Best Blue Öyster Cult Album

i may form a religion based on "extraterrestrial live"....seriously godzilla is so fucking nuts on this

On your Feet or On Your Knees is also a v impressive live album imo.
The gatefold image rules, too.
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth_images//boc_onyourfeet_gatefold.jpg
You can't really see that the audience all have pillowcases over their heads in this img, tho.

I just recently discovered Cultosaurus Erectus, and have to the conclusion that I, along with everyone else at ILM, seriously screwed up by not having in my top ten of the recent 80s Albums poll.

*have come to the conclusion*

listening to cultosaurus erectus for the first time. damn you are right this is a nuts album! black blade! the weird cocktail jazz breakdowns in the middle of monster's AOR goth metal...woah.

"fallen angel" is kinda ELO-ish

Agents of Fortune is the apex of AOR

Fucking BOC forever IMO.

confession time: i do not have a single Blue Oyster Cult album. where should i begin.

Oh fuck dude! I'd say start this way--

1. Secret Treaties (get the remaster)
2. On Your Feet Or On Your Knees (live)
3. Agents Of Fortune (get the remaster)
4. Fire Of Unknown Origin

i know, i know. it's a glaring blind spot. i blame my older brother. but thanks for the reccs, i will check out secret treaties! super cheap on amazon.

fyi - tyranny and mutation has "the red & the black" that the minutemen cover

yeah i think Tyranny is the one album of theirs I've heard in full. Otherwise I just know the hits.

That live album will show u their deadly side, how they 'played like they got knife fight in the alley afterward' to paraphrase patti smith.

(but she said that abt Television live)

i got agents of fortune cuz of dont fear the reaper but the entire thing rawks p fukken hard

this is more once you get to be a super fan, but i really love the totes over the top arena antics of "extraterrestrial live"...

Yeah ETL Live is nice. The two studio records from that era, Cultosaurus Erectus and Fire Of Unknown Origin, are both terrific (and underrated for some reason). Fire Of Unknown Origin in particular is wall-to-wall awesome-- I might actually like it a little more than Agents. Also both these records sound good even in their early CD incarnations (they haven't been remastered yet).

You want a good live introduction to the very early sound of the band? "For the Heavy Metal Kids and the Yardbirds[/i] which was originally done as a promotion, I think, but wound up bootlegged. I'm almost certain it was ripped to the net awhile back. Anyway, four tunes, including tear ass versions of "The Red & The Black," "Buck's Boogie" and "Cities On Flame." Invigorating stuff from 72. Used copy on Amazon asks for 37 bucks, way too dear.

googling!

you should have to pay too much for their later 70s stuff on vinyl either, always see decent copies of a lot of those

Gorge I think those 4 tracks might have been included on the Workshop Of The Telescopes anthology? I feel like they have appeared in one of the Sony Legacy remasters anyway...

No, not all of them. The version of "Cities on Flame" isn't from that. I'm checking with the booklet. Hmm, yeah, you got "The Red & the Black" and "Workshop of the Telescopes" from it on that box. Not bad. And I think you're right, they were put in pieces on the early remasters.

DOMINANCE, submission....

Such little love for Fire of Unknown Origin?

Dude I just said I rate it above Agents of Fortune!

[puts on blue priest garb]

joan crawford video is still one of the most nuts things ever

Agents Of Fortune and Spectres are really of a piece, aren't they? They're right up there with Fly Like An Eagle/Book Of Dreams and Kid A/Amnesiac in my book. (I speak here are 2-album tandems that stand apart from the remainder of the artists' catalogue, in terms of both sound and quality, and were probably also recorded at the same time, even though issued separately).

And fuck that whole "cowbell" thing...it's pretty much all BOC are remembered for these days!

yeah, i mean that and Godzilla are what I think of ... but then Allen Lanier sort of pops up around the edges of the CBGB scene (as Jon alluded to above) so I'm curious to see what these records are like.

(By the by, the demo of "Fire of Unknown Origin" (which was originally to have appeared on Agents of Fortune, and appears as a bonus track on the AoF reissue) is awesome, as is the Allen Lanier track "Dance the Night Away", which reveals him to be a languid crooner in the same vein as Dennis Wilson and (much later) Epic Soundtracks.

I'm tempted to get that Patti Smith book for the two paragraphs or so she writes about Lanier...

Mirrors is another great BOC MOR album. (I like to think of BOC as the Fleetwood Mac of metal, at least from Agents to Fire.) Mirrors has Lanier's best track, "In Thee". (Probably written with Patti Smith in mind. "Maybe you've bought your ticket, going back to Detroit".)

I missed the original poll, and would have contributed another vote for Fire of Unknown Origin. I readily admit it was my first BOC album, and that tour was my first BOC concert, which was also my first rock concert, period. But it's still a fine, fine album.

http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/41hPlFST%2B4L._SS400_.jpg

this can be found for around $15

where? about $25 from a third party seller on amazon ... still a good deal, I guess.

Those don't have the bonus tracks, though, do they? They're worth the couple extra bucks you'd pay for the individual albums.

especially the 'Secret Treaties' ones -- totally essential!!

weird that that set skips past 'Spectres', too. That's the BOC album I've been playing the most over the last year or so

i think those original album classics things do have bonus tracks. at least the Sonny Rollins one I have does ... no liner notes, but a bunch of extra tracks.

all but mirrors have bonus tracks. maybe the price went up in the last few months (i bought it in january on amazon.ca marketplace for yes $15).

Dude I just said I rate it above Agents of Fortune!

That's nice, but it still got no votes.

DOMINANCE...submission.

"so I'm curious to see what these records are like."

Do it, you wont be disappointed.

I voted Tyranny in this poll, but could have voted Spectres, which is awesome, but Buck's guitar on Death Valley Nights is a particular hight point.

i'm doing it! BOC!

Seems like there's only really 3 good BOC albums then?

Fire of Unknown Origin got robbed.

tyler you need to become a BOC superfan ASAP so you can start tracking down sweet soft white underbelly and stalk-forest group live boots for me! :)

this ain't the summer of loooooove

haha, well, i've already started digging around for bootlegs: http://soundaboard.blogspot.com/2010/02/blue-oyster-cult-rochester-new-york.html

Seems like there's only really 3 good BOC albums then?

― Is that your Ayrshire bacon? (Tom D.), Tuesday, April 20, 2010 10:56 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

No, there's the run of the first 5 that's unimpeachable, then a few scattered through the 80s (Fire, Cultosaurus) that are getting big play here. Not including live stuff, and weird shit like Imaginos.

first album is gettin slept on. great debut and precursor of what's to come while retaining those burnt psychedelic vibes.
has the essential 'Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll' and the sublime dealers' blues of 'Then Came the Last Days of May'.

^agree

I hope the remaster program can crawl along one more notch to Mirrors, which really needs it. Cultosaurus and Fire Of Unknown already sound great, so I won't cry if the major-label-reissue industry perishes before they get to those (though I'd love some liner notes about that period).

On Your Feet... could use it too.

and the sublime dealers' blues of 'Then Came the Last Days of May'.

^ what a fucking great song

stairway to the stars is dope

^this!

Yeah Secret Treaties is head and shoulders above the rest of the catalog but I was definitely raised on Some Enchanted Evening. I remember trying to draw that grim reaper when I was a kid...

I wish the Flaming Lips would have covered the 1st BOC record, rather than (ugh) 'Dark Side...' e.g., "She's as Beautiful as a Foot" seems tailor-made for Coyne & Co.

Haha OTM.

Basically, what we're trying to say is that every BOC album from the debut through Fire of Unknown Origin is freaking great and worth getting. Second on the love for the demo version of "Fire of Unknown Origin!"

Let's not overwhelm tylerw! He has to start somewhere!

Also, look up the BOC-FAQ online, it's pretty damn fun.

He was me. And I was called. FRANK! EN! STEIN!

^^yeahbut if you want to cut to the chase, stick to the first three.

clearly i need someone to make me a career-spanning comp a la those King Crimson comps that were shared on ILM ... :)

every BOC album from the debut through Fire of Unknown Origin is freaking great

St. Cecilia: The Elektra Recordings by Stalk-Forrest Group is nothing to sneeze at, either.

Yeah, you might just call THAT the debut.

Man, I would love to step up and do a BOC mix... don't know if I'm oyster enough tho...

and The Revolution By Night at least has the great Buck tune "Shooting Shark"

Revolution By Night has three great tunes: that, 'Veins', and that one with 'California' in the title.

Imaginos has a few unmissables too, and is overall so WTF that it's kind of cool.

I have to confess I've never dared listen to Club Ninja though...

I would rank their ouevre thusly :
Secret Treaties
Tyranny & Mutation
Blue Oyster Cult
St. Cecilia: The Elektra Recordings
Spectres
Agents Of Fortune
Fire Of Unknown Origin
Cultosaurus Erectus
Mirrors

and I haven't heard The Revolution By Night, Club Ninja or Imaginos for years so I can hardly judge. Have never heard The Curse of the Hidden Mirror or Heaven Forbid at all tbh.

Have never heard The Curse of the Hidden Mirror or Heaven Forbid at all tbh.

There are a few fantastic Buck tunes on these, namely 'Harvest Moon', 'Stone', and 'Pocket' if I recall the titles correctly. I believe he had these left over from his abortive early 80s solo career. Well worth cherry picking off itunes or emusic. There is a fair amount of half-baked /embarrasing stuff on there too. But I would still go see them live.

haha, well, i've already started digging around for bootlegs: http://soundaboard.blogspot.com/2010/02/blue-oyster-cult-rochester-new-york.html

========
The above has the "For the Heavy Metal Kids and the Yardbirds" cuts.

Cool, thanks!

In my opinion, the classic run is Secret Treaties, Agents, and Spectres.

clearly i need someone to make me a career-spanning comp a la those King Crimson comps that were shared on ILM ... :)

This is for you people that have not heard BÖC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpCB-0d42-g

and for those who have!

It always made me happy that Current 93 covered "This Ain't The Summer of Love." Their version isn't very good, but it's the principle of the thing.

I also added some umlauts to the thread title bcz they make me happy, too.

richard meltzer writes the hottest lyrics

DOMINANCE...submission

...radios appear

I seriously think that album wins on the basis of Astronomy....what a great song that Metallica had to go and fucking butcher

course Career of Evil is no slouch either...

Maybe my favorite heavy not metal band that isn't Alice Cooper. First three albums are all classic, and I dunno that any one stands head and shoulders above the rest. Surprised that Fire of Unknown Origin and Cultosaurus Erectus got so little love on the original poll. Would advise the curious to start with the first three, and if those do it for you, to move up through the latter two.

tracklist for a 2-disc comp I made for some friends a while back:

the red and the black
cities on flame with rock and roll
dominance and submission
career of evil
screams
she’s as beautiful as a foot
subhuman
hot rails to hell
7 screaming diz-busters (brutally edited)
transmaniacon mc
before the kiss, a redcap
teen archer
harvester of eyes
flaming telepaths

arthur comics (stalk-forrest group)
this ain’t the summer of love
don’t fear the reaper
godzilla
black blade
veteran of the psychic wars
joan crawford
unknown tongue
burnin’ for you
don’t fear the reaper (demo)
minutemen - the red and the black
fu manchu - godzilla
thrones - black blade
green river - swallow my pride

no astronomy frown

Astronomy has to be one of my top ten BÖC songs.

yeah i like it too, though it's not a top ten favorite or anything. dunno why I dumped it, especially relative to say teen archer. just wasn't feeling it at that moment, and it's long, and there was too much other stuff off secret treaties i couldn't live without.

When I saw them live, Astronomy seemed to be the big crowd favourite, but Harvester of Eyes would be my Secret Treaties pick, should anyone wish to poll it.

bombers at 12 o'clock high!

The guitars on ME 262 rule. Astronomy rules too.

the instrumental break towards the end of "Tenderloin" is so weird and cool...sort of almost prog breaking out of an FM rock song, the only thing i can think of is that prog part of "Stone in Love" by Journey

On Your Feet Or On Your Knees live version of ME262 kills 1000 limey flyboys.

Contenderizer you gave Spectres a rough time on that comp, damn!

I'm so happy that april 20th and 21st have turned into BOC ILM love days.

Seconded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAi1mIHb2FU

good ol' Eric Bloom...always loved his cheesy intros to "Godzilla"...("you're just sitting at home, chilling in front of the tube, smokin' a joint...then you hear a thump!...and another one...and it gets louder, and louder, and...wait!...did you just hear that?...could it be?...could it be??..it is!...it's him!...the big fella...the music king...God-ZILLLLLA!!!")

The Workshop of the Telescopes anthology is actually a pretty good place to start. Missing some of my favorites, and there are some strange omissions (no "Joan Crawford"), but it's actually a pretty solid overview of their career.

...and the joke's on you

...and the joke's on you

...and the joke's on you

...AND THE JOKE'S ON YOU

...AND THE JOK-

Overall this is not really worth reading except for this amazing fact:

These lines I needed the printout to confirm. Not every album came with a lyric sheet. Hell, oftentimes it COST too much. And if the lyrics were dumb, nobody included them. But on the cover of this Blue Oyster Cult album it said you could SEND AWAY for the lyrics. Which I did. And they came back on COMPUTER PAPER, green and white striped, with perforations on the edges. This was back before THERE WAS SUCH THING AS A PERSONAL COMPUTER!

I wish I had a job typing up BOC lyrics & mailing them to people!

OMG BOC invented the difference engine!

Babbage Oyster Cult

xpost they need better fan club merch, I really tried to convince myself into any of the stuff on their website but it's too lame. WHY CAN'T I JUST HAVE HOODIE WITH BOC CROSS ON BACK?

how is babbage formed?

Contenderizer you gave Spectres a rough time on that comp, damn!

Yeah, it's true. I know it's one of their most popular albums, but I've never been a fan. Prefer Erectus and FoUO. I did use the The Golden Age of Leather intro (uncredited) to open disc II, and flirted with both Fireworks and Nosferatu. If I'd been making a comp for even halfway fans, I'd have cut the covers and more obvious hits in favor of stuff like that, Astronomy, ETI, Buck's Boogie, live versions, etc. But the audience was almost entirely unfamiliar w the band.

Hey, I sent away to that Long Island address for those dot-matrix printed lyrics - they were still distributing 'em as late as '84! Maybe even later.

C'mon man Celestial The Queen!

Oh BTW contenderizer, I know you said you used to be a True Swamp fan, FYI I am doing new material online now, 1 new page of story per week:

trueswamp.wordpress.com

(sorry BOC)

Oh man, Jon, you are right about the BOC site merch. I think I'm gonna order the shirt for chicks w/just their logo on it, though.

Chicks get better choices it ain't fair.

To think I had a pin of the Fire Of Unknown Origin cover when I was 14 and did not conserve it like a grail.

I will tell you what, Jon Lewis, that is the first time ever in my life I have seen chicks get the better choice of band t-shirts.

Soft Boys reunion tour-- blue ringer T with orange rings, orange crab silhouette on front, girls only. One of the best band shirts I've ever seen.

NOT BITTER

Wow, thanks for pointing out those True Swamp pages, Jon. So great to see all them little guys again! Love how you get one good laugh out of every page ("how about you boys shut up and listen", titmice, etc).

OT

I know it's one of their most popular albums, but I've never been a fan.

^^^ Spectres is the only one I don't rock on the regular. I'm hoping some day it just clicks, but right now it's kind of dull.

The only bit of BOC merch I own is the T-Shirt they were selling when they filmed/recorded this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JQ0QFV13L._SS500_.jpg

it says "I WAS THERE!! Chicago, June 21, 2002!!" in a pretty cheesy looking layout. but I had to have it anyway. I never really wore it for years. but with the passage of time it felt sufficiently burned-in that I now regularly rock it with pride.

Yeah Spectres and Mirrors are undeniably on a lower level than the other 6 albums in the original streak, but I still love them a lot for their highlights. You cannot not have a song called 'The Great Sun Jester' in your life IMO.

(also, ty contenderizer!)

although when I was first getting into them in the mid-90s I seriously contemplated a tattoo of the BOC logo, I fell for them so hard.

(fifteen years later and I still don't have a single tattoo tho. them and the Germs circle are the only band-related ones I've ever toyed with. I just don't think I care enough about tattoos to bother. maybe one day.)

x-post

Maybe I should talk to my friend who has a silkscreen and see about running off a dozen simple BOC-cross shirts for ilxorz only. Is white ink on black really hard to do on home silkscreening gear?

when i first got the LP I was fairly meh on 'Spectres' (although I always dug "R U Ready 2 Rock" and used it as the intro music for a 70s metal radio show I did), but I bought the CD remaster last year and it kinda became the album of the summer for me. The poppiness just suddenly clicked. "Goin' Through the Motions"! Good driving album.

Yeah the remaster did well by Spectres.

Embarrassing disclosures dept... when I am getting ready to take the dogs out I often sing the following to them, to the tune of R.U.:

Do you wanna go out?
[high pitched voice]'Yes, we do!'
Do you wanna go out?
[high pitched voice] 'Daddy, yes!'
Do you wanna go out?
[high pitched voice] 'We do!'

oh yeah and

whoooo willl walk with youuuu?
Aw doggies with you!

speaking of BOC covers, my favorite is espers doing "flaming telepaths"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxj2D2jEqok

My own embarrassing disclosure: I used to draw the Kronos-cross on the blackboard EVERY DAY upon entering my 12th grade calculus classroom. Never explained what it was for fear of risking my cool mysterioso aura.

x-post

Jon, that dog story is awesome!!

Yeah well you haven't heard me singing it. I deserve SB's for even describing it.

Hahaha MVB that's awesome!

Okay WTF I am bumping Mirrors on headphones for the first time in ages and it's fantastic. Why did I think of this as being weak? Very, VERY Buck album, suffused with that sinuous byrds-in-chrome AOR magic that became his special genius once Reaper revealed it. Awesome guitar fills all over the place. This is the BOC album Curt Kirkwood owned, I feel sure. Good god 'The Vigil' is absolute Buck noodling heaven!

Of course the version of Mirrors on my iPod only has 6 tracks. I deleted the other tracks so long ago... looking at discogs I see 'Dr. Music', 'You're Not The One' and 'Lonely Teardrops'. They must have really sucked because I have a high tolerance for BOC corn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc9PPy0jzc8

amirite

I would rock the fuck out of an ILXor BOC Fan Club tshirt.

Japanese manga Battle Angel Alita pays tribute to this album by naming one of Alita's cyborg bodies "Imaginos". Another character, Zapan, wears the Blue Oyster Cult logo on his forehead. One of the central characters, mad scientist Desty Nova is named for Desdinova from the song Astronomy.

My favourite BÖC soft rock vampire jam :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjl-FODymg

Argh fuckin' LOVE that song. The twinkly lead guitar countermelody in the chorus YESSSS.

I saw a copy of Imaginos a few weeks back at the local FYE...it was used but I still think it was way expensivbe...maybe in a couple of weeks I'll go back & get it...I've always wanted it. I really <3 Agents & Mirrors & Cultosaurus Erectus.

Imaginos is a trainwreck but really worth it. The story of how it was written, recorded, re-recorded and cast is 5 tons of WTF.

Curse of the Hidden Mirror seems pretty good so far! huh!

Secret Treaties is so great. I need to check out the first 2, I think. Apart from "Don't Fear the Reaper", Agents of Fortune didn't make much impression on me.

first 2 are great.

secret treaties is like one of the top 10 best rock albums ever recorded though

the song "Pocket" off Curse of the Hidden Mirror rules

are you in the pocket of the moment?
(in this particular second?)
plugged into the socket of the moment?
(in this particular second?)

So glad you are digging on Curse and particularly that song, M@tt. Basically the Buck songs on the 2 reunion albums are awesome (see also "Harvest Moon" and the Eric songs are... okay to not-okay.

I have a feeling Buck used a bunch of songs he had left over from his brief early 80s solo career...

O.Nate, after the first 3 albs I advise jumping forward to Cultosaurus Erectus and Fire Of Unknown Origin. Then the ones in between later on.

yeah just picked up cultosaurus erectus, i feel like the song "Deadline" invented Ariel Pink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zapr0yIfE

jon what's the other reunion album?

Heaven Forbid

haha i just saw that on spotify and wondered what it was....what...in...the...holy...hell...were they thinking with that album cover?

btw listening to spectres right now, "Death Valley Nights" is so gorgeous

i mean

http://wallpaper.metalship.org/images/heaven-forbid.jpg

So awful

LOL same artist, same year:
http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=158648&gsub=25054

also i'm not a big font dork but that font was the worst thing in the 90s

<3 Cultosaurus Erectus. I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I really want to spend copious amounts of quality time with every BOC album between Secret Treatises and Club Ninja

I have never dared set my ear to Club Ninja, and I speak as someone who has listened to and enjoyed Imaginos and Revolution By Night.

Club Ninja is half pure awesomeness ("Dancing in the Ruins," "Perfect Water," "Spy in the House of Night," "Madness to the Method") and half really embarrassing attempts to become Survivor or something ("White Flags," "Rock Not War," "Beat 'em up"). The awesome half makes it worth listening to, though.

never been the biggest spectres, but "the night flyer" is slaying me atm

spectres fan, that is

i'm listening to revolution by night now, aside from shooting shark, a truly odd beautiful bit of 80s pop/prog (with randy jackson from american idol on slap bass according to allmusic!) it's a rough go...

i'm a bit of a club ninja apologist, but it's def better than revolution by night overall (dancing in the ruins is a classic sequel to burnin' for you)

i've always seen those two as being roughly equivalent, a bunch of half-baked crap supported by one truly magnificent track (shooting shark and dancing in the ruins, natch). it's been a while since i took club ninja out for a whirl though, so maybe i owe it another chance. mirrors finally clicked for me late last year.

mirrors hasn't clicked with me yet, i bought it at the same time i bought cultosaurus and i just liked the latter so much better

I love Mirrors' first side with a passion

well, it is so much better. they've got five great albums, imo (the first 3, cultosaurus and FOUO), plus some other stuff you might want to trawl for tracks.

xp

drugs, you love dr. music? man i can't hang w/that

listening to mirrors now with an open mind

ha! it reminds me of cheesy bikini comedies the same way that Black Blade reminds me of cheesy horror movies

retract that 2nd 'cheesy'; replace it with 'low-budget'

I mean, you guys are otm about Cultosaurus being better though for sure

hate to admit it, but i kind of love "dr. music".

strictly for the cheeze tho

^^^ I do too

I mean, I'm way more down with the next three songs; "In Thee" esp seems appealingly plaintive...

i love that BOC is a band that would make like a commercial FM rock record and have song titles like "In Thee"

On Your Feet Or On Your Knees is a pretty classic double live album, too, imo

fire of unknown origin rules so hard

On Your Feet Or On Your Knees is a pretty classic double live album, too, imo

― Trip Maker, Friday, February 3, 2012 3:00 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Then Came The Last Days of May on that record is mindblowing.

On Your Feet... is so essential, one of the great guitar records of awl time.

"in thee" is really pretty...but yeah mirrors doesn't totally do it for me, so far

it's not terrible, but it seems like a not-as-good cultosaurus erectus imo

Yeah that's probably fair: I probably overdid by saying I loved Side A w a great passion. But am still down w a mediocre album from these guys; call me a fan, I guess.

"the vigil" is on now, this is pretty interesting

Hot Rails to Hell. Am I right?

"The Great Sun Jester", "In Thee", and "Mirrors" off Side A is a sweet little run. I am among those who cannot consult Dr. Music tho.

Side B starts with two awesome tracks then peters out.

I'm always singing "Pret-ty girls can't look away!" in my head.

the leadoff line:

"A mirror is a negative space with a frame" is great

they snuck the weirdest lyrics into 80s pop rock songs

ok club ninja is not as good as i remember haha

but dancing in the ruins is still classic!

perfect water's end guitar solo is stunning

make rock not war might be the worst BOC song? gotta be close

the title alone is eliciting irl lols over here

Oh yeah I meant to say that the other keeper off Revolution By Night is "Veins".

yeah veins is great!

Jon lewis otm about the Sun Jester/In Thee/Mirrors run; makes Dr. Music more palatable imo.

I saw the Moorcock paperback that The Great Sun Jester is based on for sale from a sidewalk vendor but I didn't buy it :(

Is it called the Great Sun Jester? I might try to check iit out when I read thru the Jerry Cornelius quartet

It should be noted that the Jerry Cornelius stuff is pretty… different than the rest of Moorcock's oeuvre.

It's called The Fire Clown.

Side 2 of Mirrors is not without its merits...Allen Lanier's vampy "Lonely Teardrops" could have been a Doc Pomus cover, the Cars/Who power pop of "You're Not The One (I Was Looking For)" is marred only by a weak chorus (then again, in a power pop song a weak chorus is a double-technical), and the sheer [doom metal-to-free jazz-and back again] daftness of "The Vigil" certainly portends later stuff like "Monsters"...about the only track on Mirrors I could never really get behind in some way is "I Am The Storm"...

getting back to this after a quick couple listens...

so i guess "the great sun jester" applies to the jerry cornelius novels in the same way that "black blade" applies to elric? huh. dinna know. anyway, it's a decent tune, but the lyrics are atrocious. can't abide it:

they have killed the wild-eyed jester
they have killed the fire clown
he'll never sing his songs again
he'll never dance between the stars again
he'll never laugh again
no, he'll never ever laugh again

ffs. "dr. music" is much more endurably, cheerfully cheezy, imo:

so if you really wanna do it
you better do it ... hot

lol. now that's a fucking philosophy. plus the build-up and chorus remind me in good ways of both kiss and def leppard, and i can def hang w that. "in thee" is great too, lost in the 70s, passed out behind mirrorshades in 1st class, though i can't help r'ing my de at that trop-cult "thee". would sound so much better if it was just plain old "you".

strongly disagree w the idea that side 1 has any run of good songs. it's totally up and down. "sun jester" blows, "mirror" blows, "moon crazy" us beautiful and winds things up nicely. honestly, i like side two about equally well. "the vigil", dopey as it may be, has a tough riff and a sweetly aching chorus. plus that spooky "come to us" over the badass solo, in case you forgot who you're listening to. "you're not the one" starts off like t-rex, but moves into this weird, chilled-out new wave number. not great, but i dig the chorus. "lonely teardrops" rips off styx but i love it anyway. anticipates the downtempo but off-kilter vibe of "deadline".

Don't think The Great Sun Jester applies to Jerry Cornelius. I think George is just reading those books.

Yeah the book its based off of is The Fire Clown. Sorry for the confusion!

Also <3 sun jester and mirrors, tho the lyrics of SJ are def hard to take seriously. imo you need a sense of humor to fully appreciate this album.

well yeah, but that's a fire clown too far, imo

Listening to Heaven Forbid now.

not loving this...the production seems like a weird attempt to make them palatable to 90s metal audiences...pretty crunchy guitar tones

"Harvest Moon" is a nice little oddity! weird little tale of losing the family farm, sharing a title with a Neil Young album/song

lol this revive has made me listen to so much Blue Oyster Cult in the last couple of days

btw the alternate album art to heaven forbid is something too!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/ff/BOC_heaven_forbid_alternative.jpg/220px-BOC_heaven_forbid_alternative.jpg

Never listened to Cultosaurus before. Holy shit I love it.
Hungry Boys, Lips in the Hills, Black Blade...shit is so good

yeah it's great

btw...Blue Oyster Cult's 2012 trek is the weirdest tour itinerary I have ever seen in my life:

http://www.blueoystercult.com/Road-main.html

featuring both North Dakota and Brazil

From Coconut Creek FL to Sao Paulo Brazil

kinda psyched to hear "Still Burnin'" which i'm assuming is the cheesy Unforgiven II to "Burnin' For You"

"Live For Me" is real nice actually

I can't remember... does Heaven Forbid or Curse of the... have that "Damaged But I like It" song? That's a contender for all-time least bearable BOC...

But between Heaven.. and Curse... you can put together a nice 10 track Blue Oldster Cult album.

haha yeah that "damaged" song is on Heaven Forbid, really bad

listened to these back to back and Curse is hands-down the better album

OK so BOC are playing a fucking ostrich festival...http://www.ostrichfestival.com/

I still can't get into side 2 of Agents Of Fortune, Spectres is a far better album I reckon. But then every album after Secret Treaties contains a fair amount of suck.

Secret Treaties -> Tyranny -> debut -> Stalk Forrest Group album -> Spectres -> Agents -> Fire Of Unknown Origin -> Cultosaurus -> Mirrors -> Revolution -> Imaginos -> Club Ninja -> still haven't heard the 2 later ones

Working on my mega mix for spotify, hard not to put every song from tyranny and secret treaties on

Secret Treaties > On Your Feet... > Tyranny > Fire Of Unknown Origins > Cultosaurus > Spectres > Agents > Stalk Forrest > Debut > Mirrors > Curse...Hidden Mirror > Imaginos > Heaven Forbid/Revolution by Night > (afraid to listen to Club Ninja)

With everything after the debut counting as a 'overall bad album with x number of great tracks on it'

And On Your Feet... counts as a proper album just because it's so fucking great.

i hadn't really listened to the last three 80s albums in quite a while, so i spent some time with the revolution by night, club ninja and imaginos yesterday. turns out that i enjoy quite a few tracks off the former two, not just the pop singles. they're probably terrible albums by any sane measure, but i've become such a huge BOC fan over the last couple years that just sounding a little cultish is good enough for me. though the band had apparently fragmented and several club ninja tracks were written by others, these albums aren't much worse than mirrors. i sincerely hate imaginos though. i never wanted BOC to be a "real metal band", and the new songs are all so long, ponderous and hook-free. they even ruin "astronomy" and "blue oyster cult", a terrible crime.

THE REVOLUTION BY NIGHT

1) Take Me Away

huge def lep rip on the chorus, strong echoes of “photograph”, but the central riff is awesome (“spidery” as I like to say). starship is an obvious parallel, but BOC retain more of their essential identity amidst the 80s cheese. and the solo slays, of course.

2) Eyes On Fire

more fire clown garbage. no one deserves this.

3) Shooting Shark

one of the best late cult jams. love the smoothly rolling bass throughout, banks of warning synths, and that sax, man, cuts like a knife. haunting lyrics despite the bonehead title phrase, and i love the tradeoff between sax and gtr in the last minute.

4) Veins

um, okay, meltzer's lyrics are cool & creepy, troo cult style. plus that cryptacized who riff on the chorus, awesome, but this song's a mess. the parts don't hang together and that supershitty synth is way too prominent. gtr shredding and constant textural shifts as a substitute for coherent songwriting. near miss.

5) Shadow of California

new wave by way of joe walsh? verse is dull, but the tones are cool, hanging piano notes, talkbox guitar effects. huge chorus that's suitably anthemic but not terribly memorable. half like this.

6) Feel the Thunder

shitty biker rock. okay, “three friends”, i geddit. haw.

7) Let Go

so embarrassing. should have saved that "B.O.C." chant for something worth singing along with.

8) Dragon Lady

well, ok, it's a song about a “dragon lady” so it's obviously fucked, but given the basic stupidity of the proposition, it's a lot of fun. dig the “reaper” cop at the end.

9) Light Years of Love

hideous

CLUB NINJA

1) White Flag

generic 80s hard rock with slick production, big drums, catchy guitar bits. piles of synths, but used more for atmosphere and texture than as a focus. inane but rocks okay and does deliver a bit of that doomy, sepulchral feel.

2) Dancing In the Ruins

big pop move, but more blandly optimistic than “burning for you”. “it's all done with mirrors, have no fear,” lol (even though someone else wrote it). like so many of their shittiest mid-80s songs, the sound here recalls stuff like starship, asia and survivor, but it's a good deal better than most of their other attempts in this direction.

3) Rock Not War

an abortion

4) Perfect Water

even worse, a worse abortion. soulful and darkly sweet where "rock not war" tries to get tough, but just as earnestly shitty. “do you know jaques cousteau?”

5) Spy In the House of the Night

three in a row. crappy heavy rock cheese with some nice organ work and a cool, crepuscular groove. a worthless song, but it builds well and ends on a pretty impressive high.

6) Beat 'em Up

moronic “hard rock” in an unmistakably 80s mode. judas priest softened by def leppard. awesome harmony lick on the chorus, and the solo slays. utterly generic and sounds nothing like BOC, but i kind of dig it.

7) When the War Comes

“energy imprisoned will make itself free. booga-chacka, booga-chacka.” fuck yeah. the obvious cult epic on this album. so self-referential, boys. “creator, destroyer, victory, defeat. i did not come to bring a seed. black flag, red flag, space and time. the future is my mind.” woah. basically an extended, spidery drone in the vein of "blue oyster cult", but that's a good look for the band, imo.

8) Shadow Warrior

bunk. tries to be all ozzy-style paranoid and doomy, but just sucks. draggy and uninspired until it goes all ape crazy with the guitars towards the end. like a lot of bad late cult songs, the attempt to rescue great riffs and shitty songwriting with a “mind-blowing” rave-up. and my mind is blown, no argument, but I could use a song to wash the residue down.

9) Madness to the Method

a response to lords of the new church? I dunno, but that piano says yes, and I endorse the consonance, intentional or not. one of my favorite 80s BOC tunes, cringeworthy lyrics and all. pyrotechnic gtr excess, fuck yes, this time in service to a decent song. “wenches in the trenches on a saturday night.”

secret treaties > tyranny & mutation > blue oyster cult > fire of unknown origin > cultosaurus erectus > stalk forrest group > agents of fortune > spectres > mirrors > club ninja > revolution by night > imaginos > still haven't heard the last two

i used to think of "club ninja" a place, like a club called ninja, maybe the space station on the album cover. now i like to imagine that it's a club-oriented ninja. he likes dancing. much better that way.

1) I can't find many good interviews w/BOC on the internet

2)..um....this:

I've got more questions from the fan club. In the 1973 song "Seven Screaming Dizbusters," what is a dizbuster?

Bloom: (laughs) Well, it has a sexual connotation.

That's OK, I'm a grownup. You can tell me.

Bloom: I think Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman came up with a term, that was sort of like an inside joke to them, and used it in the lyric of that song. To them, the diz was the groove at the top of the penis.

Yeah?

Bloom: And that's what a diz was. So "Seven Screaming Dizbusters" are some pretty bad boys.

So they were fucking so hard, the tip of their penis fell apart.

Bloom: I can't read more into it, and you're probably reading more into it than I can. But that's really what the diz is, in our nomenclature.

I always thought dizbuster was some satanic jive.

Revolution by Night tour -- my first ever concert -- Saginaw Civic Center -- with Dokken and Aldo Nova!

basically an extended, spidery drone in the vein of "blue oyster cult", but that's a good look for the band, imo.

wtf, me? meant "subhuman". retitling on imaginos throwing me off.

sometimes i feel like i've heard it too many times

but right now i'm sort of in awe of "Don't Fear the Reaper"

It still works for me, like '8 Miles High' or 'Maneater'.

Contendo, thankig u profusely for liveblogging those two albums. Weird that I forgot about 'Take Me Away' off Revolution. That was the radio hit! It, 'Veins' and 'Shooting Shark' are the ones I keep in my library.

Does anyone here have Martin Popoff's BOC book? It's the only such thing in existence afaik. I need to try to hunt it down...

the songwriting's really nothing to write home about on Curse of the Hidden Mirror but the guitar tone/recording is frankly beautiful

didn't know Jim Carroll wrote the lyrics for "Perfect Water" off Club Ninja! they had the weirdest cast of characters writing lyrics for them: Meltzer, Patti Smith, Michael Moorcock, Jim Carroll, etc...also recently some "cyberpunk author" I hadn't heard of (wrote for Curse and Heaven Forbid)

Aero - there are some gems on Curse I think! esp Pocket and Live for Me

dang, ums. just read carroll's "perfect water" lyrics, and they're a hell of a lot better than i thought they were when i was trying to sort them out on my own. guess i'll have to give that one another try, because it was really only the lyrics that were bugging me (i was hearing them as some kind of overly concerned eco-plea).

oh ok jeez i guess the "cyberpunk" author i mentioned is named John Shirley and is pretty well regarded (most famous for writing The Crow but I guess a big influence on William Gibson?)

Shirley's cyberpunk novels are City Come A-Walkin and the A Song Called Youth trilogy. Avant-slipstream critic Larry McCaffery called him "a postmodern Edgar Allen Poe."[2] Bruce Sterling has cited Shirley's early story collection Heatseeker as being a seminal cyberpunk work in itself. Several stories in Heatseeker were particularly seminal, including Sleepwalkers, which, in just one example, probably provided the inspiration for William Gibson's "meat puppets" in Neuromancer. Gibson acknowledged Shirley's influence in an introduction to Shirley's City Come A-Walkin. Shirley's story collection, made up of increasingly bizarre stories, the whimsically titled Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories has developed a cult status.

William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer, collaborated with Shirley on short stories—as did fellow cyberpunks Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. Shirley's lyricism, wealth of ideas and imagination, crossover pioneering, and street-level honesty have been praised by other writers including Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Roger Zelazny, Marc Laidlaw, and A. A. Attanasio. His more surreal work, as in A Splendid Chaos showed how it was possible to describe the indescribable with a paradoxical believability and impeccable internal logic no matter how bizarre the subject matter. Shirley's personal experiences as a recovering drug addict and punk rocker brought real verisimilitude to his darker, urban-tinctured writing.

okay, song's half-decent now that i've gotten over my objection to my misinterpretation of lyrics. not great, long and rather 80s AOR bland, but it's clearly BOC, both in theme and sound. club ninja consists of five proper BOC tunes propped up with four oddball outliers by outside songwriters (counting "perfect water" as one of the propers cuz roeser wrote the music and jim's clearly working in the mythos). sad part is the ringers are generally more musically memorable.

"urban tinctured"

shirley's first novel, from '79, is called transmaniacon. never read it, but full circle lol. remember digging his short stories in mags like F&SF and IASFM during the early-mid 80s.

While I'm thinking about it, all BOC addicts should check out DENIAL OF DEATH by Brain Surgeons (Albert Bouchard, his wife at the time, and the lead guitarist from the Dictators). Came out in 2007 or so. It scratches some of that early 80s subversive MOR BOC itch.

cool will investigate?

jon do you know Buck's solo album from 82? allmusic review is pretty negative, but it's a pretty old review and not super informative

No I've never heard it. I'd like to. His BOC songs are pretty ace on Fire Of Unknown Origin.

turns out the Buck album in on spotify...so far...eh...nothing amazing, very AOR/MOR Aldo Nova type style, Mirrors would be the closest equivalent in BOC terms, but yeah the first song is really corny, so far 2nd one is only marginally better

hey guys

i finished my BOC Spotify Playlist last night!

The Playlist of 1,000 Psychic Wars:

http://open.spotify.com/user/matthelgeson/playlist/46Ccxmnl1IErLlsdE0C3hM

just FYI, Imaginos isn't on Spotify so no tracks off that, but every other album

\Blue Oyster Cult – Hot Rails To Hell
Blue Oyster Cult – Burnin' For You
Blue Oyster Cult – Transmaniacon MC
Blue Oyster Cult – ME 262
Blue Oyster Cult – I Love The Night
Blue Oyster Cult – (Then Came The) Last Of May - Live Version
Blue Oyster Cult – The Red & The Black
Blue Oyster Cult – Dominance And Submission
Blue Oyster Cult – Joan Crawford
Blue Oyster Cult – Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll
Blue Oyster Cult – Veins
Blue Oyster Cult – She's As Beautiful As A Foot
Blue Oyster Cult – Morning Final
Blue Oyster Cult – 7 Screaming Diz-Busters
Blue Oyster Cult – Godzilla - Live
Blue Oyster Cult – Pocket
Blue Oyster Cult – Wings Wetted Down
Blue Oyster Cult – Flaming Telepaths
Blue Oyster Cult – Buck's Boogie - Live Version
Blue Oyster Cult – Celestial The Queen
Blue Oyster Cult – (Don't Fear) The Reaper
Blue Oyster Cult – Career Of Evil
Blue Oyster Cult – Kick Out The Jams - Live
Blue Oyster Cult – Unknown Tongue
Blue Oyster Cult – O.D.'d On Life Itself
Blue Oyster Cult – Monsters
Blue Oyster Cult – In Thee
Blue Oyster Cult – Dancin' In The Ruins
Blue Oyster Cult – The Subhuman - Live Version
Blue Oyster Cult – Harvest Moon
Blue Oyster Cult – Ginger Snaps - Original
Blue Oyster Cult – This Ain't The Summer Of Love
Blue Oyster Cult – Death Valley Nights
Blue Oyster Cult – Shooting Shark
Blue Oyster Cult – Veteran Of The Psychic Wars
Blue Oyster Cult – Live For Me
Blue Oyster Cult – Teen Archer
Blue Oyster Cult – Perfect Water
Blue Oyster Cult – Golden Age Of Leather
Blue Oyster Cult – Black Blade
Blue Oyster Cult – Tenderloin
Blue Oyster Cult – I Just Like To Be Bad
Blue Oyster Cult – Madness To The Method
Blue Oyster Cult – Lips In The Hills
Blue Oyster Cult – E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)
Blue Oyster Cult – Deadline
Blue Oyster Cult – Astronomy

Very very nice work there!

Fkin righteous, M@tt! Now I have to figure out how to use Spotify...

should be easy i think you just download the app now and get up and running

not sure if anything from Imaginos would have made the list anyway but i was kinda sad it wasn't on...just you know, if you're going to listen to Revolution By Night and Mirrors and Some Enchanted Evening like 3 times through to make a dumb list you might as well listen to Imaginos

One thing I learned about doing this:

Blue Oyster Cult might not be the best band of all time. But...they are capable of doing pretty much anything a great band can do, so remarkably diverse and skilled and talented.

Also, they are the weirdest fucking band ever.

like their evolution from a proggy mash-up of the Doors and Steppenwolf to a gleaming, sinister AOR pop rock band is just odd on so many levels

more fire clown garbage.

funnier than "more cowbell" A+

Off Imaginos... maybe "Del Rio's Song". Or "Siege and Investiture..." for LOLs. But yeah no big loss.

I do want to advocate for a couple of the bonus tracks from the Columbia/Legacy remasters-- namely "Boorman The Chauffeur" off Secret Treaties and "Please Hold" off Spectres.

Also, they are the weirdest fucking band ever.

OTM x 100,000. They stay in the mind and are infinitely chewable because they cannot ever be fully digested.

never got "boorman the chauffeur". it's just "boris the spider" with different lyrics, right? among the spectres bonus tracks, i do love "the night flyer". mentioned it a ways upthread.

Yeah, "Night Flyer" is sweet too. Goddammit if they never finish the remaster series. I want Cultosaurus and Unknown Origin outtakes!

HOLY SHIT

http://www.concertposterstore.com/inc/sdetail/224/259

the original Mahavishnu lineup + Clarence White Byrds + BOC

fucking A

found out about this in this interview with Bloom from the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onwq8cVNiI4&feature=related

says Mahavishnu blew them off the stage every night

also he talks about a new album forthcoming in 92!!! heaven forbid wasn't until 98...hmmm

oops

http://o.b5z.net/i/u/10023017/i/byrdsbluetc.jpg

Jesus!

M@tt and contendo let's get one of those british dad rock mags like Uncut or w/e to commission a long BOC article from us so we can go KIW Eric, Buck and Allen for a few days.

god that would be amazing

btw i've been googling and googling and i CANNOT find an interview with sandy pearlman re: BOC at all

I may have told this story here before (on a different thread), so I apologize for the repetition.

A few years ago, a guy came into my workplace and noticed my Clash t-shirt. He said, "Hey, you know their record Give 'Em Enough Rope? My partner produced that." I said, "You know Sandy Pearlman?" "Yep, we used to work together; we did a lot of the Blue Oyster Cult stuff." Realizing that I was talking to Murr4y Krugm4nn -- and thinking of a particular song he co-produced -- I said, "So...you worked on 'Don't Fear The Reaper'..." That was all I had to say. He looked down, sighed, and said, "Yeah...yeah. I think I'm the only person on earth who doesn't think that sketch is funny."

That is so awesome

lol, yeah, i've read that somewhere else, but it's great. and hell yeah, xps. :D

i CANNOT find an interview with sandy pearlman re: BOC at all

yeah, this is disappointing. appears to be some stuff archived @ rock's back pages, but i'm not a member.

^ 3 yeahs

= the Beatles.

namely "Boorman The Chauffeur" off Secret Treaties

^great tune

Just went on Martin Popoff's site and was delighted to find he offers a bunch of his books, including Blue Oyster Cult: Secrets Revealed, as $9 ebooks. I've been putting off buying the book for a long time 'cause of its 30-40 dollar price tag. Also seems he expanded it in 2009.

It purportedly has at least a little bit of Pearlman interview, along with the other folks you'd expect.

Just found some inane Pealman interview on youtube, some eejit interviewer goes on and on about the SNL sketch, can't even face linking it but search his name and you'll find it.

wau Pearlman was the founding VP of eMusic?

He was also Sabbath's manager for a short amount of time in the Dio era.

Yeah that stupid sketch makes it even harder to find good info on an already under reported band, watched that one matt 2 was talking abt

A steadfast young bro goes through the discography track by track. Many quotables. I like him, he's got heart:

http://www.hotrails.co.uk/blueskybag/features/jacobkoehler/index.htm

holy crap that's a lot of cultwork. impressive, though a bit overwhelming.

Check out the intricate detail on the skull; it looks as if it is saying "Yes young man....come and follow me to worlds unknown...". I took the ride and have not regretted it one bit.

Otm

I love that guy. His favorite BOC album is "Tyranny..." which is the right answer. Plus he looks like early '70s Joe Bouchard.

Yeah I'm sad he quit before doing the whole catalog :(

picked up a really nice copy of On Your Feet Or On Your Knees on saturday for $5! :)

i honestly don't have a desire to listen to any other music right now

On Your Feet would be a good candidate for those remastering jobs they were doing a few years back.

this vinyl pressing sounds pretty great, so much better than what i was listening to on computer

yeah, OYFOOYK is great. one of the last cult albums i got around to, as i'd heard from someone that it wasn't all that great. lies! better than the album versions in some cases ("harvester of eyes" <3). always struck by the super-sharp division in sound between the tracks off the first and third albums and the T&M tracks. makes sense that studio albums might have a different vibe, but they almost sound like a different band on "hot rails to hell" and "the red & the black".

yeah harvester of eyes is way better, as is last days of may and the subhuman jam is fucking unreal

between the horror of space
and the terror of time
my heart is crystal
down the line
...i'm screaming

It really does belong with Live 1969 and The Blow Up and Aghartha in that pantheon of double live benificent monoliths. One has to conclude at this point that the Legacy remasters won't include it, which is FUCKING DUMB.

yeah especially because columbia apparently needs to release a new greatest hit comp about every 6 months

Some of which are live without saying so! Knees really could use the remaster too, the sound on the CD is meh. I wonder if anyone has a sweet vinyl rip in the blogosphere, like that great Raw Power one Tyler linked to a couple years ago...

yeah listening to the vinyl it's like a whole 'nother record

i like how they START with a mega-jam on The Subhuman that basically sounds like a "last song" jam, like "buckle up!"

well how about that!

via wikipedia:

[Rudy] Sarzo was born Rodolfo Maximiliano Sarzo Lavieille Grande Ruiz Payret y Chaumont,[1] in Havana, Cuba on November 18, 1950. He emigrated to the United States in 1961.

dang, now that's a name

How do you pick Rudy Sarzo as yr stage name when you could just easily be MAX GRANDE?

there's literally like 10 great stage names in that name

Rodolfo Maximiliano Sarzo Lavieille Grande Ruiz Payret y Chaumont would have looked great on the credits of a Whitesnake sleeve.

He looks like a MAX GRANDE

rapper Grande Pay
crooner Rodolfo Max Sarzo

and so on

Payret y Chaumont

^^that's a hella expensive champagne

Does anyone have any love for Extraterrestrial Live?

I am loving this BOC thread. That E Bloom interview is the nuts!

Sarzo was born Rodolfo Maximiliano Sarzo Lavieille Grande Ruiz Payret y Chaumont,[1] in Havana, Cuba on November 18, 1950. He emigrated to the United States in 1961.

Did he come over on a raft made up of his extra names

this thread slays so hard you people are awesome

I still think the "Godzilla" from Some Enchanted Evening is one of the very best BOC tunes. It's such a powerful performance. I Dj that all the time.

Just friend requested John Shirley, thanks to this thread. He added me within minutes. Talk about cyberpunk.

cyberpunk as fuck!

yeah harvester of eyes is way better, as is last days of may and the subhuman jam is fucking unreal

― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, February 13, 2012 10:03 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

dropped out for a couple days, but it's interesting to me that the best songs on OYFOOYN (imo, and apparently iyo, too) are the quieter, less aggressive tunes from the first and third albums. like, to my mind, it's all about "subhuman", "harvester", "last days of may" and "before the kiss". if it weren't for that tragically overlong, noodly breakdown, i'd add "ME262" to that list. much more raw and energetic than either the studio original or the live version tacked onto the extended some enchanted evening. need to make an edit, i guess...

speaking of SOE, it deserves more love itt. "r u ready 2 rock" is a dumb lead track, and i don't care about either of the covers*, but the faster take on "godzilla" is great (nate OTM there), and i think the live versions of "ETI" and especially "astronomy" flat blow the originals away. the only way in which it's worse than OYF is that it's only half as long.

* i can't think of a band i like that's been so ill-served by their cover choices. no one on this earth needs rote takes on the likes of "born to be wild" and "roadhouse blues". and while they do a bit better on "kick out the jams" and "we gotta get outta this place", when it comes to these songs, it's not like i ever think "well, the original is great, but you know, i really wanna hear the BOC version."

Does anyone have any love for Extraterrestrial Live?

― broom air, Monday, February 13, 2012 5:55 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wish i did, but no, not really. weirds me out that allmusic trashes on your feet and shrugs off some enchanted evening, saving their "the one to own" praise for extraterrestrial. it's a great selection of songs and the band delivers them capably, but it's pretty dull compared the the other two. the sound is big in the 80s style but rather canned and plodding. none of the songs really compete with the original versions, and why the thin, cheezy sound effects in "black blade" and "joan crawford"? do like the call-and-response bit at the end of "dominance and submission" (one of my favorite BOC tunes), but i miss the weird devo nerdiness of the original.

real talk: when i was in HS, i bought this cheap-o BOC greatest hits CD that had the live verison of "kick out the jams" from SOE on it.

i always feel guilty but i felt that way the first time i heard it and everytime since...the MC5 version (which i didn't hear much later in college) always seems kinda slow and ploddy and not-rocking compared to the BOC version IMO

like i feel bad for thinking that but i do :/

Isnt Maserati GT a Yardbirds song? They crush that song on On Your Feet....

yeah i think it's a yardbirds tune

weirds me out that allmusic trashes on your feet

i actually kinda like the gonzo dumb arena theatrics of extraterrestrial live a lot but it's weird to me that they would trash on your feet, which the other two aren't even in the realm of IMO

re UMS: lol, me too. i heard the SOE live version of "kick out the jams" long before i ever heard the MC5 (courtesy of the columbia record and tape club who sent me the BOC album by mistake). was my intro to both bands, really, tho i'd heard "don't fear the reaper" on the radio. seriously loved BOC's cover at the time, was maybe my favorite track on the album, but i tend to skip it nowadays. not sure why.

re bill: i may be in the minority here, but i only like the first minute and a half of "maserati GT", when it sounds like a coda to "before the kiss". the song itself i could do without, but then i'm not a big fan of bluesy, jammy hard rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYbAWZ8yPks

[tilt]

90s FMV game featuring the music of Blue Oyster Cult and a pre-cowbell-era Christopher Walken

walken goes hard in that trailer!

the song itself i could do without, but then i'm not a big fan of bluesy, jammy hard rock

^fair. I am a big fan of that kind of stuff, however.

* i can't think of a band i like that's been so ill-served by their cover choices. no one on this earth needs rote takes on the likes of "born to be wild" and "roadhouse blues". and while they do a bit better on "kick out the jams" and "we gotta get outta this place", when it comes to these songs, it's not like i ever think "well, the original is great, but you know, i really wanna hear the BOC version."

I can't speak for the live "BTBW" cover, but I feel the b-side studio version is a fantastic re-tooling of the original.

Very interesting point about the covers. You would think they would be savvier about it. Maserati GT is pretty hip though. Someone should do a comp of others' covers of BOC. Mike Watt is a huge fan, as you must all know.

I listened to ETL all the time when I was a kid but haven't for years. I remember thinking that the version of Hot Rails to Hell was the nuts. I also had no love for On Your Feet or On Your Knees as a laddie, so I'm glad this thread brought me back to it. I do miss the production that the studio records bring -- they are pretty good at getting good sounds -- but good grief is the band on fire on that record. It's almost exhausting to listen to.

The other reason for this post is that I can't quite bear to see this thread fall off the front page of ILXOR

Lol otm re: your last point

Someone should do a comp of others' covers of BOC.

when i made an "intro to BOC" comp for my friends, i included the minutemen's "the red and the black", the thrones' "black blade", fun manchu's "godzilla" and green river's "swallow my pride" (a huge and obvious nod to "this ain't the summer of love"). also dig the screamin' diz-busters (aka nomads) cover of "this ain't...", though i didn't include that.

front and back covers to that comp:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/BOCart1.gif

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/BOCart2.gif

"light of darkness, light of light"

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile

in hindsight, i can't imagine why i didn't umlaut the 'O'

wow! sucks that i missed this thread revive, was out of town on vacation all last week, didn't visit ILX. great Cult Conversation !

last year was only the second year out of the last 13 or 14 where I did not see BOC at least once in concert (I can't remember exactly when my streak began, but it was definitely 1999, if not 1998..) So bummed about that! but the two times they played Chicagoland in 2011 just didn't work for me. One was the same night as Marshall Crenshaw's Detroit tribute at Symphony Center (with brother Wayne Kramer!), and the other was the same weekend as Pitchfork fest (the same reason I missed them in an earlier year.) I thought about taking the Amtrak to downstate Illinois for their performance in Effington in October, but in the end I just couldn't justify the expense

MIRRORS > CULTOSAURUS, IMNSHO !! (although "Black Blade" is one of the greatest tracks)

also, Agents of Fortune is sort of flawless. blows my mind that someone could like the first three but "not get into it" or whatever someone said upthread. Spectres, too. Those two are not as heavy as the first three, no. But the songwriting and playing is still amazing. First five albs are essential

yeah, it's weird, but i've been listening to a LOT of cult over the last couple weeks, and those two are still v hard for me to get with. i love "summer of love", "reaper" (duh) and "very gemini" off agents, but the rest of the songs do nothing for me. when it comes to spectres, i love "godzilla" (of course), the intro to "golden age of leather" (but not the song), and "fireworks" (as music, though the lyrics are gross). i am starting to realize that, though they include some of the band's best songs, these are my two least favorite BOC albums, overall. this side of imaginos anyway. despite the lack of classics, as albums, i think i prefer mirrors and even the two post fire of unknown origin albums. or at least my ideal world, boiled-down versions of them. this make me some kind of fucked-up freak, i know, but so be it.

and cultosaurus erectus is MAGNIFICENT.

lol @ "very gemini"

i'm pretty sure I've mentioned it on ILX before, but I was at this gig (and have the commemorative T-shirt to prove it):

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Oyster-Cult-Long-Night/dp/B00006L923/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1329640819&sr=1-1

As many times as I've seen BOC, that was the last time I saw them play "E.T.I." Really bums me out that they dropped it from the regular setlist, possibly my favorite BOC song. Also, you know, becuz of thred I am now listening to my CD reish of Agents (somewhat crappy bonus tracks -- the BEST bonus tracks of the reissue series were totally all those unreleased tracks that made it onto the Secret Treaties CD) -- and I forgot about the lyrical reference to "Balthazar" in "E.T.I."!! Just saw Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar for the first time ever this week. nice confluence

Another song they stopped playing in concert since that gig is "M.E. 262". that sucks

on the other hand, they continue to pull cool shit out of nowhere -- when I saw them in 2010, the second song was "The Golden Age of Leather"!!!

the BEST bonus tracks of the reissue series were totally all those unreleased tracks that made it onto the Secret Treaties CD

yeah, though there's some great stuff on the expanded spectres, too. and it's kind of nice to have nearly the full set on the expanded some enchanted evening, though the recording/production on the bonus tracks isn't quite up to snuff. plosives just about ruin "hot rails to hell", for instance.

yes, you are right about the Spectres CD -- there are some good tracks among the bonuses there... And actually, I am ashamed to admit, I still haven't picked up the Some Enchanted Evening, which I gather actually includes a bonus DVD of a contemporary live performance? What's wrong with me?!

Check out the intricate detail on the skull; it looks as if it is saying "Yes young man....come and follow me to worlds unknown...". I took the ride and have not regretted it one bit.

― Axolotl with an Atlatl (Jon Lewis), Thursday, February 9, 2012 3:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

(Jon quoting Jacob Koehler's BÖC blog)

Love this description, and though I didn't comment on it at the time, I've been thinking about it over the last week or so. For me, it applies to Blue Öyster Cult in general more than to any single image I associate with the band. As a teenager, I remember being similarly fascinated by the cover art for Some Enchanted Evening and Fire of Unknown Origin, the first BÖC albums I owned. The skeletal rider, his green-eyed charger, the moonlit disciples, and always that strange symbol. The images were deliberately spooky but also quite elegant, promising worlds as seductive as they were ominous, and they created in my mind these webs of mysterious suggestion, webs I associated more with horror and fantasy as literary genres than with pop music. Not only was the art engrossing on its own, it provided a perfect visual analogue to the dark, visceral pull of songs like "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Burnin' for You". These songs seemed haunted and otherworldly ("eldritch", in the language of the old pulps) yet also suffused with an erotic yearning that I could feel without entirely understanding. Listening to them as a rather sheltered kid was like seeing adulthood reflected in a black mirror, a smoky, nocturnal commingling of death and desire.

As it turned out, this particular combination of mystery and understatement, narcotic beauty and mortal dread, was only a small part of what BÖC were up to. They were also weirdly jokey and perverse, obsessed with the same geeky genre stuff that consumed my adolescence, willing to try almost anything once, and full-on, 70-style, kickass rock musicians to boot. Moreover, at their best, not only on "Reaper" and "Burnin'" but on songs like "Subhuman", "Unknown Tongues", "Seven Screaming Diz-Busters", "Shooting Shark", "Before the Kiss (a Redcap)", "Screams/She's as Beautiful as a Foot" and "Deadline", they cultivated this sense of a fascinating alien landscape that could only be half-glimpsed through a screen of occult misdirection. Where most popular art is concerned, the "intricate detail on the skull" draws you toward the doorway, but the curtains part rather easily, and what you find on the other side is a kind of fantastical ordinariness, the sublime rendered mundane. BÖC's great trick is that they never fully usher you through the doorway. Instead, they leave you to peer in from the threshhold so that you're always an awed initiate, always the seeker reaching towards the chamber but never the adept arriving there.

This is what makes Imaginos seem like such a mistake to me, conceptually, and it's why, as albums and as a longtime fan, I prefer "lesser" efforts like Mirrors and even Club Ninja (I admit it) to more commercially successful outings like Agents of Fortune and Spectres. The latter two seem to reserve no secrets for themselves. Almost every song is an exercise in a familiar style (cryptic standouts like "Reaper" and "Vera Gemini" excepted, of course), and there's very little room for discovery, either musically or lyrically. They're merely good, and where Blue Öyster Cult is concerned, that's a bit of a letdown.

Moreover, at their best, not only on "Reaper" and "Burnin'" but on songs like "Subhuman", "Unknown Tongues", "Seven Screaming Diz-Busters", "Shooting Shark", "Before the Kiss (a Redcap)", "Screams/She's as Beautiful as a Foot" and "Deadline", they cultivated this sense of a fascinating alien landscape that could only be half-glimpsed through a screen of occult misdirection.

umm, while this is one of the the things i like best about BÖC, i overstepped myself here. songs like "the red and the black", "cities on flame...", "career of evil", "dominance and submission", "black blade" and "godzilla" trade less heavily in the mystical shit, but aren't any less successful for that. they do just as well by cracking jokes and kicking ass.

there is no better opening lyric in the history of rock than "Canadian Mounties, baby, police force that works"

"police force at work"?

my honeys know it's alright

Heard "Monsters" on a classic rock station in Salt Lake City over the weekend. Really threw me for a loop!

Contenderizer, your long post of yesterday sums up so much of how BOC and their reflexive vibe works for me that I want to send you a box of cookies. OTM OTM OTM.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Lf-gflvAgKk/TlGrlYwrrcI/AAAAAAAABAE/UYjY-kfM6e0/IMG_2909%25255B21%25255D.jpg

great posts by contenderizer, even if i disagree about agents of fortune, i love that album front to back

I agree. At the time Agents was released, BOC had done nothing even remotely similar to "Debby Denise" or "True Confessions". 35 years on, I'm still not sure how to categorize these songs.

I like Spectres a whole lot more than Contendo. I agree Agents is a 'problem piece'-- that's part of its fascination of course. "This Ain't..." "...Reaper" and "ETI" are such overwhelming bullseyes and much of the remainder is this very weird folio of the kind of lame-cool dud-poet stuff you find on solo Lou Reed records. It might be their least 'band'-y record and their most 'buncha dudes all brought some songs'.

idk I ride super-hard for "Vera Gemini" for one...

if it weren't for that tragically overlong, noodly breakdown, i'd add "ME262" to that list

B-b-but that breakdown features ALL FIVE Cultists playing guitar simultaneous!

Really think Spectres deserves more love. (Maybe their song-for-song hookiest, plus the ballads are great.)

What Contenderizer wrote upthread is completely true to me too.
I can only add that the alien, unseizable feeling surrounding BOC was further amplified by what seemed to me their almost quintessential Americanness.
They have the same hazy, dream-like quality of those old 50's horror movies, always walking the fine line between the familiar and the utterly arcane, always evoking a fantasy world where cars, drive-ins, rock n roll, sorcerers and labyrinthine Gothic mansions could stay side by side.
I discovered Blue Oyster Cult around the same time I stumbled into Chrome, and both bands are for me like the perfect soundtrack of this dark, imaginary continent I thought it was America.

OK I'm no contenderizer (thanks for the great posts!) ... but while we're going all the way, has anyone fully fleshed out the punk rock/ BOC connections, and more importantly divined their meaning?

1. Patti Smith (obviously)

2. Alan Lanier reportedly rehearsed Marquee Moon with Television

3. One of the first issues of seminal punk zine Sniffin Glue has a conspicuously robust article on the Cult amidst run downs on downtown punk bands

4. in the early reviews (XGau I think) they are often received as a neo-nazi band -- I guess for ME262? -- which puts them in the company of the Ramones as Long Island/Queens Jews flirting with Nazi iconography.

5. there is some connection to Manic Panic too, but I can't seem to discover it.

Wasn't Aussie protopunk Iggy-worship band Radio Birdman influenced by the Cult as well?

Radio Birdman certainly made reference to BOC, yeah, with the title of their first LP being "Radios Appear". But I dunno, never thought of Birdman as a much of a "punk" band, they sound more like the Doors to me (not necessarily a bad thing either)

I'd say the fact that one of BOC's principal lyric-writers, Richard Meltzer, was in a little band called VOM is more significant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VExv2qGEdHI

re the ramones comparison, in terms of lyrics and "attitude", i'd say that BÖC have something in common with both the ramones and the dictators. maybe the dolls, too (though to a lesser extent)? jokey, smart-assed, mildly transgressive, obsessed with lowbrow midcentury pop culture. there's kind of a geeky, boy's club vibe: monster movies, rock & roll, "girls", comic books, WWII, the radio. i'm tempted to add devo to that mix, but devo were much more aggressively subversive in their use of the same material, more critical of the consumer culture it represented. in that sense, devo seem more prescient about what punk would come to be in the late 70s and early 80s.

speaking of devo, though there's very little trace of "punk" in BÖC's sound, i've always heard something a bit devolved in "dominance and submission", especially during the breakdown with the "dominance...sub-MISSION!" call & response. there the nerdy alienation is so exaggerated it becomes alien, aggressive.

that ties in with marco damiani's observations, which i found fascinating:

the alien, unseizable feeling surrounding BOC was further amplified by what seemed to me their almost quintessential Americanness.
They have the same hazy, dream-like quality of those old 50's horror movies, always walking the fine line between the familiar and the utterly arcane, always evoking a fantasy world where cars, drive-ins, rock n roll, sorcerers and labyrinthine Gothic mansions could stay side by side.

OTM, and what's fascinating about the band's "quintessential americanness" is that it's almost invisible to me. i notice their strangeness, of course, because it is strange, but i don't notice how closely that quality is tied to their americanness. i'm american myself, and to me, there's nothing unusual about that.

lotta fascinating going on in that last post there

has anyone fully fleshed out the punk rock/ BOC connections

Sandy Pearlman worked with The Clash as well didn't he?

Another weird thing about BOC, there can't be too many bands where the drummer is the best songwriter. In fact, there aren't too many bands where all the members get individual songwriting credits. Not to mention the multitude of outside lyric writers.

The late Helen Wheels wrote lyrics to several of the Bouchard brothers' BOC songs ("Tattoo Vampire", "Sinful Love", "Celestial the Queen", "Nosferatu", "Fallen Angel"), and was also a pretty big NYC punk rock scenester in the late 70's.

Right -- Helen Wheels is the Manic Panic connection.

Excellent point about Devo. Dominance and Submission does indeed have that uptight/subversive vibe. BOC is not really subversive though as you say. Another thing that's interesting about the early reception of BOC is that XGau's reviews suggest that all of the iconography and imagery (sci fi, fascist, what have you) is originally taken seriously, but as of Agents of Fortune becomes part of a joke. I've always taken it the other way. It's with AoF that they become committed to the joke -- literally making "a career of 'evil,'" if you will.

And yes as mentioned much further above, Pearlman produced Give Em Enough Rope, which is why many diehard Clash fans don't like the album.

which puts them in the company of the Ramones as Long Island/Queens Jews flirting with Nazi iconography

^i think Bloom is the only Jew in the group. Then again, ME 262 is his song.

man these guys need a box set like the new judas priest one

i think BOC is deeply subversive but not in a "punk way"...my belief that they are the Steely Dan of heavy metal was somewhat vindicated by a pdf of the Popoff book i downloaded where Buck talks about the making of Cultosaurus Erectus and how he had gotten a Steely Dan songbook and was studying their "advanced" chords and stuff

also FYI the Doors were punk

gtfo

here's my case

i'm working on a theory that the doors literally invented punk and prog, check back for more later!

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:02 PM (8 minutes ago)

but basically:

i saw this interview with johnnny ramone and i thought it was interesting when the interviewer asked him about bands he liked, he said the Doors were the only good american band of the 1960s, said he worshiped them..

i know iggy idolized the doors too, so Johnny + Iggy = the founders of punk to me...

the doors had that darkness and artiness and also a real confrontational vibe that seems to prefigure punk in a lot of ways

at the same time, i can't imagine, for instance, the full on organ workout version of light my fire, with its jazz/classical aspirations, couldn't have been a major influence on the first-gen prog dudes like rick wakeman, ELP, yes etc

so the doors basically invented everything

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:37 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh yeah, see the beginning of Legs McNeil's amazing "Please Kill Me" on how the early proto-punks were deeply influenced by the Doors. Also Patti Smith's new book.

i see the doors as having "invented" romantic gothiness in a rock context. can see why the darkness of that might have inspired a lot of punks, but i don't know that that = being punk. interesting idea, though.

i think BOC is deeply subversive but not in a "punk way"...

yeah, that's a good point. their subversion wasn't aggressive, direct, critical. more satire and displacement. helped build the strangeness i was talking about earlier (and the strangeness-in-familiarity that marco mentioned).

I dig the Doors as proto-punk for sure, you can't hear "Gimme Danger" and not recognize Iggy was taking notes from J.M. but I'm kind of notoriously orthodox about genres I guess - your band does "Touch Me" with strings 'n' shit? then yall aren't punk imo*
*"in my orthodoxy"

right now i just got chills from "Live For Me" off of Heaven Forbid the 98 BOC album...it's about someones brother who was killed in a car accident, the chorus is a bit cheesy but it's got that crystal sad buck dharma verses

I dig the Doors as proto-punk for sure, you can't hear "Gimme Danger" and not recognize Iggy was taking notes from J.M. but I'm kind of notoriously orthodox about genres I guess - your band does "Touch Me" with strings 'n' shit? then yall aren't punk imo*
*"in my orthodoxy"

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, February 22, 2012 10:21 AM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i'm the opposite really, like i see punk as a long-form narrative of the late 20th century, basically i see everything i like as punk: free jazz, weirdo hard rock, early hip hop, the doors, CCR, the stooges, PIL...like the byron coley/mike watt definition of punk

So m@tt you've read the Popoff now? Thoughts? I'm wanting to buy it...

nah not the book, i just found like one chapter of the book in PDF form somehwere, it was the chapter on the making of cultosaurus erectus, didn't seem like super well written but interesting and lots on inside details, think i'm gonna buy the e-book version...shit is way too expensive on ebay

Yeah I'ma ebook it too, the $ goes right to the author it seems.

just bought this cuz what the heck. 313 pages! never read popoff before...

His Sabbath book is great.

or i should say "books", he had one that was full of memorabilia along with the text, plus one he called a "FAQ".

big "Never Say Die" fan, which means he's good with me.

listening to heaven forbid, it's not bad!

OMG

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3353/3453108429_ec1068d62e_z.jpg

Filthy McNasty's looks like a good place.

AGGRESSION UNCHALLENGED IS AGGRESSION UNLEASHED!

Thats such a beautiful fkin picture on so many levels

america was such a beautiful country once :(

I miss the old Sunset Strip... That Secret Treaties billboard would have been across the street from the original Tower Records and a couple blocks down from Ben Franks.

Filthy McNasty's looks like a good place.

Yup. Filthy McNasty's eventually became the infamous Viper Room where River Phoenix, etc.

I probably would have liked it better as McNasty's

Any NYC ilxorz wanna go see them at Bergen Performing Arts Center on the 21st?

i have tickets purchased to a slightly less upscale venue, but the cult nonetheless! (and also apparently they are suffering the indignity of opening for kansas)

Kansas & Blue Oyster Cult
(447)
Details: Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult
Ho-Chunk Gaming-WI-Dells
Baraboo, WI
Sat, May 19, 2012 07:00 PM

I can't tell you how happy I am seeing this thread in SNA again!

BÖC at the Ho-Chunk? That's like just up the road from me! (Leave before Kansas, get on down Hwy 12 before it gets too dark and arcane out there.)

haha yeah what's Ho-Chunk like (best casino name ever!)...we actually are driving down from Minneapolis, about 4 hours, so we gotta couple double rooms at the casino itself and are just planning on getting tanked during Kansas and leaving if they are too lame...actually though Kansas has a surprising amount of original members (3/5)...though a little sad one of the greatest 70s rock bands has to open for one of the corniest

hope they play the emerald queen casino this time around. they did a year or so back, but i couldn't make it.

also given the May 19th date we are hoping for a timely addition of "Last Days of May" to the set list!

Hey guys apparently Kansas still do some of the prog epics, not sure if I'm selling it to you here tbh. At least BOC aren't supporting Styx.

honestly, just because we were totally cool with going to see BOC alone I'm kinda geeked to see Kansas in a weird way, though I hope it means that BOC doesn't get a short set :(

They did "Last Days of May" when I saw them a year or two ago, it was great. So they probably still do it.

cool, yeah from setlists i've seen they definitely seem to do a lot of "real headz know the deal" type songs still

I don't think I've ever seen them *not* do "Last Days of May", it's a Buck showpiece

Last time I saw them (2010 -- really still bummed that I didn't see them at all in 2011) the opener was Foghat. Who had 1 of 4 original members, the drummer . The rest of the band was made up of the bassist who joined in 1976 (so okay, that is kinda old school), the guitarist from Wild Cherry of "Funky White Boy" fame, and another singer/guitarist who had played on some late-70s Ted Nugent albs (not Derek St. Holmes -- some other guy)

and they were actually pretty good!

really like Foghat but it's not that hard to recreate their songs, pretty simple so you could plug a lot of people in there and they'd still be okay

Ho-Chunk is probably not the MOST depressing Indian casino. So there's that.

oh my God they're playing in Newton, IA

fucking Newton

the guitarist from Wild Cherry

In Foghat?!!?!?!

That is so wrong - Paul Rodgers/Queen-wrong.

"Grand Funk, featuring Punky Meadows"

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/04/mlb_season_preview_blue_oyster_cult_national_league.php

Tony La Russa was only the second manager to win the World Series in both leagues. Dismissed... as coincidence!?

<3

hmm itd be nice to go see them in IL on May 18th

well, as it turns out, I'll be there!

Ho-Chunk is probably not the MOST depressing Indian casino. So there's that.

― @GracieLoPan #fyi (Display Name (this cannot be changed):), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 7:37 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha high praise! i've been to some pretty depressing ones in northern iowa

still excited!

this is one of my favorite ever ILM posts:

What Contenderizer wrote upthread is completely true to me too.
I can only add that the alien, unseizable feeling surrounding BOC was further amplified by what seemed to me their almost quintessential Americanness.
They have the same hazy, dream-like quality of those old 50's horror movies, always walking the fine line between the familiar and the utterly arcane, always evoking a fantasy world where cars, drive-ins, rock n roll, sorcerers and labyrinthine Gothic mansions could stay side by side.
I discovered Blue Oyster Cult around the same time I stumbled into Chrome, and both bands are for me like the perfect soundtrack of this dark, imaginary continent I thought it was America.

― Marco Damiani, Tuesday, February 21, 2012 5:09 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, love that post

also love the chrome connection, not an association i would ever have thought to make

OKAY ROLL CALL FOR THE BÖC SHOW AT HO-CHUNK: ME

that cannot be a real place

I'll thank you not to slander one of Wisconsin's most awesome Native American nations. Or its lucrative casinos: http://www.ho-chunkgaming.com/wisconsindells/

implied slander retracted

"Ho-Chunk!" is also a pretty good approximation of what BOC's guitars sound like.

Been to the Ho-Chunk before, but would've gladly traded that experience in for being there for BOC.

Ho-Chunk casino signs make driving through Wisconsin even more pleasant than it already is

i'm going w/five other dudes from Mpls! we roll deep to BOC!

DN hope to run into you, yell "M@tt!" really loud

Haha YOU MUST DO THE SAME (as we are the only two M@tts on here, maybe?)

God DAMN wish I was goin' to this with y'all

Display name I'll have on a shirt that says hells kitchen, but not the show, a restaurant logo drawn by ralph steadman

can u guys post to this thread while the show is happening

just stuff like "YEAHHHHHHH"
or
"WOOOOOOOO"
or
"Red and the BLACCCCCCK"

Will do!

Drinking dos equis and glenlivit on ice on the balcony, getting ready for BOC

should xpost to the "people who know how to live" thread imo

WOOOOOOOO!

I was hemming and hawing all week, but at the last minute I took out the Zipcar to see 'em in St Charles, IL last nite. Hemming becuz they announced a much more accessible show in Naperville (where I seemingly always see them, Metra line hits there), hawing because it's been almost 2 yrs since my last show, was jonesing. Shocked at lack of Sarzo, now some guy from Rundgren's band -- acutally a much better player technically than Rudy, if not the showman.

Setlist was very close to the '10 show I saw, with two significant changes. Solid time. per directive, glass of beer was raised on high

They came out to game of thrones theme song!

In the middle of shooting shark

Eric bloom has a lot of swag

Perfectly executed beer run during bass solo

They were in St. Charles?!?!?!? Oh man, I wish I would've known that.

Oh wait, I see that Naperville show in September, might have to check that one out... of course that means, y'know, having to be in Naperville.

Sorry I didn't see you dude -- but yeah they were great. Kasim Sulton on bass!

alright! so this was a really fun trip!

we left Mpls about 11, took the scenic route and ate lunch at the Rock n' Roll Cafe in Ellsworth Wisconsin, one of those old school 50s themed diners with 45s on the wall and pix of marilyn monroe and elvis and stuff, great burgers...

got to the casino/hotel, checked in and did the aforementioned drinking of glenlivit and dos equis (and some mike's hard lemonade)....the show started EARLY, doors 630, show 7...so we didn't have time to eat...

got the show, and I was expecting it was going to be in some theater, but it was really just a big event room, like where you'd have a manager's conference with chairs set up....my friend james went up and talked to the sound guy -- turns out we were lied to and BOC was not headlining but going on first :(

so it was general admission and we grabbed some decent seats...BOC came out to the Game of Thrones theme song :) :) :)

so it was Eric, Buck, two dorks on guitar/keyboards and drums, then Kasim Sulton....

Kick things off with Red and Black...Buck's playing one of those really dorky Steinbergers with a with a white body type and no headstock (but not the super small 80s steinbergers, has kinda of a strat-ish body)...it also had "craters" that scooped out of the body? kind of like if they scooped out parts of the body...weird, sounds ok though....

sadly, they didn't get to play long...only did R&B, Burnin' for You, Shooting Shark (oddly given the set length), Cities on Flame, Godzilla, and Reaper....they did manage to squeeze in drum and bass solos (LOL)....also they did a weird medley where they introduced Kasim and when they said "You might know him from Joan Jett" they did a bit of I Love Rock n Roll and then so on for Todd Rungren (i don't wanna work) and Meatloaf (paradise by dashboard)....kinda corny....

Bloom is still really goony and did the godzilla rap from extraterrestrial live about godzilla coming to stomp out the Wisconsin Dells! was awesome....

As far as the performance, the new dudes can certainly play...Bloom definitely has to strain a bit at this point, but Buck's voice, maybe because his singing tone is so soft, really sings and plays amazingly still....

There was the vibe of phoning it in a bit but they are such pros it was still good...and there were a few moments where you felt like you were REALLY seeing them, like they jammed out the end of Reaper for a couple minutes and Buck was sublime...

the best part was that you could actually walk up and there was a big area in front of the stage to stand in front of the chairs so I basically got like 12 feet from Buck...like seeing them in a really small club :)

we got fucking wasted basically and were pissed at Kansas for headlining and decided to fuck off their set and go to the sports bar -- a most fortuitous decision!!

we saw the session guitar and drummer sitting down at a table...we thought about saying something but what the fuck do you say to them?

so we ordered beers and burgers and stuff and just started drinking more....then a group of ppl we'd see upfront -- some really oddball older folks with various old tour t-shirts, sat down with the drummer and the guitarist...they seemed to know them...I got the sense they were old fan club ppl or maybe follow BOC around on tour sometimes??

but anyway sure enough BUCK DHARMA WALKS INTO THE SPORTS BAR!!!!! he starts shaking hands with that group and chatting...eventually sits down with them...I was like fuck it, I was totally in the bag and went up to him and said I'm a big fan and would you take a picture with my friend...which he totally agreed to

after that Eric Bloom walks in and also agrees to do a picture!!!

so that pretty much made up for the short set, especially because this is the only venue we could have possibly ever just "ran into" buck and eric after a show....but yeah they weren't super into talking but they were totally gracious and willing to do a picture and autographs....I didn't see either one of them fail to stop and talk to ppl for a second and sign stuff, seemed, again, like total pros.

so yeah I shook Eric and Buck's hands! felt like the culmination of the last year of BOC obsession....

!RIGHTEOUS!

LOL Steinberger.

Please tell me that the current rhythm section is not fonkeh. Can you give me that?

rad. can't believe they were the opener! for KANSAS! i would really think that BOC would be the bigger draw, but I guess these are weird scenes/times.

xpost

nah they were fine! pretty much playing it straight by the book...that bass dude I'm sure could get funky or whatever you wanted, but he was tasteful

Yeah that is weird. Maybe Kansas played the Christ card to get switched to headliner.

xpost

rad. can't believe they were the opener! for KANSAS! i would really think that BOC would be the bigger draw, but I guess these are weird scenes/times.

― tylerw, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 5:07 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we did feel a bit burned, and just a general sense that the world is an unjust place.

one thing i learned there are SUPER HARDCORE KANSAS FANS....like SUPER hardcore....I talked to this really haggard old drunk that had seen them 46 times....he also...(bizarrely given his age)....was a big Tool/Perfect Circle fan

i saw like assloads of ppl wearing all types of kansas t-shirts.

the world is definitely SO unjust!
that's cool that there are hardcore kansas fans, maybe Kansas rock? resisting urge to google "best Kansas bootleg".

I still have time for 'Dust In The Wind'.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/carryon.jpg

"This is a Kansas casino. Always has been. Always will be."

http://vivalesbootlegs.blogspot.com/search/label/KANSAS

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_VIt42ZwDrR4/SVeqCHx9III/AAAAAAAABxE/qMaLTA8U8V4/s400/Kansas+Mayhem+SYmphony+Pittsburgh+76+front.jpg

Awesome! thanks for the report.

yeah my story is way lamer. i went up with my brother-in-law, we ate at the baraboo uno's, got there during 'burnin' for you,' no tickets at the will-call AS I WAS PROMISED, dude hooked us up anyway, rocked out to böc, stayed for kansas who were competent and professional, drove home.

Great show report from upper mississippi sh@kedown there! I only ever saw them back in the 80s, 1984 (great), 1985 (not great) and 1989 (Aldo Nova on 2nd gtr iirc, pfffft). Next time they're in the UK I promise to see them again, even though it's just Buck + Eric + session dudes these days.

*tries to resist Mayhem Symphony*

lol i dunno, dl-ing kansas bootlegs might be the kind of internet k-hole you never wake up from, you know?

still though: MAYHEM SYMPHONY

The way he sings "I'm Burning for You" is almost as delicious as a candy bar.

http://www.odinartcollectables.com/images/BlueOysterCultOnYourFeet.jpg

lol I'm probably the closest thing ILX has to a SUPER-HARDCORE KANSAS FAN.

anyways, m@tt, that whole concert sounded like lots and lots of fun. Sucks they only played 5 songs, but meeting them sounds amazing. I totally should see if they are playing Michigan in the next few months.

http://doublefuneral.tumblr.com/post/81358919620/fuckinrecordreviews-of-all-the-things-weve

http://31.media.tumblr.com/9bb0e83f12c80ef3b8af8b4e1005edec/tumblr_n3bimgsRg21stk2lwo1_400.png

!!!!

Huge