh tracks. Overall, nothing that wow'd me - I Am the Storm is the closest thing that came to it. The good thing about these BOC albums is they are a quick listen!
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I'm here, but I am catching up. I still have to listen to Mirrors, and then I will be on to Cultosaurus Erectus.
BTW, that may be the greatest album name in the history of albums.
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BTW, that may be the greatest album name in the history of albums.
I don't know, I always thought Mirrors was kind of generic. :biggrin:
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I said earlier that this is the only BOC album I own (on vinyl). All I remember about it is The Marshall Plan but I love it. Love the Smoke On The Water riff n the middle when the kid is learning to play guitar. Nice moment. Cool story in the lyrics.
Will revisit the album later.
That's also cool because Martin Birch was the engineer who captured recording of Smoke on the Water. Oh, and Johnny's Whole Lotta Love lead moment after Kirshner introduces him is ripping roaring, funny and jaw dropping all at the same time.
Overall, nothing that wow'd me - I Am the Storm is the closest thing that came to it.
I'm pleased you liked that song. I was beginning to think I was the only one! If you ever revisit Mirrors, you may be surprised how much more you'll like it after some time passes. It's kind of a weird grower that way.
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On most days, Cultösaurus Erectus is my favorite B.O.C. record. In fact, when I did my top 50 albums a while back, it was number 30, so there ya go. :coolio
Black Blade is my favorite B.O.C. song. Deadline, Lips in the Hills, The Marshall Plan and Monsters would all be high on my list, as well.
This is simply a fantastic record from start to finish.
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On most days, Cultösaurus Erectus is my favorite B.O.C. record. In fact, when I did my top 50 albums a while back, it was number 30, so there ya go. :coolio
Black Blade is my favorite B.O.C. song. Deadline, Lips in the Hills, The Marshall Plan and Monsters would all be high on my list, as well.
This is simply a fantastic record from start to finish.
I'm glad we agree! :tup
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I'm on Fallen Angel, and I'll say I'm easily enjoying this album the most so far. This is a great tune. Loved the light-flair from Hungry Boys, and The Marshall Plan had that nice (although fabricated) live feel. Black Blade and Monsters were a nice 1-2 opening punch.
Just might be purchase worthy.
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Just might be purchase worthy.
:tup Let us know how you feel about "Unknown Tongue"...for some reason I get the impression that it will appeal to you.
I'd agree. I've purchased it four times! A cassette when it was released, basically because at the time the only place I had to listen to music was in my car. The vinyl a few months later when I replaced the home stereo I'd sold the previous year (hey, I was broke.) The CD when I was replacing vinyl in the 90's. And then another CD just a few years ago when I lost my original in a car crash.
Definitely purchase worthy!
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BTW, your description of Buck's guitar work in Deadline was really nice, but I have to point out stellar the bass line is, as well as the keyboard melody. The way they all dance around each other is so freaking cool. It's like they are all playing something kind of different, yet it all blends together. The bass and keys are playing a similar melody, but while the keyboard is shiny and bright, the bass is dark and dreary. Very, very awesome. :coolio
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BTW, your description of Buck's guitar work in Deadline was really nice, but I have to point out stellar the bass line is, as well as the keyboard melody. The way they all dance around each other is so freaking cool. It's like they are all playing something kind of different, yet it all blends together. The bass and keys are playing a similar melody, but while the keyboard is shiny and bright, the bass is dark and dreary. Very, very awesome. :coolio
I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately I'm not a musician (just an music fan) and I have real difficulty remembering the subtleties that turn me on while listening at the time I sit down to write these reviews. As a result, guitar is often what sticks in my mind. Also, I've been paring back the descriptions in an effort to be more succinct...a huge undertaking for me! :lol
Please, everyone, if you have something to point out (like Kev did above) I'd really enjoy your take on anything related to composition or performance--both good and bad.
That being said, I've always thought the combination of the Bouchard brothers in the rhythm section is nearly magical on a regular basis. Take for instance Lips In The Hills; Joe leans so hard on the bass during the riffs that it's almost like a really deep, loud guitar almost like he's strumming. Coupled with the scratchier sound of guitar it really provides an expansive and heavy riff that is teeth-grittingly effective. :metal
Laniers keyboard choices are alway so appropriate for the songs that he sometimes gets lost in the arrangements but when he does stand-out it usually to great effect.
[edit] Yeah, I just listened to the song, with your comment in mind, and I see what you're talking about. Joe's playing nearly the same rhythm as the keys but with extra notes. It gives it kind of strolling, walk, sorta feel. The sound Birch got for the bass is really round and like you said very melancholy. Ah, I just love hearing familiar music with new ears. Thank you, Sir! [/edit]
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Just might be purchase worthy.
:tup Let us know how you feel about "Unknown Tongue"...for some reason I get the impression that it will appeal to you.
With all the discography threads (including those still to come), I have to be like Elaine from Seinfeld, and really qualify what is purchase (sponge) worthy. :lol
The closer was good, not the best, but I liked it, and definitely sense it will improve with age.
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Aw damn, I wish I had seen this thread earlier so I could have been following from the very beginning. Ah, well, at least I discovered it at a great album, and right before my favourite! ;)
Seriously, though, Cultosaurus Erectus is one of the true jewels in the crown of BOC's career. While I don't like Black Blade quite as much as it's counterpart on the following record, it is still one of the best songs in their entire discography, and one of the best rock/metal songs ever written about Moorcock's beloved doomed albino. The whole album pretty solid from start to finish, with Lips In The Hills, Monsters, Deadline and Marshall Plan being among the standouts.
I guess I have some backtracking to do on this thread to get up to date, but I will certainly be following from here on out! :metal
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Aw damn, I wish I had seen this thread earlier so I could have been following from the very beginning. Ah, well, at least I discovered it at a great album, and right before my favourite! ;)
Seriously, though, Cultosaurus Erectus is one of the true jewels in the crown of BOC's career. While I don't like Black Blade quite as much as it's counterpart on the following record, it is still one of the best songs in their entire discography, and one of the best rock/metal songs ever written about Moorcock's beloved doomed albino. The whole album pretty solid from start to finish, with Lips In The Hills, Monsters, Deadline and Marshall Plan being among the standouts.
I guess I have some backtracking to do on this thread to get up to date, but I will certainly be following from here on out! :metal
Ha, welcome. Your avatar is certainly appropriate for this update. All hail the Dragon Emperor of Imrryr!! May Moonglum dodge the affection of your black friend.
I was going to pound out the next update this afternoon but perhaps I'll wait until Sunday or Monday to give you a chance to catch up some. :)
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Due to a lot of other listening things I kinda lost track of this thread, but reading the positive comments on CE, I decided to give it a shot. Currently just finished "Black Blade", and it's definitely awesome. Probably a better opener than "Transmaniacon MC", though I like that one a lot as well. If the album holds up, then this will definetely one that I'll enjoy a lot.
EDIT: Well, that was awesome. It'll probably need some more listens and I still prefer the debut slightly over it, but it was a great album nontheless. I prefer Side A, but not by a lot.
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Scorp,
If you were unable to experience the six albums between the self-titled and Cultösaurus, and preferred the self-titled, I'd definitely recommend you go back and listen to Secret Treaties...maybe even Tyranny and Mutation. ST should be right up your alley, and T&M maybe 80/20.
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Scorp,
If you were unable to experience the six albums between the self-titled and Cultösaurus, and preferred the self-titled, I'd definitely recommend you go back and listen to Secret Treaties...maybe even Tyranny and Mutation. ST should be right up your alley, and T&M maybe 80/20.
What he said. Definitely Secret Treaties.
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OK, just finished Mirrors. I enjoyed the sound, and there were definitely some cool moments, but overall, I didn't care for it as much.
Starting Cultosaurus Erectus now.
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Lot of the hardcore BOC fans thought Mirrors was too slick in production.
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Took your advice and listened to Secret Treaties, and I liked it a fair bit. I'd put it on equal footing with Cultosaurus Erectus and slightly behind the debut, with ST being less consistent than CE (on Side 1, I only really like "Career of Evil" and "Dominance and Submission" except for that one part where the title is just incessantly repeated; plus, "Cagey Cretins" is kinda bland), but I like the remaining four songs a fair bit more than most songs on CE, except for maybe "Black Blade". Still, all in all a very enjoyable album. :tup
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Lot of the hardcore BOC fans thought Mirrors was too slick in production.
And I happen to think they were right. The drums sound sterile and because Albert mailed in his performance, they could have easily been replaced with a drum machine. That's probably what Werman was going for anyway! :) I don't know, I think Mirrors could have been very interesting if Martin Birch produced it. They probably would have thrown out some of the weaker tracks and maybe given some weight to the more rocking tunes. We'll never know, but it's fun to speculate.
Scorp, I'm totally cool with your preference for the debut over all. I don't necessarily disagree. To me the enjoyment difference between the top albums is so slight that it could be a wash.
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My favourite so far I guess. Liked the production - sounded fuller and a bit more powerful. Not as much filler this time around. If the first album had this production we'd have some competition for the number 1 spot.
Although I own this album not much other than the first track and The Marshall Plan rang any bells.
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CE was outstanding, my favorite one so far. I especially liked Black Blade, as I was a large Elric fan.
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I am the Black Blade
Forged a million billion years ago
My cosmic soul it goes on for eternity
Carving out destiny
Bringing in the Lords of Chaos
Bringing up the Beasts of Hades
Sucking out the souls of heroes
Laying waste to knights and ladies
My master is my slave
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
You poor fucking humans
:metal
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My favourite so far I guess. Liked the production - sounded fuller and a bit more powerful. Not as much filler this time around. If the first album had this production we'd have some competition for the number 1 spot.
Although I own this album not much other than the first track and The Marshall Plan rang any bells.
CE was outstanding, my favorite one so far. I especially liked Black Blade, as I was a large Elric fan.
I am the Black Blade
Forged a million billion years ago
My cosmic soul it goes on for eternity
Carving out destiny
Bringing in the Lords of Chaos
Bringing up the Beasts of Hades
Sucking out the souls of heroes
Laying waste to knights and ladies
My master is my slave
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
You poor fucking humans
:metal
:tup :hefdaddy :metal :metal, In that order!
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I had for a very long time dismissed CE as being "the one with Black Blade and The Marshall Plan and nothing else" on it until Kev was singing its praises here and I gave it a spin, and found out how badly I'd been underselling it. At the time, it was a bit of an underrated BOC album, clearly by me, but it's now one of my favorites of the early days for them. :metal
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Posts like that please me. :)
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“ And I'm young enough to look at, and far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside”
Fire of Unkown Origin (1981)
(https://i.imgur.com/lfwdrM1.jpg)
Eric Bloom—lead vocals, bass on “Heavy Metal”
Albert Bouchard—drums, synthesizer, vocals
Joe Bouchard—bass, vocals
Allen Lanier—keyboards
Donald (Buck Dharma) Roeser—lead guitar, vocals, bass on “Joan Crawford”, additional percussion on “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”
Additional Musicians
Karla DeVito—background vocals on “Sole Survivor”
Sandy Jean—background vocals on “Don’t Turn Your Back”
Bill Civitella and Tony Cedrone—additional percussion on “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”
Jessy Levy—strings on “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” and “Joan Crawford”
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Fire of Unknown Origin 4:09
Burnin' for You 4:29
Veteran of the Psychic Wars 4:48
Sole Survivor 4:04
Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver 3:16
Vengeance (The Pact) 4:41
After Dark 4:25
Joan Crawford 4:55
Don't Turn Your Back 4:07
Total length: 39:06
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Band tensions were at an all time high largely due to Albert’s contentious behavior and because of feuding between band-wives that had been escalating for years. It was becoming obvious that the band was in decline. Concert ticket sales were down, and money problems were so bad that there was talk of calling it quits.
Not all was gloomy though. The producers of the animated movie “Heavy Metal”, based on the magazine of the same name, had asked the band to submit songs from their upcoming album for the soundtrack. They were flattered by their inclusion and tailored several songs after seeing the movie at a private screening.
Pearlman arranged for the Martin Birch to produce another record and everyone had enjoyed working with him so much that they entered the studio with a great deal of enthusiasm. There was an overarching attitude of ‘going out on a high note’ so their determination to make a record they could be proud of helped drive the project.
The thought going in was that Cultösaurus Erectus had gone to far (as a reaction to Mirrors) in eradicating pop radio viability, but they were at least pleased to have excited their fan base again. Could they make a heavy record that would also be embraced by radio?
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The album opens with Fire of Unknown Origin, a poppy little number that had been slated for recording as early as the Agents of Fortune sessions but due to the band never being satisfied with Albert’s composition it was rewritten, at least partially, by nearly everyone else. Using an unusually sparse, but gorgeous, lyric by Patti Smith, the song bounces along with a quasi-reggae guitar riff over a trotting rhythm that slides into a melancholy chorus full of gloomy synthesizers and a background choir. The descending keyboard lines over the slow, fade-out riffs at the end of the song show a deliberate new wave flavor. Albert was slated to sing the song, and was quite proud of his performance, but during the recording Eric was asked to redo the vocals.
Burnin’ For You is a Buck tune to a Meltzer lyric (at least partially borrowed from Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road) that was slated for Buck’s solo album Flat Out. Buck really didn’t want it to be a BÖC song because the music was personal to him but relented mostly because everyone felt it would be a hit, so he took one for the team. They were right of course; the song spent 3 weeks at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 single chart and peaked at number 1 on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks. In my mind it earned every bit of its popularity and I’m certain everyone reading this has heard it.
Next up is another collaboration between Bloom and Moorcock, the BÖC masterpiece Veteran of the Psychic Wars. The song is perhaps a reference to Moorcock’s eternal champion concept of which Erekosë is the principle character. The song is largely atmospheric but still manages to rock because of the We Will Rock You drum rhythm that never really feels like the Queen song. Perhaps that’s due to the addition of a military snare pounding out a march while distorted guitar and silvery keys build a backdrop for the vocals. This is Eric’s finest vocal performance ever! He really pours emotion into the words, giving them a visceral weariness through all the twists and turns of this emotive epic. Buck plays a dialed back lead built around these cool fading echo trails.
Sole Survivor is a stripped down rocker by Eric, John Trivers, and Liz Meyers that feels like a spiritual extension of “Veteran” with a story of the last man on earth who is offered succor from visiting aliens but instead slinks off to hide in his paranoia. It has a nice hooky chorus but without any pyrotechnics it doesn’t really go anywhere and fades away feebly.
Side one ends with the metal anthem Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver. The music by Albert and Eric was already recorded to a different lyric called Ear Damage but the band didn’t think it was cryptic enough for a BÖC record so the asked Sandy Pearlman apply his touch to it. Thus we get a cosmic, alchemical formula for making heavy metal…Pearlman style. It’s a good song if perhaps a bit formulaic. I really like the effect Buck uses for his guitar on this one and his use of harmonics and feed back is pretty interesting. The band was very surprised this song wasn’t chosen for the animated movie.
Starting out with a haunting little pipe organ refrain is Vengeance. Written and sung by the Bouchard brothers specifically for the movie Heavy Metal. It wound up being just a bit too specific about the plot and was rejected as one huge spoiler alert to the Taarna story! :lol But, what a great song. Electric guitars pick up the organ riff and build into medium-heavy verses. From there, the song takes a few unpredictable turns, builds up to a huge dramatic conflict before coming back around to the familiar riff to end the song. Great fun here and steeped in the trademark BÖC sound.
Now we come to one of my favorites, the vampire boogie number After Dark by Bloom/Trivers/Meyers. I just love how the drums and bass jump into a light, foot-tapping rhythm to be joined by bright 80’s style synths and then serenaded with aggressive electric guitar. It features a great, sing-a-long, two part chorus with clever use of language that tricks the listener into hearing a double meaning that’s not really there. Buck throws in a blistering lead over the instrumental bridge. All together you get a deceptively bright tune with a dangerous edge that was very germane to the times.
Welcome to tonight’s Creature Feature, the dark and campy Joan Crawford. Even if you’re familiar with this song you probably don’t know that it was inspired by Albert’s wife Caryn. The story goes that Albert, David Roter and Jack Rigg were working on a song late at night in his basement studio when Caryn popped in and started screaming at Albert. He left to calm her down and Roter looked at Rigg and said, “Jesus, it’s like Joan Crawford has risen from the grave.” 10 minutes later they had this bizarre rocker that became a surprise concert favorite. The grandiose piano intro was written by Joe but wound up be performed by Allen on the record. As much as I love this crazy song--it cracks me up every time I hear, “Catholic schoolgirls have thrown away their mascara. They chain themselves to the axles of big Mac trucks.”--I must admit that it is the odd song out and the album probably would have been more cohesive if they’d gone with something else.
Don’t Turn Your Back is a plodding meditative song originally written by Allen but reworked by Albert and Buck. This is yet another song submitted for the movie Heavy Metal and was actually the last one rejected before Veteran was ultimately chosen. It’s not a bad song and I always enjoy it when it’s on but once it’s over, it’s forgotten. The mood is fitting for an album closer, coming off as a sort of epitaph but, ultimately it’s a bit limp to my ears.
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By all accounts, this was a difficult album for the band. Birch was on short time and even though he got a terrific production--arguably the best of their career--there’s a rushed feeling to some of the performances and you just know that given more time, several of these songs would be different. Everyone was sick of everyone else and Albert seemed on a mission to make everyone as miserable as he was. Even so, they went on the road to promote the album culminating the infamous and ill-fated “Black and Blue” tour: A subject for an entire thread by itself. [edit] I misspoke, the Black and Blue tour was actually between Cultösaurus and Fire of Unknown Origin in 1980. I will now submit to punishment for my error. [/edit]
Fire of Unknown Origin was very popular in its day and was quite a phenomenon for the band. I can attest that the album was actually more popular than its sales figures would indicate even though it would be certified Gold the next year. Just look at its performance on the Hot mainstream Rock Tracks charts: “Burnin’ for You” peaked at #1, “Joan Crawford” at #49, “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” at #24, “Vengeance” at #16, “Fire of Unknown Origin” at #11. The radio was playing the shit out of this motha, in fact, when I was listening to this album a few years ago, Mrs. P started singing along to “Sole Survivor” (she’s a dance music fan) and I asked her where she’d heard it before, “The radio, back in the day.” was her response. I can only assume that the U.S. recession had much to do with sales lagging behind popularity. Times were tough.
Still, the album stayed on the Billboard 200 for three months and peaked at 24. The UK Album Chart peak was 29 and it ended up being certified Gold in Canada in 1982 as well.
I, of course, was all over this album like Burt on Liz when it came out. I don’t know if I over played it or if Cultö is that much better but the years haven’t been kind to this album for me. Some flat out classics and one masterpiece not withstanding this album is down my list to around the five or six position. That’s difficult to justify too since I don’t skip a moment on this record, yet when I want a BÖC fix, there are several I go for first.
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The radio wasn't the only thing all over this album, as MTV played Burnin' For You so much that, to this day, my mom can hear the first three seconds of it and will say "is this that damn Blue Oyster Cult song?" :rollin
At the time, Fire was considered a comeback for the band after a couple of duds amongst the people I knew, as I wasn't the only person underrating CE, and, of course, most people had no idea back then what was going on behind the scenes and really didn't know until Albert was gone during the tour for this. Given the circumstances of its creation, it's a remarkably solid album-certainly the best choice in my opinion to ease someone into BOC-but I too have played it so much I rarely come back to it. I remain amused that the band wrote so many songs to be in Heavy Metal and the one song that was picked was one of the ones they didn't write for it. :lol
While I agree that Joan Crawford sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the album, I simply can't imagine the album without it. It's like in the middle of BOC trying to make an overtly commercial album that appealed to their fan base, their early days just popped up and said "HI THERE."
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Yeah, the MTV saga is interesting; they played Burnin' For You to the point of annoyance but banned Joan Crawford because of the school girl outfits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQBJfQhpw_U)!? Is that right Jaq, or am I misremembering again?
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Had this on 8 Track. Don't remember much about it though.
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This album is pure awesome from start to finish. I especially love Joan Crawford. Dat piano.
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Wow, I didn't know that Joan Crawford had a video, but that was kind of cool. Not sure why it was banned, but whatever. The beginning of that song is always awesome to listen to with the lights out. When it comes to songs with the best piano intros, this would be up there, especially if grading just the piano intro.
I don't remember seeing Burnin' for You on MTV back in the day, and I watched the ever-living crap out of MTV for most of the 80s, but Totally 80s plays it a lot, so there ya go. :lol
Anyway, I agree with Podaar that this is probably a slightly above average B.O.C. record, but not particularly outstanding as a whole. Granted, it's an easy listen, as every song is good, but only a few are great, with Veteran of the Psychic Wars being the clear man among boys. Having said that, I am actually really fond of all of Side 2 (tracks 6-9), not just Joan Crawford - After Dark has a great little bass line, Vengeance has a lot of great stuff going on, and Don't Turn Your Back is a really good closer.
So yeah, overall, it's not one of their absolute best, but still really good. :hat
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Yeah, the MTV saga is interesting; they played Burnin' For You to the point of annoyance but banned Joan Crawford because of the school girl outfits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQBJfQhpw_U)!? Is that right Jaq, or am I misremembering again?
Joan Crawford was never played on MTV, and, yes, I seem to recall the school girl imagery and general weirdness was a part of it.
Hang on Kev, I'm calling my mom to tell her you don't remember seeing Burnin' For You on MTV...
She can't believe you watched much MTV if you didn't see it. :rollin
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Woah, woah! I didn't say I didn't see it; I said I don't remember seeing it.
It's an important distinction. :biggrin:
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Well, she doesn't understand how anyone who watched MTV in the 80s can't remember seeing it. Fucking thing was on like every two hours. :rollin
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I'm calling shenanigans on Kev about seeing the video. :lol
No hot looking chicks in that video for teenage Kev to lust about. That's why he can't remember.
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:|
Metallica doing an acoustic cover of Veteran of the Psychic Wars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5vSIu_ERm8). I really don't know what to make of this. HELP!
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Had a sneak peak at this one the other night when listening to CE. Enjoyed it too. maybe not as much as CE but a good album with several good tracks.
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Well, she doesn't understand how anyone who watched MTV in the 80s can't remember seeing it. Fucking thing was on like every two hours. :rollin
I'll take your words for it. :lol
I'm calling shenanigans on Kev about seeing the video. :lol
No hot looking chicks in that video for teenage Kev to lust about. That's why he can't remember.
:rollin :rollin
:|
Metallica doing an acoustic cover of Veteran of the Psychic Wars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5vSIu_ERm8). I really don't know what to make of this. HELP!
About two minutes, it's actually not bad. I'm sure I'll never listen to it again, but it sounds okay.
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This was the album that made me realize there was more to BOC then just Don't Fear The Reaper (which I think is totally overrated and has been completely overplayed on classic rock radio). I still remember buying Heavy Metal on VHS for the first time, and discovering, among the many kick ass songs in that film's soundtrack, Veteran Of The Psychic Wars. Between Bloom's haunting voice, that inexorable driving rhythm, and above all the trippy, sci-fi sounding keyboards, this song instantly became my favourite track on the Heavy Metal soundtrack. Imagine my excitement when I discovered that the song was not only about the Eternal Champion, but was co-written by Moorcock himself! I immediately realized that I had sorely underestimated BOC due to the gross overplay of DFTR and, as Fire Of Unknown Origin had both Veteran and Burning For You (with which I was also familiar and had found to be much more tolerable then Reaper), FOUO seemed like a safe way to hedge my bets while digging deeper into the band.
Aside from VOTPW and BFY, the record did have several other stand out tracks. The title track was, despite not being as rocking as my younger self had hoped, still highly enjoyable. Sole Survivor was, as Podaar said, very much a spiritual extension of Veteran, while the metalhead in me loved the shit out of Heavy Metal: The Black And Silver. Vengeance was another gem in the album's tracklist, the lyrical theme of which further solidified by interest and growing love of BOC. After Dark, as cheeseball as it is, is still great fun to listen to, and I always felt the song's climactic coda made it the logical album closer. And Joan Crawford, which sounded less like a BOC song and more like a deleted number from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, was still an excellent tune in it's own right. If the record has any weak tracks, it is Don't Turn Your Back, which isn't even really bad per se, just not as strong as the rest of the album, and an unfortunate choice to end an otherwise phenomenal record.
Overall, I would still rank this album very high in the BOC discography. Yes, it is very poppy, and perhaps lacking the depth of some of the band's headier works, but it does hold a certain nostalgic charm for me that is reinforced by genuinely strong songwriting. If I were to meet someone getting into BOC for the first time, this would be the album I would recommend. It has an easy of accessibility throughout while at the same time not compromising the band's loftier, more poetic side. Beyond all that, it also has a charmingly dated sound, the kind that makes one wish there was still music like this being made somewhere. :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal
:|
Metallica doing an acoustic cover of Veteran of the Psychic Wars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5vSIu_ERm8). I really don't know what to make of this. HELP!
Out of the three covers I have heard of that song, Metallica's is by far the weakest, IMO because the style of the song (very keyboard heavy) is ill-suited to Metallica, and the band really did not add enough of their own ingredients to make up for the lack of keys. Don't get me wrong, I was more then happy when I discovered that metal's most popular band had given a shout out to my favourite BOC song (and, by extension, Moorcock), but if 'Tallica really wanted to cover this song, then they should have done it on S&M, where the orchestra would have supplemented the sound of the band and better captured the spirit of the original.
Other then Metallica, I have heard Tarot, the side band of Nightwish bassist/vocalist Marco Hietala , also cover this tune. Their version is..... ok. Decent, but it lacks a lot of the flair that made the original so special.
By far the best cover of Veteran is by Arjen Anthony Lucassen of Ayreon/Star One fame on his solo album, Lost In The New Real. In most respects, Arjen's version sounds like just a straight up re-recording of the original with modern production and keyboards, yet with Arjen's voice, those distinctive Ayreon synths and a bit more crunch to the guitar is a few places, the AAL version stands on it's own merits, paying tribute to the BOC original while at the same time being it's own creature. Anyone who has not heard it should go check it out now! :metal
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Great post! Your enthusiasm along with the detail of your experience is just the type of discussion I'd hoped we would have when we started this thread.
Anyone who has not heard it should go check it out now! :metal
I believe I'll do that very thing...
[edit]
Great cover! And, a pretty trippy album overall with some other cool covers and some interesting originals. How do people on this forum consistently find such things! :lol
[/edit]
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Just want to chime in to say I saw B.O.C. like 8 times back in the late 70's early 80's. Always tremendous shows!
Nothing like being totally baked watching a guy do a drum solo wearing a Godzilla head! Complete with strobe lights! :metal
:biggrin:
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Just want to chime in to say I saw B.O.C. like 8 times back in the late 70's early 80's. Always tremendous shows!
Nothing like being totally baked watching a guy do a drum solo wearing a Godzilla head! Complete with strobe lights! :metal
:biggrin:
They did work pretty hard on their live shows; motorcycles, mirrors on the back of their guitars to reflect spotlights, crossing guitars to make noise, giant puppets, lasers (remember when Eric had one that shot from his finger), giant mirror balls, pyrotechnics, more lasers, five guitar attack, solo spots for Albert, Joe and especially Buck, they rocked very hard...oh, and did I mention lasers?! It was always an E-ticket when BÖC came to town.
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Just want to chime in to say I saw B.O.C. like 8 times back in the late 70's early 80's. Always tremendous shows!
Nothing like being totally baked watching a guy do a drum solo wearing a Godzilla head! Complete with strobe lights! :metal
:biggrin:
They did work pretty hard on their live shows; motorcycles, mirrors on the back of their guitars to reflect spotlights, crossing guitars to make noise, giant puppets, lasers (remember when Eric had one that shot from his finger), giant mirror balls, pyrotechnics, more lasers, five guitar attack, solo spots for Albert, Joe and especially Buck, they rocked very hard...oh, and did I mention lasers?! It was always an E-ticket when BÖC came to town.
Yeah, its been so long sometimes I forget just how freaking cool they were live!
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This was the album that made me realize there was more to BOC then just Don't Fear The Reaper (which I think is totally overrated and has been completely overplayed on classic rock radio). I still remember buying Heavy Metal on VHS for the first time, and discovering, among the many kick ass songs in that film's soundtrack, Veteran Of The Psychic Wars. Between Bloom's haunting voice, that inexorable driving rhythm, and above all the trippy, sci-fi sounding keyboards, this song instantly became my favourite track on the Heavy Metal soundtrack. Imagine my excitement when I discovered that the song was not only about the Eternal Champion, but was co-written by Moorcock himself! I immediately realized that I had sorely underestimated BOC due to the gross overplay of DFTR and, as Fire Of Unknown Origin had both Veteran and Burning For You (with which I was also familiar and had found to be much more tolerable then Reaper), FOUO seemed like a safe way to hedge my bets while digging deeper into the band.
Aside from VOTPW and BFY, the record did have several other stand out tracks. The title track was, despite not being as rocking as my younger self had hoped, still highly enjoyable. Sole Survivor was, as Podaar said, very much a spiritual extension of Veteran, while the metalhead in me loved the shit out of Heavy Metal: The Black And Silver. Vengeance was another gem in the album's tracklist, the lyrical theme of which further solidified by interest and growing love of BOC. After Dark, as cheeseball as it is, is still great fun to listen to, and I always felt the song's climactic coda made it the logical album closer. And Joan Crawford, which sounded less like a BOC song and more like a deleted number from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, was still an excellent tune in it's own right. If the record has any weak tracks, it is Don't Turn Your Back, which isn't even really bad per se, just not as strong as the rest of the album, and an unfortunate choice to end an otherwise phenomenal record.
Overall, I would still rank this album very high in the BOC discography. Yes, it is very poppy, and perhaps lacking the depth of some of the band's headier works, but it does hold a certain nostalgic charm for me that is reinforced by genuinely strong songwriting. If I were to meet someone getting into BOC for the first time, this would be the album I would recommend. It has an easy of accessibility throughout while at the same time not compromising the band's loftier, more poetic side. Beyond all that, it also has a charmingly dated sound, the kind that makes one wish there was still music like this being made somewhere. :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal
Great post! :tup :tup
:hat
Just want to chime in to say I saw B.O.C. like 8 times back in the late 70's early 80's. Always tremendous shows!
Nothing like being totally baked watching a guy do a drum solo wearing a Godzilla head! Complete with strobe lights! :metal
:biggrin:
They did work pretty hard on their live shows; motorcycles, mirrors on the back of their guitars to reflect spotlights, crossing guitars to make noise, giant puppets, lasers (remember when Eric had one that shot from his finger), giant mirror balls, pyrotechnics, more lasers, five guitar attack, solo spots for Albert, Joe and especially Buck, they rocked very hard...oh, and did I mention lasers?! It was always an E-ticket when BÖC came to town.
Yeah, its been so long sometimes I forget just how freaking cool they were live!
A friend of mine, who is late 40s and saw tons of concerts in the early 80s, swears that after Rush and Triumph, B.O.C. was the best live band during time period, although some days he might say Judas Priest, but he says those four were the best. Pretty good company there. :coolio
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A friend of mine, who is late 40s and saw tons of concerts in the early 80s, swears that after Rush and Triumph, B.O.C. was the best live band during time period, although some days he might say Judas Priest, but he says those four were the best. Pretty good company there. :coolio
Pink Floyd was my favorite but Rush was certainly tops in my book. The Farewell to Kings tour was completely mind blowing! Of course, we were certainly under a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement aids though. Just below that was BÖC so yes good company.
I saw Judas a few times between Stained Class and Screaming for Vengeance and I always enjoyed the music but their show wasn't that great. They screwed up, a lot!
They all kinda got blown away by first DIO and then Iron Maiden as the 80's progressed. DIO's shows were completely unbelievable and were choreographed down to the last second...you didn't need to be high for them. Of course, the energy of Iron Maiden is not to be believed until you see them live. No one gets a crowd jumping like them.
Ah, concerts. Great memories!
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But Podaar, the chemical. You remember the shows? :lol
I actually have very clear memories of some concerts full of debauchery. Oh the stories!!
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King, how can I forget?! The combination is blotter-paper and Xanadu is a mind altering experience. :rollin
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A friend of mine, who is late 40s and saw tons of concerts in the early 80s, swears that after Rush and Triumph, B.O.C. was the best live band during time period, although some days he might say Judas Priest, but he says those four were the best. Pretty good company there. :coolio
Pink Floyd was my favorite but Rush was certainly tops in my book. The Farewell to Kings tour was completely mind blowing! Of course, we were certainly under a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement aids though. Just below that was BÖC so yes good company.
I saw Judas a few times between Stained Class and Screaming for Vengeance and I always enjoyed the music but their show wasn't that great. They screwed up, a lot!
They all kinda got blown away by first DIO and then Iron Maiden as the 80's progressed. DIO's shows were completely unbelievable and were choreographed down to the last second...you didn't need to be high for them. Of course, the energy of Iron Maiden is not to be believed until you see them live. No one gets a crowd jumping like them.
Ah, concerts. Great memories!
I wouldn't see Triumph until the Thunder Seven tour, and Rush until Power Windows, but considering all I heard about how great their shows were, I thought both were overrated.
Now I bet The Farewell To Kings tour would've been incredible!
And yes, Iron Maiden was the best live band in the 80's. I would also venture to say that while AC/DC doesn't sound like they'd put on a great show, they absolutely did.
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I'll get to this one when I can, guys. My headphones crapped out on me, and I have a new puppy.
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I'll get to this one when I can, guys. My headphones crapped out on me, and I have a new puppy.
Pics or it never happened!
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Facebook! I've seen the pup!
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Extraterrestrial Live (1982)
(https://i.imgur.com/MM2mE7c.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – lead vocals, stun guitar, keyboards
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser – lead guitar, vocals
Allen Lanier – keyboards, guitar
Joe Bouchard – bass, vocals
Rick Downey – drums on all tracks except "Dominance and Submission" and "Black Blade"
Albert Bouchard – drums on "Dominance and Submission" and "Black Blade"
Additional musicians
Robby Krieger – guitar on "Roadhouse Blues"
Production
Sandy Pearlman - producer, management
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Dominance and Submission 5:56
Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll 5:19
Dr. Music 3:40
The Red and the Black 4:39
Joan Crawford 5:17
Burnin' for You 4:50
Roadhouse Blues (The Doors cover) 9:06
Black Blade 6:17
Hot Rails to Hell 5:03
Godzilla 7:46
Veteran of the Psychic Wars 8:11
E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) 5:20
(Don't Fear) The Reaper 6:42
Total length: 78:06
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With three new studio albums to draw off of and the enormous success of Fire of Unknown Origin Pearlman decided it was the perfect time to do another double live album. Krugman, by this time, was long gone, so there was no dissenting voice to oppose since everyone in the band was just too tired to argue. No one was eager to head back into the studio once the tour finished since FoUO was such a huge effort and the wounds from infighting were still too fresh. Dragging a mobile along to document the tour they popped across the pond to begin in Europe.
Just a few dates in and Albert Bouchard was on a plane back to the states and Stage Manager Rick Downey was manning the drum kit. The story behind Albert’s firing is long and tawdry and not really what this thread is about so I’ll just leave it there. He does appear on two songs on this album but both were recorded in 1980 before the FoUO tour. Suffice it to say that Rick is a capable drummer. After 8 or so years with the band he was intimately familiar with the show and drum parts so nothing really dropped off performance wise from behind the kit.
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There are many fans who consider this the cream of live BÖC albums and I’m willing to surrender to the idea that the live production is superior to what came before and that if you are a live album fan, there are some ‘must have’ versions on ETL. But (and you knew there would be one didn’t you Jaq) half the music has been on other live albums before and, in my opinion, performed just as good if not better.
Of the first four songs, only “Dr. Music” hasn’t been on previous live releases and quite frankly all four feel largely stale. Been there done that.
Side two of the first album starts out with a stellar performance by Allen of the epic piano intro to “Joan Crawford”--probably even better than on the studio album. The rest of the song and the live version of “Burnin’” are okay but I find nothing to recommend them over the studio recordings. Then side two ends with another live cover, this time of The Doors “Roadhouse Blues” that includes the one and only Robby Krieger as a guest on guitar. This is without a doubt the best live cover on any BÖC record. There’s a tangible enthusiasm because of performing with Robby that’s great fun, even when Buck’s trying to show him up. :lol Oh, and Allen plays Ray Manzarek’s keys with terrific feel and much honor.
Side three has what should be a hell-fire metal onslaught of “Black Blade”, “Hot Rails to Hell” and “Godzilla” but it just comes off as going through the motions. Besides, we already have 2/3rds of that on other live releases.
Side four has a terrific version of “Veteran of Psychic Wars” if only for Buck’s bombastically huge solo section in the middle. For awhile it sounds like he’s channeling pre-heroin Jimmy Page. He breaks the solo up into chunks with these fast-strumming fret board climbs that are pretty cool. I would absolutely recommend that everyone who’s a fan of Buck should hear this performance. I like the version of “E.T.I.” that comes after far better than the one on Some Enchanted Evening, but, yet again, we’ve already been here before. Still, the extra moments really add to the song and probably should have been included in the studio. “The Reaper” is also a tad better than on SEE but only because of the vocal performance, otherwise it’s unremarkable.
As a fan I would have really liked BÖC to include “Golden Age of Leather” and “Nosferatu” which I know they played frequently. Also, the omission of “I Love the Night”, “Deadline”, “Lips in the Hills” and certainly “The Marshall Plan” from their live catalog is criminal and ramps up my disappointment of this, their last, live release of the classic lineup.
Compared with their earlier live albums, sales-wise, this was a colossal dud, in spite of the super-cool album cover. I’m inclined to think that the times had bypassed the ‘live album’ mentality. It’s just another sign that management’s finger had begun to slip off the pulse of the music consumer. CBS/Columbia was irked (perhaps unfairly) and set some pretty high expectations for the band’s next album…the threat was crystal clear.
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I remember it being a good live album, but yeah, it's just a live album...
Next. :)
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Of the BOC live albums, the double disc reissue of Some Enchanted Evening is my favorite one, with ET Live coming in just a shade ahead of On Your Feet Or On Your Knees.
I have less of the problem of the repeating songs since I went backwards through the live albums and as such, ET Live was the first one, and I don't rate the versions of some of the songs that repeat as low as you do, Podaar. Dominance and Submission and Cities on Flame are amazing in particular and I love the version of Reaper on this album,and Red and Black and Hot Rails are both pretty wicked too. I actually flat out loathed the Doors cover when the album originally came out, though it's grown on me over the years. And Veteran of the Psychic Wars here is the definitive version of the song, if you ask me, with the best solo Buck ever played.
Here's the thing about this album though, and it's one of the reasons that I rate it higher than a lot: the MTV concert of the same tour. Most of the songs on ETL featured in it, including a longer version of Godzilla with a longer drum solo, and, of course, the visual display of the 20 foot tall Godzilla they took with them as a backdrop being particularly awesome. As MTV played the concert a lot, this wound up being one of the first live albums (along with Rush's Exit Stage Left) for me that came with a visual component, so you could see how Buck was making those weird sounds in Cities on Flame (by moving his guitar in the air while playing it) or how he played the solo in Veteran. So I will freely admit that SEEING the performances on this album, frequently, adds some sentimental value to me. It did kind of feel a little like a dying gasp for the live album genre even at the time though with MTV being out there and video releases of concerts, of repeatability, on the horizon.
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After this album, I have very little recollection of anything BOC did in the 80's. I don't remember them touring at all. They certainly may have, but I don't remember it.
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Next. :)
Of the BOC live albums, the double disc reissue of Some Enchanted Evening is my favorite one, with ET Live coming in just a shade ahead of On Your Feet Or On Your Knees.
:iagree:
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I'll get to this one when I can, guys. My headphones crapped out on me, and I have a new puppy.
Pics or it never happened!
Oh, it happened.
Do you want him?
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I'll get to this one when I can, guys. My headphones crapped out on me, and I have a new puppy.
Pics or it never happened!
Oh, it happened.
Do you want him?
:lol Uuh, gee...no thanks all the same.
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*crossed Podaar's name off list*
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After this album, I have very little recollection of anything BOC did in the 80's. I don't remember them touring at all. They certainly may have, but I don't remember it.
I know they opened for Rush on the Power Windows tour, because I saw them in 1986. I remember them doing a brief tour supporting ETL-because back then bands DID tour for live albums, though it was dying-with Aldo Nova opening-but basically this is the point where BOC starts falling off the cliff.
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“ Speed is the game in the shadow of kings
Where the company of angels fly
They appear at the crossroads at once in the future
Clad in the darkness on the highways of night
With no love ... from the past”
The Revölution By Night (1983)
(https://i.imgur.com/QJPN0Xb.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – guitar, lead vocals on tracks 1, 2, 5, 6, 7
Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser – lead guitar, keyboards, lead vocals on tracks 3, 4, 8
Allen Lanier – piano, keyboards
Joe Bouchard – bass, electric and acoustic guitars, vocoder, lead vocals on 9
Rick Downey – drums
Additional musicians
Larry Fast - synthesizers, programming
Aldo Nova – guitar and synthesizers on "Take Me Away"
Gregg Winter - backing vocals on "Eyes on Fire"
Randy Jackson – bass on "Shooting Shark"
Marc Baum - saxophone on "Shooting Shark"
Production
Bruce Fairbairn – producer, mixing
Dave Wittman - engineer
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1. Take Me Away Eric Bloom, Aldo Nova 4:31
2. Eyes on Fire Gregg Winter 3:56
3. Shooting Shark Donald Roeser, Patti Smith 7:09
4. Veins Roeser, Richard Meltzer 3:59
5. Shadow of California Joe Bouchard, Neal Smith, Sandy Pearlman 5:10
6. Feel the Thunder Bloom 5:48
7. Let Go Bloom, Roeser, Ian Hunter 3:28
8. Dragon Lady Roeser, Broadway Blotto 4:08
9. Light Years of Love Bouchard, Helen Wheels 4:05
Total length: 41:44
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Albert was out. While the rest of the band, including his brother Joe, collectively sighed with relief at being free of his antagonistic behavior (crazy drummers) that also meant they needed to take up the slack. Albert was the most prolific and energetic song writer in the band since its inception. Sure, anything that was a hit came from Buck’s pen (maybe Albert was a bit jealous) but Albert always helped with arrangements too. Considering what was about to happen, perhaps the soul of BÖC had really always been Albert. He had a way of keeping his eye on the ball and insisting (demanding?) that the band retain their identity.
The spirit of collaboration I’ve been praising throughout this thread can be taken too far and this album clearly tries to walk the ledge in hurricane. This album has the first song in their history written entirely from outside the band and four more songs include writers that had never been used previously.
Pressure does funny things to people and with CBS/Columbia insisting the band recreate the success of FoUO, what did they do? Why, throw out most of what made it a success in the first place. They hired another pop producer in Bruce Fairbairn, but in his defense most of his successes leaned in the direction of rock so it’s not really a bad choice…until. Instead of going to his studio where he’d had success, they dragged him out of his native Canada and into New York. Then when he was finished and went back to Canada, Buck and Sandy went through and remixed about half the album! I don’t know; this review is going to be too long if I sit and bellyache about what went wrong but some of the decisions are truly baffling.
Full disclosure: I don’t own this album and I don’t intend on buying it. I have “Shooting Shark” in my digital library and when it comes on during shuffle I’m just as likely to skip it as enjoy it.
This album was so far off my radar when it was released that I literally didn’t listen to it in full until researching for this thread. At the time of it’s release my tastes had moved on to Triumph, Krokus, Savatage, Maiden, Dio, Queensrÿche, MSG, Y&T and this little known indie record called “Kill ‘em All” from some nobody band called Metallica. Now that my tastes have circled back around some I’d hope to find some sweet BÖC meat to sink my teeth in but this album is awful scrawny. After forcing myself through a dozen plays I’m still of the same mind.
It’s not completely horrible and I’m even betting that some folks whose taste runs toward AOR or Melodic Rock may find some real enjoyment here. Take the Aldo Nova song…okay, Eric redid the words so he’s credited too but essentially “Take Me Away” is pure Aldo Nova with Buck doing a guest spot on guitar. It’s catchy and has some good moments if just a bit on the light side. “Veins”, “Feel the Thunder”, and “Dragon Lady” may also appeal but maybe would have been better if done by a Bon Jovi or someone like that. You know, with more enthusiasm and heart.
If you haven’t heard “Shooting Shark” I can honestly say it’s worth a listen if only for the Patti Smith lyric but this is a different animal than what we’ve listened to so far in this thread. It’s a light jazzy number with melancholy air complete with electronic drums, sax solo, slap bass (played by Randy Jackson of American Idol fame) and even when Buck plays a guitar lead it’s with a jazz club sensibility that sounds much like a sax anyway. It’s great, but different. In the extreme.
“Shadow of California” being the odd duck on this record is actually the one that sounds the most like BÖC. With reference to our long lost Transmaniacon Motorcycle Club who returns to the world they left behind, when they slaughtered each other in “Golden Age of Leather”, by the new found ability of time travel. Still, there’s nothing immediate about this song and I find the whole thing too distant.
In fact, that’s a complaint I have about the entire production. It’s very slick, don’t get me wrong, but it lacks the intimacy of their previous records. Everything is expansive, like you're listening to a stereo from across a huge, white-tiled operating theater or something. The shadows are gone and the darkness banished. Oh, and the electronic drums, especially the toms, are dated and annoying as hell.
This has been a test of the Podaar negative opinion system. If this was an opinion you actually agree with, you will receive further instructions ahead. This is only a test.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Thank you…
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I do like Aldo Nova. Never knew he played on a BOC album. Will check it out. I didn't hear anything by BOC after CE back in the day.
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I cannot get on board with that assessment. Maybe it's because the mixed tape that got me into the band had three songs from this - Take Me Away, Shooting Shark and Feel the Thunder, all of which are great) - or maybe it's because I first listened to this whole album with no predisposed thought of what B.O.C. is supposed to sound like, but I liked it a lot, and still do. Okay, it's not a top 5 B.O.C. record, and yeah the electronic drums do sound a bit dated, but everything on this is at least good and more than half of it ranges from very good (Shadow of California and Veins) to great (the aforementioned three above). I get why fans at the time probably didn't like it very much, but as someone who got into the band in the mid 90s, it sounded just fine to me. It's not essential, but some of the songs on it definitely are. Take Me Away and Shooting Shark are two of their best songs, by any measure, IMO.
But it's okay, Podaar...we're all wrong sometimes. ;) :biggrin:
:hat
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But it's okay, Podaar...we're all wrong sometimes. ;) :biggrin:
:hat
Oh don't I know it. You can probably tell by my write up that I was disappointed in myself for not finding enough enjoyment in it. I plan to revisit it, from time to time, once this thread is put to bed. I may be too immersed in the discography at the moment...not seeing the forest, as it were.
I'm happy to acknowledge that your taste may be superior! :lol
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No, no, not superior; just different. :) Plus, we obviously came at it from completely different angles, which played a huge part in our completely different reactions to it. :coolio
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Finished my listen and thought it was a decent album. Production-wise I like it, but not the drums. Could have done with a bit more umph in the guitars but its ok The Aldo Nova song is very good. Not the worst album I've listened to in the discog so far.
Its certainly "of its time" though, and trying to compete sound-wise with their contempories.
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I do like Aldo Nova. Never knew he played on a BOC album. Will check it out. I didn't hear anything by BOC after CE back in the day.
Hell, I saw Aldo open for BOC
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Before we move on. What's everyone's opinion of "Let Go" from this album? I'm especially interested in Lowdz' and Kev's take on it.
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Playing catch-up: finished Fire of Unknown Origin this morning.
It was OK. Not bad (except for Joan Crawford WTF), but nothing special.
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Playing catch-up: finished Fire of Unknown Origin this morning.
It was OK. Not bad (except for Joan Crawford WTF), but nothing special.
:lol
You may be the first person I've ever heard characterize "Joan Crawford" as bad. It's definitely weird but most people think that's the main ingredient in the awesome sauce.
Vive la différence
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Joan Crawford is great!
As for Let Go, it's a good song. I get the impression that they wrote it with it being an eventual live favorite in mind, where the fans would chant the "B! O! C!" part, but I doubt that ever came to fruition. :lol :lol
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Maybe it's a frame of mind, wrong time/wrong song thing.
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As for Let Go, it's a good song. I get the impression that they wrote it with it being an eventual live favorite in mind, where the fans would chant the "B! O! C!" part, but I doubt that ever came to fruition. :lol :lol
Probably because their fans are all 'stuck-up sticky beaks' like me. To me it just comes off as too low brow, like, "Hey, hey we're the Culters/People say we're Culting around/but we're too busy playing/to put anybody down" :lol
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Eh, I doubt it. I'd be surprised if that song was ever played live, since I could see them thinking it was never good enough to play live, and it's hard to become a live favorite when you, ya know, never play it live. :rollin :rollin
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuK7iMG2mOk
It actually comes off a little better live. #whodathunk
Check out the second comment on the link! :lol :lol
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Before we move on. What's everyone's opinion of "Let Go" from this album? I'm especially interested in Lowdz' and Kev's take on it.
It doesn't rock enough - it sounds off because of that. Its like a big crowd participation track and the elements are there but they just didn't rock the guitars. That sterile weak production didn't help it but it comes across a bit 50s rock n roll.
and those backing vocals are :lol :facepalm:
There are much better songs on the album but they all suffer from that production - Dragon Lady being a prime example. They could have metalled that up a bit and it would have been a great track. Its all far too polite.
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Revolution by Night has a top five BOC song in Shooting Shark, and a pretty damn good one in Take Me Away, but the production really, really does it no favors. It's so 80s it hurts to listen to these days, especially the drums. Honestly you could get by with just hearing the two songs I mentioned, Feel the Thunder, and Shadow of California and not really be missing a lot. The only BOC album I like less as a total album is Mirrors.
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I'm guessing that after Fire Of Unknown Origin returned BOC to a level of success they had not seen in a while, they were eager to repeat that success. The result of this is that RBN suffers from the same paradox as Judas Priest's Turbo; the band was attempting to make an ultra-modern album and, in the process, dated themselves severely. Listening to Revolution By Night is like getting smacked in the face by the physical manifestation of the 1980's. The electronic drums, the uber-slick ZZ Top Eliminator-esque guitars, and the layers upon layers upon layers of synthesizers mark this record out as something that could only have been made in the decade of excess. It's unmistakable and unavoidable. If the defrosted 80's "That Guy" from that Wall Street parody episode of Futurama has a favourite Blue Oyster Cult album, this would be that record.
Fortunately, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, the sound actually works for most of the songs on the album. The silky guitars and synths give many of the songs a dreamy, almost lonely quality that actually seems suitable for most of the record. Especially on the ethereal Shooting Shark, this effect is apparent, but it also works on several other songs, like the epic Feel The Thunder with it's ghostly organ sections, the upbeat, driving Eyes On Fire, and even some of the heavier songs like Take Me Away. Much of the album has that distinct sound of an 80's sci-fi/fantasy film score, like something from The Neverending Story, Labyrinth or the 1986 Transformers film, or some really good, old school 80's anime, like Iczer One or Venus Wars. And for me, that is certainly not a bad thing.
The main problem with this production is that there are some songs that sound like the should have been heavier, but simply aren't. Dragon Lady is a prime example of this. It's a great song, but despite the strong, driving rhythm, it sounds a bit too light. The guitars in the riff should have been given just a bit more crunch, the drums and bass a bit more oomph. Fortunately, the song still has a slew of great melodies and ripping solos, so I can't complain too much. And that is true of the album as a whole. Yes the production does seem to hold the music back in many place, yet the songwriting here is unquestionably as strong as anything by BOC.
Of course, there is the infamous Let Go. Much like Joan Crawford, it seems to be stylistically at odds with it's own album. Unlike Joan Crawford, Let Go just seems to fail at what it was trying to be, which was a big arena rock anthem. The song just isn't rocking enough to serve this purpose, and instead just sounds like a generic limp and flaccid 80's pop song, having none of the ethereal darkness present on the rest of the record, nor the crunch and grit it sounds like it should have.
Overall, though, I do like this album. I do like to go on my 80's nostalgia trips every now and again, and this album certainly serves that purpose, and the fact that it was made by Blue Oyster Cult automatically makes it better then most 80's pop-rock out there. Most of the songs on here that are just excellent, and the only one I can honestly say I dislike is Let Go. Really, though I think the fact that the record has BOC on the cover is probably it's biggest mistake. Taken as simply an album of 80's music, it's great, and certainly well ahead of the curve of it's contemporaries. But, much like Priest's Turbo, it just sounds out of place compared to other albums made by the same band. That makes an objective judgment of the record difficult for the die hard fan, because it forces them to make an impossible choice; should Revolution By Night be judged as a BOC record, within the context of the discography of the band who made it, or on it's own, simply as music. I think if you look at it from the viewpoint of the former, you may have some issues with it. But from the viewpoint of the latter, it is highly enjoyable.
Now excuse me while I go watch some Miami Vice....... :P
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I'm guessing that after Fire Of Unknown Origin returned BOC to a level of success they had not seen in a while, they were eager to repeat that success. The result of this is that RBN suffers from the same paradox as Judas Priest's Turbo; the band was attempting to make an ultra-modern album and, in the process, dated themselves severely. Listening to Revolution By Night is like getting smacked in the face by the physical manifestation of the 1980's. The electronic drums, the uber-slick ZZ Top Eliminator-esque guitars, and the layers upon layers upon layers of synthesizers mark this record out as record as something that could only have been made in the decade of excess. It's unmistakable and unavoidable. If the defrosted 80's "That Guy" from that Wall Street parody episode of Futurama has a favourite Blue Oyster Cult album, this would be that record.
Fortunately, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, the sound actually works for most of the songs on the album. The silky guitars and synths give many of the songs a dreamy, almost lonely quality that actually seems suitable for most of the record. Especially on the ethereal Shooting Shark, this effect is apparent, but it also works on several other songs, like the organ parts of the epic Feel The Thunder, the upbeat, driving Eyes On Fire, and even some of the heavier songs like Take Me Away. Much of the album has that distinct sound of an 80's sci-fi/fantasy film score, like something from The Neverending Story, Labyrinth or the 1986 Transformers film, or some really good, old school 80's anime, like Iczer One or Venus Wars. And for me, that is certainly not a bad thing.
The main problem with this production is that there are some songs that sound like the should have been heavier, but simply aren't. Dragon Lady is a prime example of this. It's a great song, but despite the strong, driving rhythm, it sounds a bit too light. The guitars in the riff should have been given just a bit more crunch, the drums and bass a bit more oomph. Fortunately, the song still has a slew of great melodies and ripping solos, so I can't complain too much. And that is true of the album as a whole. Yes the production does seem to hold the music back in many place, yet the songwriting here is unquestionably as strong as anything by BOC.
Then, of course, there is the infamous Let Go. Much like Joan Crawford, it seems to be stylistically at odds with it's own album. Unlike Joan Crawford, Let Go just seems to fail at what it was trying to be, which was a big arena rock anthem. the song just isn't rocking enough to serve this purpose, and instead just sounds like a limp and flaccid 80's pop song, having none of the ethereal darkness present on the rest of the record, nor the crunch and grit it sounds like it should have.
Overall, though, I do like this album. I do like to go on my 80's nostalgia trips every now and again, and this album certainly serves that purpose, and the fact that it was made by Blue Oyster Cult automatically makes it better then most 80's pop-rock out there. Most of the songs on here that are just excellent, and the only one I can honestly say I dislike is Let Go. Really, though I think the fact that the record has BOC on the cover is probably it's biggest mistake. Taken as simply an album of 80's music, it's great, and certainly well ahead of the curve of it's contemporaries. But, much like Priest's Turbo, it just sounds out of place compared to other albums made by the same band. That makes an objective judgment of the record difficult for the die hard fan, because it forces them to make an impossible choice; should Revolution By Night be judged as a BOC record, within the context of the discography of the band who made it, or on it's own, simply as music. I think if you look at it from the viewpoint of the former, you may have some issues with it. But from the viewpoint of the latter, it is highly enjoyable.
Now excuse me while I go watch some Miami Vice....... :P
yup. That's what I was trying to say :biggrin:
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Dark Master, at this instant I'm trying to hear the album from your perspective simply because I find your post persuasive.
Yes, "Take Me Away" is much better than I let on in my write-up, and then...and then, "Eyes on Fire" comes on and my eyes roll back in my head and a sharp pain begins just at the base of my skull. I get that I'm listening to this too much from the perspective of a metal guy but I can't be the only one who hears Wayne Newton's greatest hits when this comes on. "Tip your waiter. I'm here all week, folks."
You say that "Let Go" is the only stylistically odd track on this album but what about "Eyes on Fire" and "Light Years of Love"?
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Dark Master, at this instant I'm trying to hear the album from your perspective simply because I find your post persuasive.
Yes, "Take Me Away" is much better than I let on in my write-up, and then...and then, "Eyes on Fire" comes on and my eyes roll back in my head and a sharp pain begins just at the base of my skull. I get that I'm listening to this too much from the perspective of a metal guy but I can't be the only one who hears Wayne Newton's greatest hits when this comes on. "Tip your waiter. I'm here all week, folks."
You say that "Let Go" is the only stylistically odd track on this album but what about "Eyes on Fire" and "Light Years of Love"?
Eyes On Fire and Light Years Of Love still have that haunting, synth-heavy sound that meshes well with the rest of the record. Yes, they are still certainly on the lighter side of the album, but they at least sound like they belong on the same record as songs like Take Me Away and Feel The Thunder. So there is at least some stylistic consistency. After all, every well balanced album needs some variance between light and heavy, fast and slow, so at least those songs have the same general sound and feel as RBN as a record.
Let Go, however has none of that. It has none of the ethereal quality of the rest of the album. It was an obvious attempt at an arena rock single, but it lacks the power to be so. When much of the album sounds dreamy and lonely, Let Go tries to be loud and proud. The problem is that the album was mixed for dreamy and lonely, thus Let Go lacks the necessary balls to be rock anthem. I'm not sure if the song could be fixed just by a different mix, though. Those backing vocals are just...... I dunno what that was all about. There aren't many songs in the BOC catalog that I would actually call "bad", but Let Go certainly crosses that line. The band was way out of their comfort zone with that one, and neither their traditional sound, nor the sound on this record, is well suited for what Let Go was trying to be.
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(https://imageshack.com/a/img341/1282/lp2.gif)
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(https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/awesome_to_the_max.gif)
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Just started this album. So far, me likey.
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Another great post, Dark Master! :tup :tup I especially like this part:
Fortunately, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, the sound actually works for most of the songs on the album. The silky guitars and synths give many of the songs a dreamy, almost lonely quality that actually seems suitable for most of the record. Especially on the ethereal Shooting Shark, this effect is apparent, but it also works on several other songs, like the epic Feel The Thunder with it's ghostly organ sections, the upbeat, driving Eyes On Fire, and even some of the heavier songs like Take Me Away. Much of the album has that distinct sound of an 80's sci-fi/fantasy film score, like something from The Neverending Story, Labyrinth or the 1986 Transformers film, or some really good, old school 80's anime, like Iczer One or Venus Wars. And for me, that is certainly not a bad thing.
I think these are excellent points. Some might view those elements as un-B.O.C.-like, but they are what they are for this album. I cannot imagine a song like Shooting Shark being on any other album of theirs, since the sound of this album is perfect for it. Having them rock it up and taking away that dreamy element, as you called it, would rob the song of its soul and character.
I am always shocked that more love is not shown for Feel the Thunder. That song rocks and sounds more like vintage B.O.C. than anything else on this record, so the diehards should love it more. It's always been a favorite of mine. :metal
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Overall, the album was OK. I enjoyed it. There were some definite low points (B! O! C!) but it was OK. I would probably put it in the bottom half of the BOC albums I've heard thus far.
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I wonder if Jaq has started swimming to that island he is gonna be on all by himself when the next album update is done... :biggrin: :lol
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I played the crap out of Club Ninja and saw them 3 times on that tour. Pick from a party after one of the show to follow during the Club Ninja part of the thread.
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I wonder if Jaq has started swimming to that island he is gonna be on all by himself when the next album update is done... :biggrin: :lol
It's only a short swim from the Revolution by Night island if you wanna drop in, Kev. :rollin
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That's it, where's my paddle boat?! :lol
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Another great post, Dark Master! :tup :tup I especially like this part:
Fortunately, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, the sound actually works for most of the songs on the album. The silky guitars and synths give many of the songs a dreamy, almost lonely quality that actually seems suitable for most of the record. Especially on the ethereal Shooting Shark, this effect is apparent, but it also works on several other songs, like the epic Feel The Thunder with it's ghostly organ sections, the upbeat, driving Eyes On Fire, and even some of the heavier songs like Take Me Away. Much of the album has that distinct sound of an 80's sci-fi/fantasy film score, like something from The Neverending Story, Labyrinth or the 1986 Transformers film, or some really good, old school 80's anime, like Iczer One or Venus Wars. And for me, that is certainly not a bad thing.
I think these are excellent points. Some might view those elements as un-B.O.C.-like, but they are what they are for this album. I cannot imagine a song like Shooting Shark being on any other album of theirs, since the sound of this album is perfect for it. Having them rock it up and taking away that dreamy element, as you called it, would rob the song of its soul and character.
I am always shocked that more love is not shown for Feel the Thunder. That song rocks and sounds more like vintage B.O.C. than anything else on this record, so the diehards should love it more. It's always been a favorite of mine. :metal
Thank you! And yes, Feel The Thunder is a sorely underated BOC track, my favourite off RBN and a Top 10 BOC song in my book as a whole. :metal
Honestly, the more I think about this album, the more similarities I see between it and Judas Priest's Turbo, and I find myself thinking that there was probably a similar mentality behind the creation of both records. I don't know much about the making of Revolution By Night, but I do remember reading a "History of Judas Priest" article a while back where one of the band members (can't remember whom) mentioned that when making Turbo, the band had seen other metal bands like Scorpions breaking big with a slicker sound in the 80's, and they felt that they could do the same. I strongly suspect something similar happened in the BOC camp after FOUO. Classic prog bands from the 70's like Genesis and Rush were having big, mainstream success in the early 80's by streamlining their sound and songwriting. BOC probably saw that success and decided they wanted a piece of that pie. I can hardly blame them for that. RBN was a departure, true, but it's hardly a bad record, and it is, in fact, quite good. I can certainly understand why a great many BOC fans dislike it, but for me, it is a sorely underrated album, a victim of it's time and sound, and the expectations that go with having "Blue Oyster Cult" on the record sleeve.
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Honestly, the more I think about this album, the more similarities I see between it and Judas Priest's Turbo, and I find myself thinking that there was probably a similar mentality behind the creation of both records. I don't know much about the making of Revolution By Night, but I do remember reading a "History of Judas Priest" article a while back where one of the band members (can't remember whom) mentioned that when making Turbo, the band had seen other metal bands like Scorpions breaking big with a slicker sound in the 80's, and they felt that they could do the same. I strongly suspect something similar happened in the BOC camp after FOUO. Classic prog bands from the 70's like Genesis and Rush were having big, mainstream success in the early 80's by streamlining their sound and songwriting. BOC probably saw that success and decided they wanted a piece of that pie. I can hardly blame them for that. RBN was a departure, true, but it's hardly a bad record, and it is, in fact, quite good. I can certainly understand why a great many BOC fans dislike it, but for me, it is a sorely underrated album, a victim of it's time and sound, and the expectations that go with having "Blue Oyster Cult" on the record sleeve.
Here is a quote from the late Allen Lanier when asked why he left the band for the first time in March of 1985:
“There were a lot of reasons. Everything seemed to be losing focus somehow. It was always that damn bugaboo about the definition of ‘What exactly is BÖC music?’ And it got to be so neurotic, in terms of analyzing. It was just nuts, you know? And then also, it was the kind of thing that everybody goes through. You start to see different types of trends happening in the music business and you say, ‘Well, we’ve got to do some of that kind of stuff.’ You know, the kind of thinking that is never, ever fruitful. Because you always come back to the truth of ‘What you can write is what you can write.’ It doesn’t matter what you try to do, it’s ultimately going to come down to who you are in the end.”
It think what it comes down to is sincerity. At the risk of engaging in magical thinking I think insincerity is a difficult thing to quantify but something that most people are tuned into. Some musicians have made the transition from one genre to another without a hitch and I may be wrong but it seems likely they were completely sincere. Phil Collins immediately comes to mind.
TRBN is largely guilt free when it comes to the idea of "fake it 'til you make it" but there are enough elements of it there to bring the whole effort down. In my mind, "Eyes On Fire", "Let Go", and "Dragon Lady" are insincere efforts. "Veins", "Feel the Thunder", and "Light Years of Love" just show a lack of confidence. None of these (except "Let Go") are truly bad compositions but the combination the production method and calculated effort of making a modern hit record comes off as insincere.
Think of every BÖC hit (or minor hit) song and you'll begin to realize they only did well when the wrote true to themselves.
Which segues nicely into...
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“ A spectacle of awakening light
The soldiers are baffled but still they fight
Ooka chaka ooka chaka”
Club Ninja (1985)
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51SxNbIAECL.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – stun guitar, lead vocals on 1, 3, 6, 8
Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser – lead guitar, keyboards, lead vocals on 2, 4, 5, 9, co-lead vocal on 7
Joe Bouchard – bass, guitar, co-lead vocal on 7
Tommy Zvoncheck – synthesizers, piano, organ
Jimmy Wilcox – percussion, background vocals
Additional musicians
Thommy Price – drums
Phil Grande – guitars
Kenny Aaronson – bass
David Lucas, Joni Peltz, Dave Immer, Joe Caro – background vocals
Howard Stern – opening to "When the War Comes"
Production
Sandy Pearlman - producer, management
Paul Mandl - engineer, overdubs editor, programming
John Devlin, Toby Scott - engineers
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1. "White Flags" Leggatt Bros. 4:41
2. "Dancin' in the Ruins" Larry Gottlieb, Jason Scanlon 4:00
3. "Make Rock Not War" Bob Halligan Jr. 3:58
4. "Perfect Water" Donald Roeser, Jim Carroll 5:31
5. "Spy in the House of the Night" Roeser, Richard Meltzer 4:23
6. "Beat 'em Up" Bob Halligan Jr. 3:24
7. "When the War Comes" Joe Bouchard, Sandy Pearlman 6:02
8. "Shadow Warrior" Eric Bloom, Roeser, Eric Van Lustbader 5:42
9. "Madness to the Method" Roeser, Dick Trismen 7:25
Total length: 44:26
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Revölution by Night was deemed a commercial failure by, well, everyone and Columbia executives had lost confidence. Yet, they also had witnessed the reemergence of other 70’s bands like Aerosmith and Heart; everyone thought it was time for another resurrection story in rock. Sandy Pearlman pulled some strings and got a huge budget to pull out all the stops. Blame Boston for starting it all, if you wish, but there was a thinking in those days that the greater the effort, and money spent, the bigger the record.
The band’s confidence in their songwriting ability was face down in the mud. They struggled to write songs, so as the deadline for beginning rehearsals approached, they panicked and bought some songs. Pearlman seized the production reins for himself and brought in a musicians and engineers he’d been working with on the ponderous Imaginos sessions (we’ll get to that). Thus, when rehearsals began, Allen Lanier showed up to find Tommy Zvoncheck already working on the keyboards so he blew a gasket and walked out. No one was to see or hear from him for another couple of years. He literally moved to Florida and disappeared from the scene, thus ushering in the first incarnation of 3OC.
Catching up on drummer issues, Rick Downey had been fired not long after the Revölution by Night tour. Then they played a few dates with Albert Bouchard but refused to let him back in the band even though he’d taken responsibility for much of what happened and promised to behave. After a half-year lull in activity the band needed a drummer so Jimmy Wilcox, at the recommendation of Rick Derringer, was hired to play some warm up dates prior to recording. He was officially in the band but for reasons probably known only to Pearlman, Thommy Price, of Billy Idol’s band, play nearly all the drums during recording.
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This has been a difficult album for me to get a handle on. Much like Revölution by Night, I hadn’t really heard this album, in its entirety, until researching for this thread. Pearlman did a terrific job sound wise on this album. Sure, the 80’s lushness is there with the vocals and guitars being expansive yet they never go too far with the echo effects. By contrast, the synthesizers are crystal clear and Zvoncheck has a marvelous sense of the appropriate. The drums and bass are also very clear and loud enough in the mix to provide a terrific driving rhythm throughout.
All of the songs actually written by the band members are worthy of inclusion in the BÖC canon.
Perfect Water is a typically lush Buck Dharma song in the vein of “Shooting Shark” but adds in much more of his soulful leads…if perhaps a bit subdued. Spy in the House of the Night also plays to Buck’s strength having a nice boogie/pop vibe that he can lay some blistering leads over and the odd Meltzer lyrics echo the glory days of the band.
Pearlman’s Imaginos story rears its conspiracy bludgeoned head in the leering When the War Comes Home but the cheese is laid on a bit thick with a corny intro by Howard Stern and comical post verse refrain of “ooka chaka, ooka chaka.” If you can ignore those moments though, there are some interesting and unusual moments of instrumentation and clannish vocal harmonies. Again, Zvoncheck pulls off some terrific effects: like the bells during the scattershot ending. Pretty cool stuff.
The album ends with the double tap of Shadow Warrior and Madness to the Method. Both are similar in that they desperately try to be epic and largely succeed but both have curious moments like a pretty pedestrian lead guitar by Phil Grande on MttM only to be followed by a spectacular piano finale by Zvoncheck. Shadow Warrior rocks, and is in fact what the album is named after, but the lyrics are just this side of obvious. I get that Eric Van Lustbader is the leading writer of Ninja fantasy but not every writer automatically translates to a great lyricist. Oh, and once again Grande is asked to do some screeching lead guitars on top of doing all the rhythm guitars too. It just boggles the mind. I mean, you have one of the premier lead guitarists in the world, with Buck Dharma, but you opt to have Joe Cocker’s guitarist do the lead?
The albums single, and minor MTV star, is Dancing in the Ruins, a song with more hooks than a Chinese phone book…ur, I mean more chins than a tackle box. A bit on the obvious side, this self conscious tune sounds just as if someone asked the song writers to pen a follow up to The Reaper. Joe Bouchard once said that he thought it was stupid to have Buck Dharma-ish song written by someone else and that they should have just had Buck do it. :) Still, it’s a good song and easy to sing along with. The video is notable for being the first time seeing Buck without a Ron Jeremy moustache!
The album opener is White Flags. Again, like the rest of the album, it has a great sound and some awesome keys, but due to a corny vocal performance by Eric Bloom it just invokes an image of Bill Murray’s ‘lounge singer’ skits on SNL. In fact, I’m not sold on Blooms performance on this entire album. He always tried to roll with whatever was going on but he’d been banned from playing guitar on this album (presumably that’s what Phil Grande was brought in to do) and maybe that removed him from the proceedings enough to keep him from feeling the vocals more. :dunno:
The other two songs, Make Rock Not War and Beat ‘em Up are written by songsmith Bob Halligan Jr. who wrote the Judas Priest tunes Chains and Some Heads Are Gonna Roll. These recordings are completely unconvincing and lack the required level pugnacious attitude necessary to pull them off.
This is a weird record. Dated, over-produced but with overall clear sound, lacking in spontaneity and heart but still decent song writing and some terrific performances at times.
This is what Joe Bouchard had to say about leaving the band after Club Ninja: I’d say Club Ninja was the big catalyst for me leaving the group… But then we started buying… the last straw was buying all those songs we didn’t need to buy, White Flags and stuff. I don’t know what happened with that song. Could have been the mix. We spent a year to complete it, 12 months from beginning to end on that record. At the end of 12 months and a ridiculous amount of money, the most money we had ever spent up to that time, I just said this is terrible. I don’t believe this; I’m leaving.
Later in the same interview he had this to say, And anyways, we weren’t making much money at the time either. I just said to myself, hey, if you’re not making any money, and the music sucks, then there’s no reason to stay. I mean if the music was good and you weren’t making any money, all right, stick with it you know? My ideals were still there. I would have stayed for the love of the music alone.
So there you have it, Joe left after 15 years with the band and we’re left with Two Öyster Cult until they get Allen back in a year or so.
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Meanwhile, on the island with the Guys Who Love Club Ninja... :lol
It's not perfect, don't get me wrong. Dancing In The Ruins sounds like what it is, namely someone in Columbia A&R telling some people to write a new Burnin' For You-though it redeems itself by being catchy as fuck and a great song when I saw them live. The two Bob Halligan songs are obvious attempts to get a hit by the guy who wrote a couple of songs that got Judas Priest a little radio attention (and Lee Aaron's version of Beat Em Up totally dusts this one.) You can practically smell the record label bending over the band and yelling at them to make a hit.
And yet...the rest of the album ranges from good (I like White Flags and don't care that outside writers wrote it, sorry Joe) to very good (I like Shadow Warrior and Madness to the Method a lot) to "really good except for some silliness" (When The War Comes), and then there's this: if I were to make a BOC song list, #1 would be Astronomy, #3 would be Shooting Shark, and #2..is Perfect Water. That song's sublime. Funny thing is, Club Ninja was largely regarded in my circles as a return to form for the band, and hey, they're touring with Rush, big things coming for BOC, just you watch!
Funny how that turned out :lol
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It's funny, I read your post, Jaq, and it very nearly echoes what I wrote. Thus, we don't disagree on the album experience but only on whether that's good thing or not. :lol
I don't like Club Ninja as an album experience but there are a few songs I've purchased individually.
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At the time of it’s release my tastes had moved on to Triumph, Krokus, Savatage, Maiden, Dio, Queensrÿche, MSG, Y&T and this little known indie record called “Kill ‘em All” from some nobody band called Metallica.
I saw this over the weekend and I wanted to quote it. This is where I was in 1982 as well. I dabbled in BOC when I was young, but frankly, there was just so much better music out there, and I kind of forgot about them.
That said, I am enjoying this chronological history of the band. I'm just sorry I really can't contribute much.
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At the time of it’s release my tastes had moved on to Triumph, Krokus, Savatage, Maiden, Dio, Queensrÿche, MSG, Y&T and this little known indie record called “Kill ‘em All” from some nobody band called Metallica.
I saw this over the weekend and I wanted to quote it. This is where I was in 1982 as well. I dabbled in BOC when I was young, but frankly, there was just so much better music out there, and I kind of forgot about them.
That said, I am enjoying this chronological history of the band. I'm just sorry I really can't contribute much.
You didn't have Savatage Sirens?!!
Actually, I'm not particularly surprised. It was incredibly obscure at the time but you must hear "Twisted Little Sister" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQk5spTj_SU) :biggrin:
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I did not have Sirens. They never really crossed my path in those days.
Krokus! :metal
A Krokus reference on DTF is always a good thing!
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I agree that Perfect Water is aces.
When I finally got this CD, long after I had gotten everything else by the band, I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as it was supposed to be. Granted, it still isn't that great, but Perfect Water and Madness to the Method are both major keepers, and Dancin' in the Ruins, When the War Comes and White Flags are all solid. When the War Comes has some of the best harmonies the band has ever done. Of course, it also has Howard Stern talking sections, so yeah. :rollin
The rest is trash and not worthy of me even listening to them because of this thread. :lol
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It's funny, I read your post, Jaq, and it very nearly echoes what I wrote. Thus, we don't disagree on the album experience but only on whether that's good thing or not. :lol
I don't like Club Ninja as an album experience but there are a few songs I've purchased individually.
I forgive Club Ninja a lot for Perfect Water. A lot. :lol
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I agree that Perfect Water is aces.
When I finally got this CD, long after I had gotten everything else by the band, I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as it was supposed to be. Granted, it still isn't that great, but Perfect Water and Madness to the Method are both major keepers, and Dancin' in the Ruins, When the War Comes and White Flags are all solid. When the War Comes has some of the best harmonies the band has ever done. Of course, it also has Howard Stern talking sections, so yeah. :rollin
The rest is trash and not worthy of me even listening to them because of this thread. :lol
I'm surprised you would characterize "Spy in the House of the Night" as trash. Yea, it's way down the list of BÖC songs, but there are some good lyrics and great sounding hammond organ playing by Zvoncheck. Not to mention, some of the only leads on the album that Buck actually played, and played quite well indeed. You were so forgiving of Revölutions faults that I'm tempted to call you inconsistent. :)
Well, as you said to me, "You can't always be right!" :lol
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Count me as one of the rare few that loved this disk. I played the cassette over and over. I saw them on this tour twice (with the Outlaws!) and even though I got the same shirt as my 2 buddies, I quickly changed after the concert to let all my friends know what a Rush Geek I was. Look at me with the cheesy $20 Alex Lifeson suitcoat as well! :lol Also Drinking Heffenwreckers FTW!!
(https://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss272/kingshmegland/Damnthe80s_zps25a4694e.jpg) (https://s583.photobucket.com/user/kingshmegland/media/Damnthe80s_zps25a4694e.jpg.html)
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Great pic Joe. That could be me on any given concert night as well, except for that fuc#ing jacket! :lol
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You should have seen the other five Jackets I owned then. :lol
Total Lifeson Nut.
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You should have seen the other five Jackets I owned then. :lol
No, I probably should NOT have seen them! :lol
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I'm still following, but a couple pages and albums behind now. Finished Fire of Unknown Origin yesterday, and really enjoyed it. Nice blend of 80s (almost) metal that is commercially appealing. Gonna skip ETL, and get right to Revolution tomorrow if I can. But, with Devy, Floyd and now bl5150's top 125 fighting for airtime, along with prepping for my Zeppelin discog discussion, I'm running out of hours in the day!!! Supposed to be a rainy day here tomorrow, so maybe I'll be able to pound out a few of these.
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So after Revolution By Night failed to recapture the success of Fire Of Unknown Origin, I would hazard to guess that the band, their management, their label, and, well, just about everyone connected to them, scrambled to figure out what went wrong. RBN had been slick and polished in every conceivable way, bringing BOC up to date with this new decade called "the '80's", so what was the problem? With the benefit of hindsight, I think most BOC fans would agree that it was precisely that slick production which had alienated the band's core audience by moving the band away from their signature sound.
However, back in 1984/85, the powers that be who were holding the reigns of BOC's careers, and, perhaps, even some of the band members themselves, had come to the conclusion that the band was out of their depth with this new decade, and were creatively running a little dry, and thus were in need of some outside assistance. Only some professional help, it was surely reasoned, could restore BOC to the success of Don't Fear The Reaper and Burning For You. As a result, nearly half of RBN's followup, Club Ninja, was written without any input from the band at all.
The problem with this is not necessarily a lack of quality, it is a lack of consistency. Only five of the album's nine tracks actually being written by BOC's traditional writing team, the remaining four songs have a distinctly different feel; not really bad exactly, but certainly not BOC. There are at least three different bands on this record, making it sound less like a single cohesive album and more like a mix-tape. BOC had always been a relatively diverse band throughout their careers, but on this album, with so much of the music being composed by others, they sound borderline schizophrenic.
The album starts out competently enough with the driving White Flags. The song is pretty cool, there's some interesting melodies and a few little nifty keyboard flourishes here and there, but something is clearly not right. That "something" would be the lack of any Blue Oyster Cult in the writing. Bloom sounds a little off here, probably because he is singing material written by someone he's not familiar with. Be assured, it's a great song, but it's pretty far from the BOC that we all know and love. These two problems, Bloom's lack of comfort and BOC playing non-BOC songs, are reoccurring issues throughout the record. The second track, Dancin' In The Ruins, is particularly bizarre, because it sounds like an imitation of Blue Oyster Cult! Again, it's still a pretty cool song, but hearing a song crafted deliberately to copy BOC's previous hits by musicians-for-hire only to be recorded by BOC for a BOC album is just plain weird!
The non-BOC tracks are rounded out by two songs written by Bob Halligan Jr. of Judas Priest/Lee Aaron/ Kix fame. Apparently, in the couple years between RBN and CN, BOC and their label had become aware of the new phenomenon called Heavy Metal blowing up all over MTV and radio at the time. While BOC had historically been associated with the heavy metal label, they were never really the same sort of metal as the bands that were dominating the media back in the mid '80's. For what it's worth, Make Rock Not War and Beat 'Em Up are pretty damn good 80's metal tunes, but are totally wrong for BOC. If you want the proof, you need to look no further then Lee Aaron's 1985 release, Call Of The Wild, where Beat Em' Up makes an appearance, and sounds much more at home with heavier guitars and Aaron's she-Dio roar rather then Bloom's..... I don't even know what he's trying to do here. I do like the old-school metal organ BOC adds to the song, but that is where my complements of the BOC version end. As for Make Rock Not War, Halligan should have given this song to Aaron as well; she could have done it justice, while here, it just sounds strange and out of place.
Now getting to the songs that BOC actually wrote, they are for the most part, quite good, and stand up pretty well compared to the band's established discography. Perfect Water is pure BOC, and it is this song rather then Dancin' In The Ruins that is the true successor to songs like Don't Fear The Reaper and Burnin' For You. Spy In The House Of The Night sounds a bit like it could be the bluesier lost sibling of the title track from Fire Of Unknown Origin. When The War Comes could have been one of the band's greats... were it not for the cringe-worthy "ooka choka" chant and the totally superfluous Howard Stern narration. It still has some of the band's best harmonies, though, so it's not totally ruined. Shadow Warrior is a bit more rocking then the usual BOC, but sounds much more natural for the band then the Bob Halligan songs mentioned earlier, and excellently showcases a more 80's metal side to BOC. I love the keyboards here, especially the doomy organ in the slower sections. The final track, Madness To The Method is just fucking epic. Strange that an album with such a severe identity crisis as this would end with such a strong yet lovely number.
So what is my final verdict for Club Ninja? Well, I can't say I hate it. There are some really good songs here. The main problem with this record is that with only a little more then half of it being actually written by BOC, it has that 80's mix-tape quality I mentioned earlier. I said of Revolution By Night that it was better judged simply as music rather then as a BOC record. Well, that is exponentially true of this album, especially since much of the album was not written by BOC at all! That doesn't make those non-BOC songs bad songs, they were just used on the wrong album for the wrong band. The five songs on here that were actually written by the band would have made a pretty solid EP. As is, this record remains, in my mind, a mostly enjoyable, if very inconsistent oddity in the BOC discography, less of an album and more of a collection of various 80's rock songs. Not bad by any means. Just don't go in expecting a single cohesive BOC record.
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I agree that Perfect Water is aces.
When I finally got this CD, long after I had gotten everything else by the band, I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as it was supposed to be. Granted, it still isn't that great, but Perfect Water and Madness to the Method are both major keepers, and Dancin' in the Ruins, When the War Comes and White Flags are all solid. When the War Comes has some of the best harmonies the band has ever done. Of course, it also has Howard Stern talking sections, so yeah. :rollin
The rest is trash and not worthy of me even listening to them because of this thread. :lol
I'm surprised you would characterize "Spy in the House of the Night" as trash. Yea, it's way down the list of BÖC songs, but there are some good lyrics and great sounding hammond organ playing by Zvoncheck. Not to mention, some of the only leads on the album that Buck actually played, and played quite well indeed. You were so forgiving of Revölutions faults that I'm tempted to call you inconsistent. :)
Well, as you said to me, "You can't always be right!" :lol
It's all about context, sir. The Revolution by Night was in the first batch of CDs I bought by the band when I first got into them, while Club Ninja was literally the last studio album of theirs I heard. Besides, Club Ninja's faults are way more glaring than TRBN's, not to mention that the songwriting is just better overall on TRBN. :)
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That said, I am enjoying this chronological history of the band. I'm just sorry I really can't contribute much.
You are pulling up these albums on Spotify and listening along right? You can contribute whatever you want if you're listening. :)
I'm still following, but a couple pages and albums behind now. Finished Fire of Unknown Origin yesterday, and really enjoyed it. Nice blend of 80s (almost) metal that is commercially appealing. Gonna skip ETL, and get right to Revolution tomorrow if I can. But, with Devy, Floyd and now bl5150's top 125 fighting for airtime, along with prepping for my Zeppelin discog discussion, I'm running out of hours in the day!!! Supposed to be a rainy day here tomorrow, so maybe I'll be able to pound out a few of these.
No worries, Chad. Activity for this thread had picked up some so I'm not in as big of a rush to finish it off. In fact, it could be several days before the next update. Imaginos is going to be difficult...ur, hey I know! Maybe I should just change the thread title to Blue Öyster Cult Discography: Imaginos and wait for everyone else to post their own custom album review. I'm sure, at least, the Wielder of the Actorios Ring would oblige us in short order. :corn
:justjen
It's all about context, sir. The Revolution by Night was in the first batch of CDs I bought by the band when I first got into them, while Club Ninja was literally the last studio album of theirs I heard. *snip*
We've seen that quite a bit for this band haven't we. I suppose you could say that about most music and that old saying, "I guess you had to be there," applies just as much to BÖC as anyone else. Maybe even more?
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That said, I am enjoying this chronological history of the band. I'm just sorry I really can't contribute much.
You are pulling up these albums on Spotify and listening along right? You can contribute whatever you want if you're listening. :)
I don't even now what Spotify is. :D
I use Youtube. I haven't been listening along. I did check a few tunes when you posted FOUO but mostly because I actually had that on 8 track and It's been 30 years easy since I heard any of those tracks. I have a day off today so I may have some time for BOC.
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You can sign onto a free web music player with your facebook account here. https://play.spotify.com/ (https://play.spotify.com/)
Hit the search button and then type in whichever album you want to listen to. You may get a random 15 second spot between every third of fourth song but it's a decent way to 'try before you buy'.
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Facebook? What's Facebook?
DTF IS my Facebook.
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Sorry to jump back to TRBN commentary, but I just wrapped it up this morning. Fairly enjoyable, but quite inconsistent. I come at it with a blend of Pod and Shmev viewpoints... it's still early enough in my BOC discovery that I don't have any significant predispositions; but I am now 10 albums in, so I have some expectations.
Dark Master's comment "some songs that sound like the should have been heavier, but simply aren't" ... is exactly how I felt at the end of this album. Between the apparent desire to break through more commercially, and the electronic drums, some tracks come off sounding more like Loverboy than BOC. Musically, Let Go is really good... then they start (and continue) singing. :puke: I really liked the opening track. Shooting Shark... couldn't stand the dance vibe I was getting from it. Remix it with real drums, and it would be an ok song. I really don't get where all the love is coming from. I really liked Feel the Thunder.
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Shooting Shark... couldn't stand the dance vibe I was getting from it. Remix it with real drums, and it would be an ok song. I really don't get where all the love is coming from.
That's not really an unexpected reaction. In fact, I'm quite surprised at the love it's gotten in this thread since nearly everyone I hung with back in the day, who loved BÖC, considered it a total sellout. But, over time and repeated listens, the lyrics and Buck's soulful delivery of them grew on me big time. Yes, at first blush, the slap bass and electronic drums feel so out place in their catalog that it's truly a WTF at first. Then one realises that a seven minute song felt like a three minute song and when you really think about it, the minimal accompaniment is largely the reason.
:dunno: It may never grow on you and I think that's just fine really. It's not everyone's glass of Scotch and like I said earlier, I can acknowledge its brilliance yet I'm only in the mood to hear it roughly half the time it comes on my music player.
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Interestingly, two friends of mine who are longtime B.O.C. fans, are not fans of a lot of 80s stuff, but have both always loved Shooting Shark, and a guy I used to work with, who was a total rock purist, thought the song was totally bad ass (KSHE here in St. Louis plays it on occasion, so he knew it from hearing on the radio in the later 90s). So there's that. :biggrin:
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I think one thing about Club Ninja for the people who were into BOC at the time that is different from people approaching it later is we were used to 70s hard rock bands attempting to revitalize their careers with outside writers, so when we read the credits we were kind of like "business as usual." Heart had just broken big working with outside writers, after all, and there were a lot of bands in the 80s that had at least a song or two written by outsiders-that pretty much was Bob Halligan Jr's career, and Russ Ballard too-so we basically just judged the songs. Which didn't make the Halligan songs here any better, mind you, just that it was more business as usual for outside writers to come in.
Another thing worth noting was that, in 1986, Howard Stern was hardly the national media juggernaut that he became-pretty sure it was years later that any local radio picked him up-so to me he was just some guy ruining an otherwise decent BOC song. :rollin
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To add a little contrast in thinking:
Those of us who were long time fans were confused at the strategy because you had bands like Iron Maiden, who stayed true to their roots, selling a shit ton of records and selling out arenas during the same era. Look at just in the U.S. alone.
1981 Killers - Gold
1982 Number of the Beast - Platinum
1983 Piece of Mind - Platinum
1984 Powerslave - Platinum
1986 Somewhere in Time - Platinum
BÖC would have sold their souls to have such success yet they continued to try and be something they're not. The farther they got from their roots, the less records they sold. Sure, Agents of Fortune was a Platinum seller but Spectres went Gold, Mirrors sold around 200,000 units, Cultösaurus just under 300,000 units, Fire of Unknown Origin went Gold, and then we have The Revölution By Night that sold about as well as Mirrors, and finally Club Ninja that barely broke 100,000 units.
To me, it's not that outside writers were used. BÖC had always been willing to use ideas of their friends and outsiders. Hell, more than half their lyrics were written by outsiders. It's more about who they selected and what songs they used. For instance, Aldo Nova got it. He provided Bloom with a song that he knew would fit their style and thus we got Take Me Away. Like jingle.boy said, it's a bit jarring to hear Lover Boy while listening to BÖC. Especially since Lover Boy did it so much better.
Again, see my earlier post about sincerity. (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1826165#msg1826165)
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More to the point, there are four songs (out of nine) on Club Ninja where no-one from the band has any writing credits whatsoever. That is a radical difference from Bloom just writing music around lyrics written by Michael Moorcock, or Buck doing the same with Patti Smith's lyrics. BOC had always been willing to write with outsiders, but simply buying pre-written songs for use on their records was something new, especially when these purchased tunes make up nearly half of the album.
I just did a quick glance over the BOC discography on Wikipedia, looking specifically at writing credits, and it looks like up until Club Ninja, the only BOC song that has no band members credited is Eyes Of Fire from RBN. So I do think that having nearly half of CN written with no input from band members is a big deal, even taking into account the time period. Again, as I stated above, I don't think that makes those songs necessarily bad. But having so much of the record written without band contributions does not help to make the album sound unified. You can have an album full of great songs and yet still not sound like a good album due to a lack of flow and unity in the songwriting. And that is exactly how I would characterize Club Ninja: it has a lot of great individual songs, but it fails to come together as a singular album as a whole.
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It was strange time for 70's bands at that time no? There were a lot of bands cashing in on what looked like easy money that was built on the backs of bands like BOC.
To, BOC was an OK 70's band, but they really had nothing to offer the 80's. Bands were rocking harder, faster, and frankly better.
So many bands thought they had to change to keep up. Seems they lost their way.
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Hey Dark Master,
Did you know that music for Feel the Thunder was originally written by Eric for a lyric from Moorcock called Sleep Of A Thousand Tears but the other band members didn't think it fit the 80's vibe they were going for? What would you give to hear the demo for that? In light of how awesome Veteran of the Psychic Wars is, I'm intensely curious.
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It was strange time for 70's bands at that time no? There were a lot of bands cashing in on what looked like easy money that was built on the backs of bands like BOC.
To, BOC was an OK 70's band, but they really had nothing to offer the 80's. Bands were rocking harder, faster, and frankly better.
So many bands thought they had to change to keep up. Seems they lost their way.
Yeah, by the time 1998 rolled around you had Metallica selling 2.5 million copies of Garage Inc. that included a cover of... wait for it... Astronomy! :lol
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Facebook? What's Facebook?
DTF IS my Facebook.
You Old Bastard! :lol
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Hey Dark Master,
Did you know that music for Feel the Thunder was originally written by Eric for a lyric from Moorcock called Sleep Of A Thousand Tears but the other band members didn't think it fit the 80's vibe they were going for? What would you give to hear the demo for that? In light of how awesome Veteran of the Psychic Wars is, I'm intensely curious.
Now that is very interesting, considering that Hawkwind's Chronicle Of The Black Sword album, which came out in 1985, has a song called Sleep Of A Thousand Tears. I wonder how closely the lyrics of the Hawkwind song match up with what would have been the BOC version. Then again, I believe pretty much all of the lyrics Moorcock wrote that ended up in BOC and Hawkwind songs were originally written for his band Deep Fix before he started collaborating with BOC and Hawkwind anyways, so the lyrics were probably exactly the same.
And yes, I would love to hear Feel The Thunder with the SOATT lyrics. It would have been sweet..... :'(
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I've never explored Hawkwind's music. I probably should fix that.
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I've never explored Hawkwind's music. I probably should fix that.
If someone does a discog thread for them we'll be here forever :biggrin:
Tried to listen to Club Ninja last night but Spotifi doesn't have it and Youtube wasn't working for me on the CN tracks. I'll try grooveshark later.
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Strange, I listened to it on Spotify about a dozen times. :dunno:
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Strange, I listened to it on Spotify about a dozen times. :dunno:
Can't find it. Maybe its a location thing. Searched by album title. Maybe try searching for a song and go from there.
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It's probably regional but just in case it's not https://play.spotify.com/album/0zKTCmwQMo3whNQFJHoW4G
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It's probably regional but just in case it's not https://play.spotify.com/album/0zKTCmwQMo3whNQFJHoW4G
Well, even with the magic of Hola its only letting me listen to 3 songs. Thanks anyway.
edit - well listened to said 3 songs (Dancin' In The Ruins, Perfect Water, Beat 'em Up) and enjoyed them. Not very BOC and they could have been any early 80s rock band, but nice, catchy songs none the less. Would like to hear the rest.
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It's on Grooveshark - https://grooveshark.com/album/Club+Ninja/1234299
Tim... that's where you should do your online listening - massively free library, and totally a web browser interface. Don't have to register or anything (although, you can to save favorites and create playlists).
Anywho.... this (like TRBN) leaves me in a bind. It's got some really good tunes, but I'm just itching for something more. While not Loverboy, it's maybe more REO Speedwagon-ish :lol. It's like a melodic band trying to rock hard, or a metal band trying to be more subtle - I can't decide which. Either way, it's confusing me. I want to really love it, but something is holding me back. Couple of tracks were right on the verge of great, but were missing a certain je ne sais quois.
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It's on Grooveshark - https://grooveshark.com/album/Club+Ninja/1234299
Tim... that's where you should do your online listening - massively free library, and totally a web browser interface. Don't have to register or anything (although, you can to save favorites and create playlists).
Anywho.... this (like TRBN) leaves me in a bind. It's got some really good tunes, but I'm just itching for something more. While not Loverboy, it's maybe more REO Speedwagon-ish :lol. It's like a melodic band trying to rock hard, or a metal band trying to be more subtle - I can't decide which. Either way, it's confusing me. I want to really love it, but something is holding me back. Couple of tracks were right on the verge of great, but were missing a certain je ne sais quois.
Thanks for that Chad. Finished listening and I agree with what you say. I think the light production is the problem. Everything seems a bit "superficial". Saying that the oly song i didn't like was the When The War Comes. Felt like it didn't go anywhere. FIrst track was ok, the rest pretty good. With a beefier production we'd be talkin'.
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Maybe it's the 18 year old in me at the time but I was really getting into BOC at the time and I loved it. Looking back, yeah is was very 80'sish but who though Kiss would sound like Crazy Nights?
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Maybe it's the 18 year old in me at the time but I was really getting into BOC at the time and I loved it. Looking back, yeah is was very 80'sish but who though Kiss would sould like Crazy Nights?
Tru dat... and I got Crazy Nights when I was 18, so I totally get what you're saying. I could probably learn to like this record, but it's just a hop, skip, and a jump away from being stellar.
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Listen to Cheat Trick's 80's outputs then listen to Woke Up With A Monster and the second Self Titled from the 90's, they have balls but I still love the 80's albums.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh1Fcr8kG6E
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OK, against my better judgement I kept listening all the way through "Make Rock Not War."
But I couldn't keep going past "Beat 'Em Up." I'm out.
:tdwn :tdwn
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Maybe it's the 18 year old in me at the time but I was really getting into BOC at the time and I loved it. Looking back, yeah is was very 80'sish but who though Kiss would sound like Crazy Nights?
Crazy Nights has a lot of good songs on it.
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OK, against my better judgement I kept listening all the way through "Make Rock Not War."
But I couldn't keep going past "Beat 'Em Up." I'm out.
:tdwn :tdwn
I totally get it. Time is short and there is a great deal of music to be explored in these forums. And, really, the only other song I can honestly recommend from Club Ninja that you didn't hear is Madness to the Method. Even at that, it's probably not as good as anything you heard on Cultösaurus.
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Maybe it's the 18 year old in me at the time but I was really getting into BOC at the time and I loved it. Looking back, yeah is was very 80'sish but who though Kiss would sound like Crazy Nights?
Crazy Nights has a lot of good songs on it.
It does but I still never expected Kiss to have that sound.
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Maybe it's the 18 year old in me at the time but I was really getting into BOC at the time and I loved it. Looking back, yeah is was very 80'sish but who though Kiss would sound like Crazy Nights?
Crazy Nights has a lot of good songs on it.
The Paul Stanley ones.
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“ A bedtime story for the children of the damned. From a dream world, paralleling our earth in time and space, the invisible ones have sent an agent who will dream the dream of history. With limitless power he becomes the greatest actor of the 19th century. Taking on many ingenious disguises, he places himself at pivotal junctures in history, continually altering its course and testing our ability to respond to the challenge of evil. His name is Imaginos ”
Imaginos (1988)
(https://i.imgur.com/LMGpoTw.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – lead vocals on tracks 1, 3, 4
Albert Bouchard – guitar, percussion, co-lead vocals on track 8, backing vocals, associate producer
Joe Bouchard – keyboards, backing vocals
Allen Lanier – keyboards
Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser – guitars, lead vocals on tracks 2, 6, 7, co-lead vocals on track 8
Session musicians
Tommy Morrongiello, Jack Rigg, Phil Grande – guitars
Tommy Zvoncheck – keyboards
Kenny Aaronson – bass
Thommy Price – drums
Joey Cerisano – lead vocals on track 5
Jon Rogers – lead vocals on tracks 1 and 9
Jack Secret – additional vocals
Shocking U – backing vocals on track 3
Daniel Levitin - guitar, backing vocals, sound design
Guitar Orchestra of the State of Imaginos
Marc Biedermann (lead guitar on track 1)
Kevin Carlson
Robby Krieger (lead guitar on tracks 7 and 8)
Tommy Morrongiello
Aldo Nova
Jack Rigg
Joe Satriani (lead guitar on track 5)
Technical personnel
Sandy Pearlman – producer, engineer, mixing
Corky Stasiak – basic tracks engineer
Paul Mandl - engineer
Steve Brown – mixing
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1. I Am the One You Warned Me Of A. Bouchard, Pearlman, Roeser 5:04
2. Les Invisibles A. Bouchard, Pearlman 5:33
3. In the Presence of Another World J. Bouchard, Pearlman 6:26
4. Del Rio's Song A. Bouchard, Pearlman 5:31
5. The Siege and Investiture of Baron von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria A. Bouchard, Pearlman 6:43
6. Astronomy J. Bouchard, A. Bouchard, Pearlman 6:47
7. Magna of Illusion A. Bouchard, Pearlman, Roeser 5:53
8. Blue Öyster Cult Eric Bloom, Pearlman 7:18
9. Imaginos A. Bouchard, Pearlman 5:46
Total length: 55:01
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The story behind how this album got made is nearly as incomprehensible as the story for this concept album. I’ll try to assemble a reader’s digest version.
As mentioned in the OP, Sandy Pearlman’s main motivation for getting into the recording business was to influence a group of players into writing music and performing his sci-fi/horror infused poems and stories, collectively known as “The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos”. Over the years, on nearly every album, a song or two based on this idea was recorded--especially during the first three albums. It was always in his mind, and largely Albert’s as well, that the band would record a concept album based solely on Pearlman’s writings. Everyone worked on the music initially but over the years everyone but Albert was increasingly resistant to the idea. Still by the time Spectres came out most of the music that appears on this album was written and four of the songs had even been demoed.
When Albert was fired in 1981 he saw it as an opportunity to complete the Imaginos saga as a solo project and through an advance secured by Pearlman (based on those Spectre demos) he was able to spend the next several years completing the rest of the demos. The concept was expanded and he and Pearlman saw the project as eventually filling three double albums. Allen, Joe and Buck, as well as Robby Krieger, all had guest appearances on this early recording. A nearly finished, 90 minute album was presented to the powers-that-be in 1984. They shelved the project citing poor vocals by Albert and lack of commercial viability. If you’d like to hear these 1984 demos simply search for “Imaginos Demos” on YouTube. The first listing should be a complete playlist. It’s pretty interesting stuff really.
After the failure of Club Ninja and the disbandment of BÖC in September of 1986, Pearlman pitched overdubbing the Imaginos recordings with the rest of the band and making it a Blue Öyster Cult release. He received a modest budget to get Buck and Eric to rerecord the vocals and to remix it. Buck claims he and Eric only did it out of respect for their past with Pearlman. Pearlman had the recordings remixed and with the help of studio musicians (which included Joe Satriani who traded studio time for his contribution) rerecorded much of Albert’s guitar work. In early 1987 Buck went out to San Francisco and spent 5 weeks recording vocals and to replace the rest of the guitar parts. Tommy Zvoncheck rerecorded nearly all the keyboards. Eric went in the studio in early 1988 to add his vocal parts finishing up the recording. But the budget had run out so nearly 40 minutes of the original concept was cut thus 95 minutes of music that became a 55 minute CD released in July. As a final slap to the project, the suits rearranged the songs from their chronological order…to make it more commercial. :lol
Seriously, that was the Readers Digest version!
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This isn’t really a BÖC album, it’s an Albert Bouchard solo album with a crap-ton of guest musicians. Joe and Allen get top billing but their contributions were so small that Joe claims he can’t hear a single thing he played that remained. It’s also likely that anything Allen played was replaced by Zvoncheck. But I’m here to say, this is a great album if taken as a single piece of artistic vision and forgetting about who contributed what.
For me, Albert’s writing and arranging is what was sorely missing from Revölution and Ninja! Like Frankenstein’s monster, the beauty of this stitched together behemoth is in its dark, sober, relentless power. Gone are the comic songs and the self-conscious metal elements to be replaced by unabashed heaviness without total reliance on staccato riffing. This is the closest any music with this band’s name on it ever got to progressive rock, and with it’s heaviness it certainly qualifies as progressive metal. With a smothering paranoid atmosphere and an alluring symphony of madness, this album strives to be BÖC’s Tommy or Dark Side of the Moon. Yet it never quite makes it.
I think where it falls short is in subtlety. The mood can get a little overwhelming (depressing?), especially on repeated listens. Del Rio’s Song is the only real moment musical respite we get and yet it still manages to maintain the tension. I feel it would have been greatly enhanced if some of the other band member’s personality had been included: Maybe a sprinkling of Bucks light-metal yet spooky vibe or Eric’s rocking boogie-pop. A moment or two of Allen’s honky-tonk piano or Joe’s hopeful and soaring synths would have provided enough contrast to lift the whole project higher.
It’s difficult to pick favorite moments since there are so many great ones but as individual compositions go, I really dig In The Presence of Another World, the ponderously titled The Siege And Investiture of Baron Von Frankstein’s Castle at Weisseria, Magna of Illusion and Blue Öyster Cult. Blue Öyster Cult is especially interesting in that it’s just a re-imagined and expanded version of Subhuman from Secret Treaties. It’s so different though that it’s hardly recognizable but still awesome. The redone version of Astronomy took some getting used to for me but I can finally say I get what Albert was going for--Buck really nails it. Still, there is something so earnest about Eric’s vocal performance and the dynamics of the original that it’s still my favorite version. I miss the quieter moments in this version. It’s impossible to know who did the lead guitar on Les Invisibles but it smokes--with all the atmospheric whammy bar work, probably Aldo Nova.
The sound of the album is very 80’s in the same way The Dark Master described The Revölution By Night and the expansive production really adds to the haunting mood of the album’s overall motif. Still, I can’t help but wonder if I’d like the sound even better if it weren’t so busy and had fewer echoes.
I hadn’t heard this album until about a year ago when I backed into it from Heaven Forbid. I can guarantee you that if I’d heard this album when it was released, I would have snatched it up immediately. Such was the lack of promotion by Sony and rather than look at themselves they put the blame completely on the band and dropped them; thus, ended a twenty year relationship and ushered in the age of lawsuits. Sony sued the band and Pearlman for album costs for Imaginos and Club Ninja and won, Albert sued Pearlman for production credits to Imaginos and settled out of court.
I'm sure someone sued someone else...And don’t forget my dog, fixed and consequent.
Edits: Horrible typos and grammar.
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The original concept for Imaginos was so bat shit insane: a total of three double albums based on the subject? You have to wonder what Sandy Pearlman and Al Bouchard were thinking trying to get that off the ground in the 1980s without the Blue Oyster Cult name on it. :lol
With the usual caveat that "this is not a Blue Oyster Cult" album in place-it's a pretty damn good album nevertheless. Musically, while very heavy by BOC standards, it comes the closest to reclaiming the sense of menace and oddity the band had in the early 70s. It's obviously a flawed concept album in that the songs aren't in any real order-which is the same thing that the label did to Kiss' Music From The Elder, which doomed that album to being incomprehensible as well-but it has its charms as well. Given that some of the story is missing by being cut down from 90 to 55 minutes anyway, maybe there was little choice to re-arrange the running order, but doing so pretty much killed it as a concept album stone dead.
Speaking as someone who has listed Astronomy as his favorite BOC song, I actually love the remake, which is actually the only song on Imaginos that sounds like latter day BOC. A great song is a great song, and changing the arrangement and who sang it didn't hurt it that much. Imaginos, to me, always suffered from being top heavy-after Astronomy the quality drops off, which means the first six songs are brilliant and the last three less so, and in fact it my days of owning it on cassette I'd play side one, flip it over and listen to Astronomy, then rewind back to the start of side one. :lol Ahh, memories.
That it sank like a stone doesn't shock me. Sometimes I think labels do things like this just to be able to write them off. :lol
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Yep, in a vaccum, regardless of who plays on it or what the circumstances are behind it, this is a great album. In fact, I had no idea about the craziness behind it for the first few years of listening to it, and by then, it was entrenched as my favorite B.O.C. album (although I now put it behind Cultosaurus Erectus).
Back then, when we still made our mixed tapes to play in our cassette decks in our cars, the B.O.C. one, made by a friend, that was used to get me into the band looked like this (50 minutes per side, thanks to those 100-minute ones :lol):
Side 1:
Don't Fear the Reaper
Godzilla
I Love the Night
Black Blade
Monsters
Deadline
Lips in the Hills
Burnin' for You
Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Joan Crawford
Side 2:
Take Me Away
Shooting Shark
Feel the Thunder
Les Invisibles
In the Presence of Another World
Baron Von Frankenstein (as it was written on the label thing, as you trying writing that entire title down on one of those cassette label lines :rollin)
Astronomy
Blue Oyster Cult
So yeah, I got into the band big time thanks to the 1976-1987 years, with nothing from Mirrors or Club Ninja, and heavy on Imaginos, so my love for that album makes total sense. I am also a huge fan of Magna of Illusion. The other three songs are all enjoyable, if not overly memorable. But those six songs are all so damn great. :metal
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Oh, and I almost forgot: the bitch of this album was figuring out the lyrics to the songs. I remember finally finding them online in the late 90s and being pretty excited about it. I can still recite most of the end of In the Presence of Another World from memory, and most of that you'd never figure out on your own. :lol :lol
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Oh, I should also mention that this is a difficult album to find at a decent price. Amazon has limited quantities of CD's but they are generally higher priced than you would normally think. No digital download is available. Perhaps due to it's rarity. It's not available on iTunes either.
Also, for purely listening purposes your only real option is grooveshark (https://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=imaginos) since it's not on Spotify and a complete treatment on YouTube would be completely confusing and difficult.
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Ah, that's right. In fact, it went out of print shortly after I got my copy of it, so I felt lucky at the time. This is one of those cases where, if I didn't have it already, I'd have no problem snagging it off the net for free. If the record company isn't gonna make it available in any form, they leave fans with no choice.
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Hey boys. This guy bought the CD when it first came out and I still have it.
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Hey boys. This guy bought the CD when it first came out and I still have it.
My attention was elsewhere at the time. :blush
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I'll see if I can dig it up and take a picture of it. I have to head to the old man's house first.
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I'm going to put up a proper review of the album later when I have time, but I just wanted to ask: has anyone listened to Imaginos in it's intended track order? Because today, after listening to the album as is for the sake of refreshing my memory, I decided, just for shits and giggles, to rearrange the tracks and listen to it as it was intended to be:
1 - Les Invisibles
2 - Imaginos
3 - Del Rio's Song
4 - Blue Oyster Cult
5 - Astronomy
6 - I Am The One You Warned Me Of
7 - In The Presence Of Another World
8 - The Siege and Invest... (fuck it :P )
9 - Magna Of Illusion
All I have to say is HOLY SHIT!!!!!11!!1! :o The original track order fucking rocks! It has such a great flow to it, it really improves the pacing and has such a climax with The Siege Of etc.... Man, fuck record label execs! This album could have been so awesome with the proper track order... :'(
I'm never listening to this album just "as is" ever again, because with the intended order, I think this is quite possibly the best record of their careers! :metal
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This album sounds batshit crazy.
OK, I'm on it.
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I finished it.
It was better than the previous album. But not my cup of tea. And I hated the song Blue Oyster Cult. :tdwn
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Enjoying it so far. I'll try the re-order as suggested by Dark Master over the weekend. I'm on Del Rio's Song atm. Catchy, commercial. I'm digging it.
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I listened last night and enjoyed it. Man they were a decent band. But why oh why do record execs think they know a band's music better than the band and their fanbase.
Appears they ruined this one with the running order as they did with KISS' the Elder.
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Well the real blame for The Elder which I love now, was Bob Ezrin and Gene and Paul. Ace wanted to go back to a straight up rock album and was outvoted since Eric Carr did not have a vote.
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Well the real blame for The Elder which I love now, was Bob Ezrin and Gene and Paul. Ace wanted to go back to a straight up rock album and was outvoted since Eric Carr did not have a vote.
The Elder is a great album. Just not a very good KISS album - certainly not the album they needed at the time.
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I finished it.
It was better than the previous album. But not my cup of tea. And I hated the song Blue Oyster Cult. :tdwn
Are we even listening to the same albums? I enjolyed Club Ninja, and thought that Imaginos was one of the best from the start. BOC wasn't a great song, but certainly not the worst I've listened to throughout this sonic adventure.
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I think it would be safe to characterize Blue Oyster Cult's career by the time Imaginos was released as being in a downward spiral. They had gone from a gold record in 1981 to a record that barely sold 100k copies in 1985. With Albert out of the picture after Fire Of Unknown Origin, the band became rudderless, and had abandoned their signature sound in favour of chasing trends in a vain attempt to remain current and repeat the success of FOUO. With 1983's Revolution By Night, they experimented with a slick 80's pop-rock sound and, despite solid songs, the record alienated much of the BOC fanbase. The band then compounded that error with an even greater debacle by turning to songs written externally by hired guns on Club Ninja in 1985, resulting in a record that, again, despite having some solid songs, sounded even less like BOC then RBN, and witnessed a further decrease in the popularity of the band. Truth be told, BOC was already on their last legs after Club Ninja, had already broken up, and were only touring for the sake of income. Yet, as it happened, thanks to a convoluted sequence of events Podaar explained elsewhere, the band would re-establish contact with Albert and record one final album, their long promised rock-opera based off Pearlman's Imaginos works, before fading into permanent obscurity.
In retrospect, it was rather strange that BOC did not record a concept album until so late in the game, but then again, it is possible that had Albert not been ousted, Imaginos would have been the band's followup to FOUO rather then RBN. Albert had already demoed all the songs on the album (plus four that were cut from the final product) back in 1984, so the concept was complete at least that early, if not earlier. There is certainly a lot of music on Imaginos that harkens back to the band's glory days in the 70's and early 80's. While the record production is every bit as slick and polished as what you hear on RBN or Club Ninja, the music is noticeably darker, stranger, weirder and more ominous. Long gone are the experiments at the Loverboy-esque pop-rock of RBN or the half-hearted attempts at being metal from Club Ninja, this is BOC, or, more specifically, what BOC could have brought into the 80's. Songs such as I Am The One YOu Warned Me Of, In The Presence Of Another World, Les Invisibles, and Frankenstein et. al., are twisted and bizarre in the finest tradition of the band, yet crisper and heavier then ever before, proving that BOC could indeed go toe-to-toe with any contemporary 80's metal act without losing the crucial elements that had made them so unique to begin with.
Yet it's not all doom and gloom throughout the record, there are some brighter spots here, such as the up-beat Del Rio's Song, the Broadway-esque Magna Of Illusion, well as more spacy, progressive tracks such as Blue Oyster Cult, Imaginos and the remake of Astronomy. The record has an excellent balance of dark and light as befitting a concept album. Unfortunately, the track order for this record was infamously re-arranged by the record label to place all of the heavier, more metal tracks on the album's front half. As a result, the album has abominable pacing, with the first half being a near continuous roar (with only a brief interruption thanks to Del Rio's Song) and the second half being about twenty minutes of continuous weirdness. Furthermore, and perhaps even more problematic, as this is a concept album, the narrative is completely lost by the re-arranged track order, rendering the story of the album a muddled mess. Not that the story, which was about Lovecraftian alien conspiracies, was all that clear to begin with, but with the mixing of the song positions, it becomes completely and utterly unintelligible. A good many of the songs on here, most notably Frankenstein, In The Presence Of Another World, and Magna Of Illusions do have that distinctive rock-opera vibe, and there are clear links in the lyrics across the whole piece, but good luck deciphering it all without knowing what is supposed to go where. Pacing and track order are crucial elements to making a good concept record, and the interference of the record label, combined with the loss of four songs that did not make the album due to budgetary constraints, are damning on the perception of the final product.
In the sad story of BOC's fall from grace in the 1980's, I think Imaginos was the greatest casualty. The album was postponed for half a decade thanks to Albert's dismissal, and by the time it was recorded, the band was falling apart and in no position to resist meddling on the part of the record label. The tragedy in all this is that Imaginos, taken as a whole, has quite possibly the best music of the band's career. No, it does not have Black Blade or Veteran Of The Psychic Wars, but, as a whole, it is probably the most solid slab of great music in the band's entire discography. Had this record been released back in '83 or '84, with all the intended songs and a track order as determined by the band and not the suits, I think it would have been remembered as the band's magnum opus, their own answer to Quadrophenia, Tommy and The Wall, and anticipating Queensryche's Opertation: Mindcrime and Helloween's Keeper Of The Seven Keys (which together kicked off the power-prog-metal concept album boom) by nearly half a decade. Taken as is, truncated, confused, and released at what was essentially the end of the band's relevance, Imaginos is still one of the best albums in the BOC discography, due entirely to the strength of the songs and the power of the production alone, but the knowledge that it could have been, should have been, so much more, makes it a bittersweet experience, and leaves one wondering what might have been....
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Just for the sake of the curious, Albert's 1984 demo of the album had the following tracklist:
1 - I Am The One You Warned Me Of
2 - Imaginos
3 - Gil Blanco County*
4 - Del Rio's Song
5 - Blue Oyster Cult
6 - Les Invisibles
7 - The Girl That Love Made Blind*
8 - The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria
9 - In The Presence Of Another World
10 - Blue Oyster Cult (reprise)*
11 - Astronomy
12 - Magna Of Illusion
13 - Magna Of Illusion (choral)*
* - indicates a deleted track.
While I am not certain if this was the intended final tracklist had the record actually been made in 1984, the demos are still a more epic album then what we got, better paced and with a song order that makes more sense, both from a dramatic as well as a narrative perspective. Unfortunately, the vocal performances on the demos are rather lacking compared to the final product, and much of the chunk in the heavier songs is lost due to the lack of production. The are a few cool little details here and there that did not make it into the final versions, like the hammond organ solo in I Am The One You Warned Me Of, but overall, the versions of songs that made it onto the final product are better then their corresponding demos. If you have the demos and want to hear the complete thing, I would recommend listening to final versions of the songs in place of the demos in the tracklist, and only listening to the demos for the deleted songs.
A BOC faq also has this tracklist for the final album, which is apparently Albert's recommended listening order for the 1988 version of the record:
1 - Les Invisibles
2 - Imaginos
3 - Del Rio's Song
4 - Blue Oyster Cult
5 - Astronomy
6 - I Am The One You Warned Me Of*
7 - In The Presence Of Another World*
8 - The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria
9 - Magna Of Illusion
* - these songs are considered interchangeable in the track order by Albert.
As I stated earlier, this track order is much better then the one released by the label. There is a much better pacing and flow with the songs, and the story and music builds up to a significantly more dramatic climax toward the end. If you do not have the demos, then this is the best way to listen to the album, as you get a noticeably better album experience listening to the songs in this order rather then the as-released tracklisting.
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I think the alternate/proper running order is listed in the booklet, but I am too lazy to go look right now. :lol
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I finished it.
It was better than the previous album. But not my cup of tea. And I hated the song Blue Oyster Cult. :tdwn
Are we even listening to the same albums? I enjolyed Club Ninja, and thought that Imaginos was one of the best from the start. BOC wasn't a great song, but certainly not the worst I've listened to throughout this sonic adventure.
:lol
What can I say? Different strokes.
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IT'S A BOC THROWDOWN!!! :lol
I saw them a few months ago and I couldn't believe how go they sounded. I think 1991 was the last time I saw them.
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So after listening to the demos and the intended track order multiple times, I've been thinking about the difference in the storytelling between the demo tracklist and what Alberts suggested tracklist for the final product.
The demo tracklist seems to be more of a first person perspective of the story, as if Imaginos/Desdinova is telling his story to the audience. It starts of with a song that is basically a character introduction (I Am The One You Warned Me Of) and likewise hits a climax toward the end with a song that sums up his place in the plans of Les Invisibles (Astronomy). Note that both songs have the phrase "Call Me Desdinova" in the lyrics. By contrast, Albert's suggested tracklist seems to be from more of an omniscent third person perspective, and a purely chronological sequence of events. The album starts with Les Invisibles because from a strictly chronological third person perspective the story really starts with the aliens and their schemes. In the demos, Les Invisibles comes after Imaginos is inducted into the Blue Oyster Cult (in the song Blue Oyster Cult) because that is when Imaginos discovers the existence of the aliens. In Albert's tracklist, both Astronomy and I Am The One You Warned Me Of appear in the middle of the album after Imaginos is inducted into the Blue Oyster Cult because it is then that he becomes aware of the plans of Les Invisibles (in Astronomy) and develops a new identity as a member of the cult (I Am The One You Warned Me Of).
As for why Frankenstein was moved from before to after In The Presence Of Another World, I'm guessing that was because Frankenstein has a more climactic ending, so they wanted it the be the penultimate track right before the finale. As the lyrics to both of these songs are more or less chronologically interchangeable, flipping them in the order has little to no effect on the story.
I've also come to the conclusion that while the double album would have been cool, judging from the demos, we didn't really miss out on much. Gil Blanco County and The Girl Who Love Made Blind are ok songs, but not really great, and certainly weaker then anything that made it onto the final album. It's possible that with better vocals and production I would like them more, but they just don't seem to be on the same level of quality as the songs that didn't get cut. The reprise of Blue Oyster Cult is cool, but since the purpose of the track was to have then end of BOC lead into Astronomy, and since on the final album Astronomy would have been placed right after BOC proper anyways, the reprise would be unnecessary and redundant. And the Magna Of Illusion Choral is just a superfluous way to extend the ending of MOI. Again, with better vocals and production, I may have found it to be more enjoyable, but it still seems rather needless.
More to the point, though, I think the additional songs kind of drag out the album and somewhat kill the flow. Albert's suggested tracklist has such a perfect sequence of musicality, there was really no need to add more to the story (and those additional songs actually don't add much to the story anyways). Overall, I think this may be one of the very few cases where I feel some songs needed to be cut. Had the album been released with Albert's suggested tracklist, it would have been sublime, and may very well have set BOC up for a comeback. Such a shame that failed to materialize....
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While we're talking about it. Albert also claims you can pretty much get the entire story for the proposed 3 albums if you listen to these songs in this order. It might make a pretty cool play list.
Act One: Imaginos
Les Invisibles
Imaginos
Del Rio’s Song
Blue Öyster Cult
I Am The One You Warned Me Of
The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle At Weisseria
In The Presence Of Another World
Astronomy
Magna Of Illusion
Act Two: Bombs Over Germany or (Half-Life Time) or Act Two was Germany Minus Zero And Counting:
Workshop Of The Telescopes
Girl Love Made Blind (left off Imaginos)
ME 262
The Red And The Black
Cities On Flame
Shadow Of California
Half-Life Time (I don't know what this is!)
Veteran Of The Psychic Wars,
Career Of Evil
Act Three: The Mutant Reformation:
Take Me Away
The Vigil
E.T.I.
R U Ready 2 Rock
Heavy Metal
Flaming Telepaths
Gil Blanco County (left off Imaginos)
Redeemed
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While we're talking about it. Albert also claims you can pretty much get the entire story for the proposed 3 albums if you listen to these songs in this order. It might make a pretty cool play list.
Act One: Imaginos
Les Invisibles
Imaginos
Del Rio’s Song
Blue Öyster Cult
I Am The One You Warned Me Of
The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle At Weisseria
In The Presence Of Another World
Astronomy
Magna Of Illusion
Act Two: Bombs Over Germany or (Half-Life Time) or Act Two was Germany Minus Zero And Counting:
Workshop Of The Telescopes
Girl Love Made Blind (left off Imaginos)
ME 262
The Red And The Black
Cities On Flame
Shadow Of California
Half-Life Time (I don't know what this is!)
Veteran Of The Psychic Wars,
Career Of Evil
Act Three: The Mutant Reformation:
Take Me Away
The Vigil
E.T.I.
R U Ready 2 Rock
Heavy Metal
Flaming Telepaths
Gil Blanco County (left off Imaginos)
Redeemed
Yeah, I saw that somewhere too. I have yet to try to listen to the whole thing, though.
And Half-Life Time is (or was) When The War Comes from Club Ninja.
EDIT: I listened to Imaginos with the track order you listed here, Podaar, and i liked it even more then the one I posted earlier! :metal
Also, I think it's rather cool that my 600th post was in a BOC thread! :P
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Gave the demos a listen, and I agree that the songs that got removed were for the better-Gil Blanco County wasn't very good, and while I liked The Girl Love Made Blind and wouldn't have minded seeing it getting the polish the rest of the demo songs got, it really didn't fit into the rest of the album. And could have stood a little editing down to about five minutes. There's a really good song in The Girl Love Made Blind, but it's not quite right yet.
Probably one of the reasons Al took another shot at it with the Brain Surgeons. :lol
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Maybe it's the 18 year old in me at the time but I was really getting into BOC at the time and I loved it. Looking back, yeah is was very 80'sish but who though Kiss would sound like Crazy Nights?
Crazy Nights has a lot of good songs on it.
The Paul Stanley ones.
Yes, very true. But I do like No No No No. Rocks pretty damned hard.
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I've been noticing some interesting similarities and patterns in the various suggested track orders for Imaginos:
1 - Les Invisibles -or- I Am The One You Warned Me Of
2 - Imaginos
3 - Del Rio's Song
4 - Blue Oyster Cult
5 - I Am The One You Warned Me Of -or- Les Invisibles -or- Astronomy
6 - The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria -or- I Am The One You Warned Me Of
7 - In The Presence Of Another World
8 - Astronomy -or- The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria
9 - Magna Of Illusion
There are some intersting combinations you can come up with. I think my personal favourite is the one Podaar just posted recently:
1 - Les Invisibles
2 - Imaginos
3 - Del Rio's Song
4 - Blue Oyster Cult
5 - I Am The One You Warned Me Of
6 - The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria
7 - In The Presence Of Another World
8 - Astronomy
9 - Magna Of Illusion
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Gave the demos a listen, and I agree that the songs that got removed were for the better-Gil Blanco County wasn't very good, and while I liked The Girl Love Made Blind and wouldn't have minded seeing it getting the polish the rest of the demo songs got, it really didn't fit into the rest of the album. And could have stood a little editing down to about five minutes. There's a really good song in The Girl Love Made Blind, but it's not quite right yet.
Probably one of the reasons Al took another shot at it with the Brain Surgeons. :lol
To be honest the only deleted track I would have kept was the reprise of Blue Oyster Cult, as I really like the full track and think a reprise of it toward the end of the album would have helped to musically tie the whole concept together. Plus, the track was under four minutes long, so they easily could have fit it on the album and still kept the record under an hour long. Ideally, I think the album should have been released like this:
1 - Les Invisibles
2 - Imaginos
3 - Del Rio's Song
4 - Blue Oyster Cult
5 - I Am The One You Warned Me Of
6 - The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria
7 - In The Presence Of Another World
8 - Blue Oyster Cult (reprise)
9 - Astronomy
10 - Magna Of Illusion
total run time: 59:13
I think that would have been the best possible album to come out of the Imaginos sessions.
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I wouldn't have kept The Girl Who Love Made Blind for Imaginos-it massively doesn't fit at all-but it's a couple of passes away, and a good singer (sorry Al) from being a really good, memorable song.
Nothing, however, could save Gil Blanco County. :lol
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I wouldn't have kept The Girl Who Love Made Blind for Imaginos-it massively doesn't fit at all-but it's a couple of passes away, and a good singer (sorry Al) from being a really good, memorable song.
Nothing, however, could save Gil Blanco County. :lol
Yeah, I mean, I like some of the music in Gil Blanco, but the vocal melodies are just............ not good. I listened to it and imagined what it would have sounded like with Bloom singing, and it still would have been tough to get through. Of course, the song dates back to the Stalk Forrest Group days, so given the early stage of development the band was in when they wrote it, the poor vocal melodies should be, perhaps, unsurprising....
EDIT: I just listened to the SFG version of the song: YE GODS! The 1984 demo was actually an improvement over the original! :omg:
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God, I don't even want to hear that version then. :lol
If one thing came out of this thread, it got me to listen to the Imaginos demos. Been meaning to for ages.
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Okay, so ignoring the songs that didn't make it; were their any of the other songs that you thought Albert was going in a better direction than what made it on the record?
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Leaving Pearlman behind for good, dropped from Columbia, no record label contract and no prospects of getting one, the band (now consisting of 3ÖC 2.0) was reduced to a touring act; playing county fairs, biker bars and occasional festivals. In the decade between studio albums (1988-1998) several official records were released.
One was a live audio CD companion to a VHS release of BÖC in concert from 1976 appropriately named Live 1976. Released in 1995 on Castle Communications label for the European market only this was a pretty pedestrian concert by BÖC standards but illustrates how popular the band still was overseas--or, at least, that’s what their management believed.
Columbia/Sony tried to cash in on the bands recordings they still owned and released several compilations.
Career of Evil: The Metal Years (1987)
On Flame with Rock and Roll (1990)
Workshop of the Telescopes (1995)
Super Hits (1998)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/Workshop_of_the_Telescopes.jpg)
The only one I can recommend to the readers of this thread, who may not want to invest in the entire catalog, would be the double CD Workshop of the Telescopes. It hits best of the highlights through the years, even if some of my favorites are missing.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/BOC_Cult_Classic.jpg)
Not to be outdone, the band still owned the rights to perform and record their songs so they went in the studio and re-recorded a compilation themselves. Cult Classic was released in 1994 and performed by the current band with the rhythm section consisting of Jon Rogers on bass and Chuck Burgi (Rainbow) on the drum kit. Also, Stephen King wanted BÖC music to be featured in the television production of The Stand and where it is used, these are the recordings presented. I think it was pretty nice of him to try and direct any notoriety from his project directly to the band but it was kind of a half-assed effort; none of these songs were included on the soundtrack. Since these recordings are so faithful to the originals, there isn’t much to recommend them other than clearer, more modern production and recording techniques. Me-262, O.D.'d on Life Itself, Flaming Telepaths, Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll and Harvester of Eyes seem to benefit the most.
In 1992, the band was asked to score and provide a couple of songs for the campy, sci-fi spoof Bad Channels. From this soundtrack we are treated to some metal goodness with the debut of John Shirley’s lyrics on the tunes Demon’s Kiss (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_k1ncbxE08) and The Horsemen Arrive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXuzE8zcuc). We mentioned John Shirley way back in the OP when talking about the song Transmaniacon MC. By the 1990’s he was a highly respected, successful and prolific novel writer specializing in fantasy and science fiction. He was especially known for his cyberpunk novels and being the first screenwriter for the movie The Crow.
With a revolving door for a rhythm section, Allen, Eric and Buck kept touring, and touring and touring while Steve Schenk continued to try and find them a label. It’s difficult, for a fan like me, to imagine the mighty BÖC as not being worth enough respect to get a recording label, but it’s true. For ten years no one would touch them. They continued to work with Shirley on making songs, so when they finally got a deal with CMC International (otherwise known as Cheese Metal Cemetery) they were prepared.
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Structurally, the songs that all made the album were essentially identical to their finished versions, with minor changes: Frankenstein gets a better riff going into the guitar solo, for example. The backing tracks for a few songs appear nearly identical-Astronomy leaps to mind as an example. The released versions are improved in every way, with better production and singing. If I had to pick something, the organ being more prominent as a lead instrument on I Am The One You Warned Me Of comes to mind. Otherwise the demos are very much rough draft versions of the songs on Imaginos.
And I'll get to the other stuff....well, some other time. I parted ways with BOC after Imaginos, and honestly haven't heard all of their two studio albums since then.
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Jaq, I don't disagree, especially about the keyboards. There are several moments on the demos that I thought, "It would have been cool if they kept those keys." Also, there were a few moments where I liked Albert's vocals better but not very many...and I'm probably the only person who likes his voice. The raw, slightly off pitch, warbling quality of his voice fits with BÖC compositions sometimes. Or so it seems to me.
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His voice is perfectly suited for the less heavy parts of Blue Oyster Cult, which needs someone to be creepy and bizarre.
And I didn't realize that one compilation was re-recorded songs. Might have to look that one up.
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Regarding the "dead years," Buck's Boogie from the Cult Classic CD is a home run of epic proportions. I'd argue that that version is one of their five best songs ever. And it is clear demonstration of what a great player Buck Dharma is. The section from around 4:40 till the end is :hefdaddy :hefdaddy.
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For no particular reason I was browsing Eric Bloom's webpage and came across this.
(https://www.ericbloom.net/images/Photos/billboard_lg.jpg)
:lol
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Concerning the Imaginos demos vs the final tracks, I pretty much agree with what Jaq said; there are a few little things here and there that I wish they had kept, like the organ in I Am The One You Warned Me Of, but for the most part, the final tracks were an improvement over the demos in every single way. I'll agree that Albert's voice isn't horrible; it sounds pretty good on Blue Oyster Cult and Astronomy, but the heavier songs, especially tracks like Frankenstein and In The Presence Of Another World, really needed a different singer, and they sound just phenomenal on the finished record. Joey Cerisano's vox on the final version of Frankenstein would give Dio a run for his money, and Bloom absolutely slays on I Am The One You Warned Me Of and In The Presence Of Another World.
So yeah, there are a few things from the demos I would have kept on the final record, but overall, the demos were, as Jaq says, just rough drafts of what ended up on the finished product.
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“In the fading light
From a middle aged star
You've seen every blemish
Every sign of age
And it's useless to whine
And it's useless to rage”
Heaven Forbid (1998)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Heaven_Forbid_cover.jpg)(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/BOC_heaven_forbid_alternative.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – guitars, keyboards, lead vocals on tracks 1, 3, 5, and 7, producer
Buck Dharma – guitars, keyboards, lead vocals on tracks 2, 4, 6, 8-11, producer
Allen Lanier – guitars, keyboards
Danny Miranda – bass guitar on tracks 1, 4-9, 11, backing vocals
Jon Rogers – bass guitar on tracks 2, 3 and 10, backing vocals
Bob Rondinelli – drums on track 9
Chuck Burgi - drums on tracks 1-8 and 10, backing vocals
Additional musicians
George Cintron – additional vocals
Tony Perrino – additional keyboards
------------------------
1. See You in Black (Eric Bloom, Donald Roeser, John Shirley) – 3:17
2. Harvest Moon (Roeser) – 4:55
3. Power Underneath Despair (Bloom, Roeser, Shirley) – 3:30
4. X-Ray Eyes (Roeser, Shirley) – 3:48
5. Hammer Back (Bloom, Roeser, Shirley) – 3:35
6. Damaged (Roeser, Shirley) – 4:22
7. Cold Gray Light of Dawn (Bloom, Roeser, Shirley) – 3:51
8. Real World (Roeser, Shirley) – 5:08
9. Live for Me (Roeser, Shirley) – 5:19
10. Still Burnin’ (Roeser, Jon Rogers) – 3:39
11. In Thee (Live) (Allen Lanier) – 3:40
------------------------
At the time of this album’s release Buck, Eric, and Allen had all had birthdays that included black balloons for decorations. It had been a decade since Imaginos (an album they barely had anything to do with) and their last true hit was already in rotation on Classic Rock Radio. The heady days of their twenties with sold out stadiums were a distant memory; their tours were smaller, their audience gray.
That being said, there is a steady confidence that comes with experience and an innate muscle memory to your beloved craft after so much repetition. All the elements of BÖC are present but without the mysterio (as Albert called it) naiveté. The monsters of aliens, conspiracies, creatures of the night and Tokyo smashing lizards have been traded in for the middle-aged monsters of addiction, fear of violence, adultery, economic hardship, incarceration and death. The lyrics are primarily provided by the previously mentioned, and now middle-aged, John Shirley.
This is a surprisingly heavy, guitar oriented, record that punches you in your rounding waistline from the first warm-up salvo of See You in Black with a tight rhythmic union between drums and guitar that is quite striking. The album is further punctuated with some of the heaviest numbers since Cultösaurus. Power Underneath Despair has a really rocking chorus riff with an odd time signature that is more head banging than just about anything else in their catalog. Hammer Back takes a more classic BÖC boogie approach to the metal as it implores you to stay prepared to return any violence your faced with. A celebration for a life of damaging habits conquered, Damaged gallops through some heavy funk and blistering guitar solos and, finally, some really cool organ leads from Allen. Not to be out rocked, Still Burnin’, presumably a sequel to Burnin’ for You, is a metalized tribute to life long physical attraction to your spouse.
Buck jokingly said during an interview at the time that he didn’t know if the album would help with their metal street-cred but he wouldn’t mind if it did.
Where the album really soars is in the light-metal™ moments such as the brilliant Harvest Moon! I can’t say enough praise for this song. Not only are the verses and chorus beautiful and catchy but the middle instrumental and Buck’s lead break is jaw droppingly awesome! Ever since our own KevShmev convinced me to give this a listen, a bit over a year now, it’s been my favorite Buck song ever and sits comfortably in 3rd place for BÖC top honors.
Cold Gray Light of Dawn, Real World, and especially the sublime Live for Me are all excellent songs and a must listen. Each is thought provoking and the guitar work is stellar throughout.
X-Ray Eyes is the only song on this album that I could do without and it’s not annoying or anything but I’m not fond of Buck’s vocals on this one and the ending is just too repetitive.
In fact, if I were to level one general complaint on this album that’s it: The chorus’s are often repetitive and usually walk a fine line between being memorable and overstaying their welcome.
The live version of In Thee is nice but I don’t find it significantly better than the studio version on Mirrors. The vocal harmonies are a highlight.
Overall this is a great record of individual songs that all sit well on shuffle of your favorite music player. There is no overarching theme nor does this album require listening to it as a whole to get enjoyment from it.
If you haven’t already, give it a whirl.
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Looking forward to it. Though you have the wrong release year. Sometimes a big break is just what the doctor ordered. I have a feeling I'm REALLY going to like this one.
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:facepalm:
Thanks Jingle!
That's what I get for using a template. :lol
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I'm gonna try and check out some of these tunes. There's a lot of shows from this time period on Dime.
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TAC, here's a playlist for you. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7oRU-zErEA&list=PLE5A055EB4353BD64)
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See You In Black :metal
Wow!!
I'm on it, bro!
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Fantastic record! I'll say more tomorrow when I am more awake... :lol :lol
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I'm listening to the best of album at work. Not bad. I think Motorhead ripped them off with Ace of Spades.
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I'm listening to the best of album at work. Not bad. I think Motorhead ripped them off with Ace of Spades.
Which one? Saying you're listening to a best of album when talking about BÖC is like saying, "That's a cool star up yonder." Which song do you think sounds like Ace of Spades?
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Excellent album. Takes pretty much the best of the past two albums (the musical quality of Imaginos + production of Club Ninja) and mashes them together.
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I'm listening to the best of album at work. Not bad. I think Motorhead ripped them off with Ace of Spades.
Which one? Saying you're listening to a best of album when talking about BÖC is like saying, "That's a cool star up yonder." Which song do you think sounds like Ace of Spades?
This one:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/36/Don%27t_Fear_the_Reaper.jpg/220px-Don%27t_Fear_the_Reaper.jpg)
The song that reminds me of Ace of Spades is called The Red & the Black.
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Fantastic record! I'll say more tomorrow when I am more awake... :lol :lol
So yeah, like I said last night in my sleepy haze, this is a fantastic record. Harvest Moon kind played to death on the radio here in St. Louis, so I bought the CD knowing that it had at least one major winner. And it ended up having a handful of major winners besides that tune, Real World being my other favorite. That and Harvest Moon are both top 20 B.O.C. tunes in my book, and I am big on Cold Gray Light of Dawn, Damaged and Live for Me, as well. Hammer Back is the only average tune here. And I really dig the live rendition of In Thee. Yep, this is a fantastic record, for sure. :coolio
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I think where this record succeeds compared with other middle-aged metal (or as I prefer to call them, Menopause Metal) albums is that BÖC never attempts to be something they're not. We've probably beat the subject to death in the A-Mob thread but it's really off putting when players 'of certain age' go for youthful angst. Heaven Forbid is a great mature classic rock album by, according to me, the most underrated classic rock band out there.
Also, I didn't mention it in the write-up, but I think the bass and drums on this record are better than on any other BÖC album. Not to take anything away from the Bouchard brothers but as multi-instrumentalists they never really locked in as tight as the specialist who play on Heaven Forbid.
Oh, and as Chad pointed out, the production is quite clear which really adds to the experience.
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Ahhh, now we are getting into unfamiliar territory for me. I have not heard any post-Imaginos BOC at all so I'm going to have to wait to comment until I check out this album later.
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“There is a chain that I have worn
And on the chain a thorn is hung
There is a pain forever borne
That sings a song forever sung
The song is but a stone”
Curse of the Hidden Mirror (2001)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Curse_of_the_hidden_mirror_cover.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom - lead vocals on tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, guitars, keyboards, associate producer
Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser - guitars, lead vocals on tracks 1, 4, 7, 9, keyboards, producer
Allen Lanier - guitars, keyboards
Danny Miranda - bass, keyboards, background vocals
Bobby Rondinelli - drums
Additional musicians
Norman DelTufo - percussion
George Cintron - background vocals
------------------------
1. Dance on Stilts (Donald Roeser, John Shirley) - 6:05
2. Showtime (Eric Bloom, John Trivers) - 4:38
3. The Old Gods Return (Bloom, Roeser, Shirley) - 4:36
4. Pocket (Roeser, Shirley) - 4:15
5. One Step Ahead of the Devil (Bloom, Roeser, Danny Miranda, Bobby Rondinelli, Shirley) - 4:16
6. I Just Like to Be Bad (Bloom, Bryan Neumeister, Shirley) - 3:54
7. Here Comes That Feeling (Roeser, Dick Trismen) - 3:21
8. Out of the Darkness (Miranda, Bloom, Roeser, Shirley) - 5:06
9. Stone of Love (Roeser, Richard Meltzer) - 5:49
10. Eye of the Hurricane (Bloom, Neumeister, Roeser, Rondinelli, Shirley) - 4:40
11. Good to Feel Hungry (Miranda, Bloom, Roeser, Shirley) - 4:12
------------------------
Shocking everyone, the band released an album a mere three years from Heaven Forbid but unlike that album they left much of the metal behind. This time they built more of a classic rock feel and fully embraced their status as a classic rock band. Curse of the Hidden Mirror is still very much a guitar showcase and is very enjoyable for what it is.
It’s a little light on the BÖC aesthetic but still manages to serve up a couple of tunes that sit quite well in the catalog with The Old Gods Return and Stone of Love. TOGR feels like a spiritual successor to Veterans of the Psychic Wars if just a bit too deliberately. John Shirley’s lyrics are perhaps a bit too tailored to the BÖC motif but Eric’s performance more than makes up for it. Stone of Love may have the best lyrics on any BÖC song ever. I’ve always been a fan of Meltzer’s contributions before but this time the odd quirkiness is traded in for, what is to me, a relevant and deep commentary on the nature of doubt and love. The music is wonderful and is worthy of a top ten ranking.
I think Dance on Stilts, Pocket, Out of the Darkness and Eye of the Hurricane are all good songs too and are all great additions to the album. The rest are just okay: not bad, by any means, just something I’d hesitate to flag with three stars on my music player.
This is the last studio album from Blue Öyster Cult and thus completes this discography…except the bands official website lists one more.
A Long Day’s Night (2002)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/BOC_A_Long_Days_Night.jpg)
This is a live album recorded in June of that year in Chicago.
I won’t bother to provide a track listing, you can find it here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Long_Day%27s_Night).
The CD is good and contains some great performances, especially Harvest Moon. There is also the fun rarity of, one of my favorites, “Quicklime Girl”. But where this release really shines is on the DVD. It’s great fun seeing the ol’ men bust out so many classics and the performance of “Then Came the Last Days of May" is truly special with Buck and Allen taking turns during the extended lead section.
To me, the DVD is a huge recommendation for those of you who may be big BÖC fans! It’s a wonderful book end to the band’s storied career.
------------------------
Thank you to everyone who followed along in this thread and a huge o/ to everyone who contributed with your thoughts and memories. I've definitely gained a bigger appreciation for the band through this exercise. I hope some of you have as well.
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I mostly agree with what you said about Curse...
Stone of Love, The Old Gods Return and Dance on Stilts are all terrific, and those other three you mentioned are solid. And the rest, like you said, are just kind of there. Not really bad by any means, but not noteworthy in any way whatsoever.
Overall, probably a bottom 3 B.O.C. album, but at least they gave us a few major keepers.
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I'm a little behind, but I'll try to get to the last two albums as quickly as I can.
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Oh, another thing about the DVD...Buck is fucking awesome!! I hate the look of his "Cheeseberger" guitar (although it's funny) but the tone of the thing is so clear and smooth and he plays it like 'buta'. He just get's smoother with age.
Check out Buck's Boogie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6lQ8cx_t0g#t=1728)
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I've enjoyed this trip through the catalogue of a band I hardly knew going in (two songs -duh - and one album was all I knew). I've loved half of every album so far but not listened to the last one yet. Thanks for doing it. Thoroughly enjoyed it and I've come to be a bit of a fan.
I'd say it was job done. :biggrin:
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I'd say it was job done. :biggrin:
:|
Well, I promised to get us through it. I never promised to do it well.
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fully embarrassed their status as a classic rock band.
I hope you meant they "fully embraced"?? If this album embarrassed their classic rock status, I'm not sure I should listen to it!!
I've enjoyed this trip through the catalogue of a band I hardly knew going in (two songs -duh - and one album was all I knew). I've loved half of every album so far but not listened to the last one yet. Thanks for doing it. Thoroughly enjoyed it and I've come to be a bit of a fan.
I'd say it was job done. :biggrin:
:iagree:
Nicely done Gregg... you've got big shoes to follow. Guess I need to start my Zeppelin discussion shortly.
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fully embarrassed their status as a classic rock band.
I hope you meant they "fully embraced"?? If this album embarrassed their classic rock status, I'm not sure I should listen to it!!
You are correct, sir. Stupid autocorrect! :lol
Thanks for the kind words.
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Haha, I assumed he meant "fully embraced," which is why I didn't even comment on it. I like to take the occasional break from my grammar nazi duties. :biggrin:
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Haha, I assumed he meant "fully embraced," which is why I didn't even comment on it. I like to take the occasional break from my grammar nazi duties. :biggrin:
Just wanted to make sure... you know what they say when you "assume". As I said, if they were 'embarrassed', I figured I'd just go right ahead and skip this release. :lol
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Haha, I know what you mean, but given how everything else around it was worded, it wouldn't have made sense. :hat
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fully embarrassed their status as a classic rock band.
I hope you meant they "fully embraced"?? If this album embarrassed their classic rock status, I'm not sure I should listen to it!!
I've enjoyed this trip through the catalogue of a band I hardly knew going in (two songs -duh - and one album was all I knew). I've loved half of every album so far but not listened to the last one yet. Thanks for doing it. Thoroughly enjoyed it and I've come to be a bit of a fan.
I'd say it was job done. :biggrin:
:iagree:
Nicely done Gregg... you've got big shoes to follow. Guess I need to start my Zeppelin discussion shortly.
I'd say you're on to a loser in trying to convert me there. Unless there are some unreleased tracks with a guest singer? :biggrin:
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Have only heard Dance on Stilts off this album, liked it, so I'll probably give it another shot sometime.
Thanks for the thread. Blue Oyster Cult is one of my favorite bands and criminally underrated, so it's been nice to see people discuss them and allowed me to revisit the discography of one of my favorites-as well as finally get the Imaginos demos. :biggrin:
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Guess I need to start my Zeppelin discussion shortly.
I'd say you're on to a loser in trying to convert me there. Unless there are some unreleased tracks with a guest singer? :biggrin:
Go sit in the corner Fredo.
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By the way, if I were asked for my personal ranking of the studio albums, this is what it would look like:
Cultösaurus Erectus (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1822273#msg1822273)
Secret Treaties (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1813712#msg1813712)
Blue Öyster Cult (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1810980#msg1810980)
Spectres (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1819766#msg1819766)
Tyranny and Mutation (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1812449#msg1812449)
Fire of Unknown Origin (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1823755#msg1823755)
Heaven Forbid (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1830135#msg1830135)
Agents of Fortune (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1815978#msg1815978)
Imaginos (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1827783#msg1827783)
Mirrors (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1821793#msg1821793)
The Revölution by Night (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1824725#msg1824725)
Curse of the Hidden Mirror (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1832208#msg1832208)
Club Ninja (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=41614.msg1826278#msg1826278)
That being said, my level of enjoyment varies only slightly from FoUO through Imaginos and their position could easily change, depending on my mood, from day to day. The top five haven't changed position for me in years and I don't imagine they will in the future.
[edit] Added hyperlinks to the album titles. It might make it easier for folks to find write-ups [/edit]
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Enjoyed the thread immensely will use it for reference
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Thanks for the thread, it was pretty awesome, and had the benefit of getting me to look at Imaginos in a different light then I did before. I'll check out those last two BOC records when I have the chance, but Heaven Forbid sounds like it could at least be up my alley.
Again, awesome thread! :metal :metal :metal :metal :metal
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Thanks for this! I didn't listen to every album, but those that I did listen to, I enjoyed quite a bit and would rank them the following way:
Blue Oyster Cult
Secret Treaties
Cultosaurus Erectus
Imaginos
So yeah, thanks Podaar for introducing me to this great band! Much applause also for you timely running of this.
jingle, you wanna start with LZ or should I go ahead with SX?
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So yeah, thanks Podaar for introducing me to this great band! Much applause also for you timely running of this.
You're welcome. I didn't think it would be cool to lollygag around with so many folks waiting their turn. :)
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So yeah, thanks Podaar for introducing me to this great band! Much applause also for you timely running of this.
You're welcome. I didn't think it would be cool to lollygag around with so many folks waiting their turn. :)
2 months to run through 12 studio and a handful of live releases... :tup :tup
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Just watched the movie "Roadie" and loved it. It inspired me to check out some BOC. I'm from Long Island, so shame on me for not doing it sooner. I really liked the song in the movie called "See You in Black." Wow. From what I read though, Secret Treaties seems to be most acclaimed album. I'm starting with that one.
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I'd never heard of it before, but the synopsis has me intrigued. I'll see if it's on netflix and give it a view.
I'm from Long Island, so shame on me for not doing it sooner.
Exactly! :biggrin:
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Whelp, against all odds, the old men are adding to their discography on the 13th of October, 2020. I guess the lockdown forced some musical ideas out of the band. I've got it cued up to auto-rip and I'll give it a few listens next week before posting my thoughts on it here.
Stay tuned.
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I've liked the 3 songs they have out on Youtube.
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New album is getting very good reviews. Will definitely check it out.
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Liked the single. First band I ever saw live (imaginos tour)
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“Dahlia floated like chimney ash
Up into a shredded sky
It was raining acidic trash
On the Moon there crawled a fly”
The Symbol Remains (2020)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/TheSymbolRemains.jpg)
Band members
Eric Bloom – guitars, keyboards, vocals
Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser – guitars, keyboards, programming, vocals
Richie Castellano – guitars, keyboards, programming, vocals
Danny Miranda - bass, background vocals
Jules Radino – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Additional musicians
Albert Bouchard – backing vocals, cowbell and percussion on "That Was Me"
Andy Ascolese - keyboards on "Nightmare Epiphany" and "Florida Man"; piano on "The Alchemist"
David Lucas - Backing vocals on "Edge of the World", "The Machine", "Florida Man" and "Secret Road"; cowbell on "Fight"
Phil Castellano - harmonica on "Train True (Lennie's Song)"; gang vocals on "Stand and Fight"; backing vocals and claps on "Florida Man"; choir programming on "Secret Road"
Kasim Sulton - backing vocals on "The Return of St. Cecilia" and "There's a Crime"
Steve La Cerra, Kevin Young - gang vocals on "Stand and Fight"; backing vocals and claps on "Florida Man"
John Castellano - backing vocal on "Florida Man"
Jeff Nolan - theremin on "Florida Man"
Produced by Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma and Richie Castellano
Executive produced by Steve Schenk
Chief Engineer - Richie Castellano
Overdub engineering - Buck Dharma
Engineer - Sam Stauff
Assistant engineer - Steve La Cerra
Mixed by Tom Lord-Alge
Mastered by Ted Jensen
------------------------
1. "That Was Me" (music by Eric Bloom, Richie Castellano, lyrics by John Shirley) 3:18
2. "Box in My Head (music by Donald Roeser, lyrics by Shirley) 3:46
3. "Tainted Blood" (music and lyrics by Bloom, Castellano) 4:17
4. "Nightmare Epiphany" (music by Roeser, lyrics by Shirley) 5:30
5. "Edge of the World" (music and lyrics by Castellano) 4:52
6. "The Machine" (music and lyrics by Castellano) 4:14
7. "Train True (Lennie's Song)" (music and lyrics by D. Roeser, Zeke Roeser) 3:57
8. "The Return of St. Cecilia" (music by Castellano, lyrics by Richard Meltzer) 4:12
9. "Stand and Fight" (music and lyrics by Bloom, Castellano) 4:48
10. "Florida Man" (music by Roeser, lyrics by Shirley) 4:08
11. "The Alchemist" (music and lyrics by Castellano, with a quote from HP Lovecraft) 6:00
12. "Secret Road" (music by Roeser, lyrics by Shirley) 5:24
13. "There's a Crime" (music and lyrics by Jeff Denny, Jules Radino) 3:37
14. "Fight" (music and lyrics by Roeser, Ira Rosoff, James Wold) 3:12
Total length: 61:06
------------------------
After nearly 20 years since their last studio release, and 6 years since the beginning of this thread, I admit that I thought I was finished with the discography. When the video of Box in My Head showed up in my YouTube suggested watch list I was surprised to say the least. I’ve been even more surprised with my half-dozen listens to this album over the past week. This is a great BÖC album!
I don’t know if the band deliberately wrote the album to be a retrospective of their entire career, but that’s how it feels to me. In the best possible way! All the elements are here; thunderous riffs, blistering lead guitar work, atmospheric keyboards, pop sensibilities with vaguely creepy lyrics, B-movie creature features, and their patented dry/dark sense of humor. There’s even a guest appearance from Albert Bouchard (the original drummer) playing cowbell during That Was Me.
In a break from the style that this discography started with, I’m not going to list all the songs and the elements I find compelling…that’s kind of fallen out of vogue on the forum and, with good reason. I think it’s more fun for the participants to bring their listening experience first.
I will say, that I think the rhythm section of the current band is exceptional, and that the addition of Frank Castellano has been a revelation for BÖC fans. His song writing, vocals, and more modern lead guitar work is a beautiful contrast/addition to the band’s sound and offers a complimentary contrast to Buck’s guitar. Also, this is a great sounding album with clear production and great dynamics. I'm also pleased to say they were able to get some great performances out of Eric, who's voice has struggled in live settings for quite a while now. No, there's nothing to compare with "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" but his vocals help solidify this album in the BÖC canon.
EDIT:
The Symbol Remains - Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/0kyBsDAOQHImwKLy8W5OEr)
Official videos YouTube:
That Was Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPW7KhN_ZM4&list=PL1k4D8QfUBtVA56XczEYX-S3ImDJiV2qw&index=14)
Box In My Head (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQoWfQ_3txA&list=PL1k4D8QfUBtVA56XczEYX-S3ImDJiV2qw&index=10)
Tainted Blood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H0iX-_Vts0)
The Alchemist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4TFfTSUbto&list=PL1k4D8QfUBtVA56XczEYX-S3ImDJiV2qw&index=4)
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I can tell I'm going to miss KevShmev, Jaq, and The Dark Master. I'd love to hear their thoughts on this release... :sad:
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Just finishing this up.
The Alchemist :metal
Holy shit that's an amazing tune.
Is it me, or does the ending sound very similar to the ending of A Tempting Offer?
Tainted Blood is really good. Great chorus on it.
Stand And Fight is really interesting. I'm not an expert on BOC, but this has more of a Motorhead/Saxon feel to it. Really interesting song.
Listening to Fight, Buck Dharma sounds a bit like Alice Cooper on Paranormal. In fact this song, and the whole album remind me a bit of Paranormal.
The album I think would be better at 10 tracks, but I'm not complaining. I may get this. This is really good.
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My CD arrived in the mail today. Have only listened to it once, but really enjoyed what I heard, with the exception of Lennie’s song. Didn't care for that one.
I agree with TAC regarding Stand and Fight. This may be one of the heaviest songs BOC have done.
I’ve always enjoyed Buck Dharma’s vocal style, so the songs he sings on tend to be my favourites, but Ritchie’s vocals are a welcome addition.
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Huh, I didn't realize there was a third singer.
I think I'm going to have to go back through this thread when the UFO one is done.
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Stand And Fight is really interesting. I'm not an expert on BOC, but this has more of a Motorhead/Saxon feel to it. Really interesting song.
I get a "For Whom the Bell Tolls" feel from it, just not as realized. The overall song is pretty simple, and it feels like a frame work for the dueling guitar solos. I have a feeling that it was written as a live showcase for the band to jam to. BÖC have written a lot of songs like that throughout the years (decades, really). They truly live to perform live.
Listening to Fight, Buck Dharma sounds a bit like Alice Cooper on Paranormal. In fact this song, and the whole album remind me a bit of Paranormal.
I don't know anything about AC and that album, but I do know that the lyrics for Fight (and the way Buck sings it) just cracks me up.
No charred timbers smoking
No bottles broken
Nobody running to the glovebox for the stolen gun
No dirty deeds done
It just wasn't that fun
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My CD arrived in the mail today. Have only listened to it once, but really enjoyed what I heard, with the exception of Lennie’s song. Didn't care for that one.
I agree with TAC regarding Stand and Fight. This may be one of the heaviest songs BOC have done.
I’ve always enjoyed Buck Dharma’s vocal style, so the songs he sings on tend to be my favourites, but Ritchie’s vocals are a welcome addition.
As far as the heaviest BÖC song, may I suggest Lips in the Hills off Cultosaurus Erectus.
As I said in the post of this album, I really like the addition of Ritchie to this band.
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Huh, I didn't realize there was a third singer.
I think I'm going to have to go back through this thread when the UFO one is done.
Ritchie Castellano has been with the band for many years, Tim. Doing live sound mixing, filling in for injured or ailing members. He can play nearly every instrument, and well. He was the primary bass player for the live band for a few years, but when Allen Lanier retired in 2013, Ritchie became an official replacement for him on keys and guitar. He's kind of a Ron Thal protégé so you'll find many of his leads have that kind of a fluid, melodic, shred like Bumblefoot.
That's his voice as the lead on Tainted Blood, The Machine, and The Return of St. Cecilia
He was born about the time the BÖC album Mirrors Cultosaurus Erectus was released. :lol
edit; corrected.
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OK gotcha!
Tainted Blood was a great listen.
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Oh, and Zoom E, I'd agree that Train True (Lennie's Song) is the odd song out on this record. The album wouldn't have suffered one bit if they would have left it off.
That being said, I quite like it! Especially when driving in my car. I get the personal connection Buck has with it because of his son co-wrote the song, but yeah...this would have been better off on a Dharma solo album.
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As far as the heaviest BÖC song, may I suggest Lips in the Hills off Cultosaurus Erectus.
As I said in the post of this album, I really like the addition of Ritchie to this band.
I haven’t listened to Cultosaurus Erectus in an eternity, but I can hear the chorus of Lips in the Hills in my head. I don’t recall it being a particularly heavy song. Will try to give it a listen soon.
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Huh, I didn't realize there was a third singer.
I think I'm going to have to go back through this thread when the UFO one is done.
Ritchie Castellano has been with the band for many years, Tim. Doing live sound mixing, filling in for injured or ailing members. He can play nearly every instrument, and well. He was the primary bass player for the live band for a few years, but when Allen Lanier retired in 2013, Ritchie became an official replacement for him on keys and guitar. He's kind of a Ron Thal protégé so you'll find many of his leads have that kind of a fluid, melodic, shred like Bumblefoot.
That's his voice as the lead on Tainted Blood, The Machine, and The Return of St. Cecilia
He was born about the time the BÖC album Mirrors Cultosaurus Erectus was released. :lol
edit; corrected.
Also married to Buck's daughter I think.
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I know it's posted above, but The Alchemist just came up on my youtube feed. Holy shit that song is amazing. SOTY material.
The best part of the video was seeing Podaar in it!
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a394c_eb436d1f3376425ba9b61c7a92d68c81~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_608,h_364,al_c,q_90/4a394c_eb436d1f3376425ba9b61c7a92d68c81~mv2.jpg)
EDIT: I bought it! :metal
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Me too. Can't wait to hear it start to finish.
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I know it's posted above, but The Alchemist just came up on my youtube feed. Holy shit that song is amazing. SOTY material.
Oooh, that was a good recommendation. I have the album, but hadn't made it to this song. It's like a heavier version of something off of Secret Treaties. :metal
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The best part of the video was seeing Podaar in it!
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a394c_eb436d1f3376425ba9b61c7a92d68c81~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_608,h_364,al_c,q_90/4a394c_eb436d1f3376425ba9b61c7a92d68c81~mv2.jpg)
Nonsense, I look nothing like Eric Bloom!
(https://i.imgur.com/iLdpQVR.jpg)
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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The best part of the video was seeing Podaar in it!
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4a394c_eb436d1f3376425ba9b61c7a92d68c81~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_608,h_364,al_c,q_90/4a394c_eb436d1f3376425ba9b61c7a92d68c81~mv2.jpg)
Nonsense, I look nothing like Eric Bloom!
(https://i.imgur.com/iLdpQVR.jpg)
:lol
Yeah, what was I thinking?.. :lol
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:lol
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I can tell I'm going to miss KevShmev, Jaq, and The Dark Master. I'd love to hear their thoughts on this release... :sad:
Would you now? :biggrin:
So far, I like the album, but I haven't had the urges to really go back to it after the initial listens. Seems to have a few songs I think will hold up as BOC keepers, but I need to get back to it to see if there is more there. I was pretty underwhelmed by the first two releases (That Was Me and Box in My Head) so that didn't help as far as getting me psyched for it, and the sound of the album is irksome like so many other modern albums (muddy and compressed to death :facepalm:), but the band has enough equity built up that I will give this more chances sooner rather than later.