Blue Oyster Cult: Classic or Dud?

this band was so fundamentally weird it's crazy.

it's true. smarter than they seemed and fucking odd.

Odd but fucking kick-ass. I love BOC. Sad that they are only known for the two or three classic rock radio hits-they don't do them justice.

...not that those couple-three hits aren't deservedly famous, of course.

I totally agree, that wasn't clear from my post.

If Gorge is reading this, it would be great if he could post that Creem Metal article he discussed a year ago.

and not just weird lyrically but they were such and odd mix musically, like you can hear (esp. on the early stuff) the vestiges of San Fran psych and Steppenwolf proto-hard rock boogie but there's something more menacing and angular about how they do it...also a metal element that's almost more there as an abstract feeling than *actual* metal music....then later stuff like "Joan Crawford" is what? AOR Goth?

Here's an excerpt from "Fear the Cheaper" which ran in the Voice back in 2001. It was a review of For the Heavy Metal Kids and the Yardbirds -- a Euro boot of Columbia's promo boot of BOC live ca. 72. Originally, it went to radio but there was enough fan and critical interest to ensure that it was issued commercially in a small run. It's also been in and out of reissue semi-regularly. The rendition of "Buck's Boogie" from it might have been the one that wound up on The Guitars That Destroyed the World anthology from around the same time. I can't remember, too long ago.
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...But the real reason for this tear is the re-arrival of For the Heavy Metal Kids and the Yardbirds, a live EP/CD of BÖC performing at a pizza parlor in Rochester in '72 that, I am informed, floats in and out of limited bootleg circulation every few years. The provenance is that it's a CD of a famous Columbia promo issued to radio shortly after the appearance of the first Blue Öyster Cult album.

For the Heavy Metal Kids has fairly obviously been mastered from original plastic. Listen close and you detect the light surface noise and rumble of turntable machinery, perfect in this case because it is precisely what BÖC sounded like back in someone's smelling-of-caked-joy-rag bedroom circa 1972. The tone is hot, airless as if heard in a stereo-equipped pine box, the band pressing stiflingly close upon the audience through a paralyzing smog of brutish, antique amplification.

Eric Bloom laughs maniacally and asks, "Wazzup, man?" as japing bullyboys chant, "You'd kill, you'd maim." This is eclipsed by the best performance of "Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll" on record. The number stalks the room in a transfixing exhibition of vulgar power, the signature riff pitting the guitar against the kick bass and floor tom in a bare-knuckles gang fight with the singer as referee. The packaging is a gatefold decorated with the half-menacing faux-Hunter S. Thompson gibber of "Transmaniacon MC." The disc even takes a stab at furthering the mythos of Gawlik.

In other words, the beating heart of For the Heavy Metal Kids brings everything BÖC's history merits to the table-its early mysterious harshness, the strong whiff of an impression that those who partook of it were members in a dream-world club of intellectual men of action and heavy-handed motorcycle thugs-everything the expected age-of-information product does not or will not provide.

And it's on a weird label named Munster.
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"Menacing" is an accurate way to describe the first three records. Even the strange way they (esp. the first two) were recorded gives you the willies. They were much freakier than their neighbors in Kiss, who came across as a cartoon.

xpost

Thanks Gorge

Alright, I don't get this. I'm crazy about this song "I Love The Night" but I tried to play the album that has Don't Fear The Reaper on it and the style just doesn't work for me. Do they have anything else like "I Love The Night"?

Yeah, that's about right. Liking "I Love the Night" at the expense of the other stuff cited doesn't get BOC. Run along now.

Bimble, I would check out Cultosaurus Erectus. "Deadline" is pretty close tonally.

^^^That's my fave BoC album!

Going to see 'em tonight! Or at least, Buck Dharma, Eric Bloom and some other dudes. Still... pretty psyched!

Has anyone seen them in the last few years? Perhaps on this tour? Or even at any point at all??

will be worth it just to see Eric Bloom do that mock "what's that noise?" bit right before they kick into "Godzilla"...

There's this insane "giglopaedia" thing here that is trying to document every show they ever did. Pretty insane.

cool!...I camped out for this concert:
http://www.hotrails.co.uk/history/images/1979/tickets/790921a.jpg

Wow. Is that 1978??

1979

also went to this one:
http://www.hotrails.co.uk/history/images/1980/tickets/801005a.jpg
(this was the Ronnie James Dio Black Sabbath, so not really the dream line-up it appears to be)

No, that's still a dream concert man. The Black and Blue Tour is legendary!

Specter, where are you seeing them? They are still great, even if they are touring small halls.

Holy shit, that Hot Rails to Hell website is great. BOC is definitely a group that lends itself to that sort of fanaticism, for whatever reason.

I have a few BOC cassettes but I just downloaded their greatest hits off emusic. I felt like doing something uncool. You guys are all a bunch of dorks talking about some records no one wants to hear. I am really loving listening to this, it sounds so seventies like nothing else. Probably because they only play two Blue Oyster Cult songs on the radio. That makes them cool and mysterious to me now.

"You guys are all a bunch of dorks talking about some records no one wants to hear."

Thanks.

Every time "Burning for you" comes on the radio I get very stoked.

it sounds so seventies like nothing else

^^this!

I've tried and failed to express somehing along hese lines before, but their whole sound and feel is some kind of purified essence of everything I look for in 'Classic Rock' a big part of which is definitely what Myonga von Bontee choicely refers to as 'arcane mysterioso read'.

(t key RIP)

and it was 'arcane mysterioso dread'. you get the point, hopefully.

And I think I might have scoffed when Tim Ellison said their best record was St Cecilia, but nowadays that doesn't seem so ridiculous to me. It's probably the one I play most.

Super stone idol CLASSIC.

BOC were almost as much a worldview as a band in a way. I have a mega sweet tooth for MYSTICAL BULLSHIT and they built that castle higher than anybody.

BOC kind of make me think of Alan Moore and his self-invented 'god' which is just a stuffed toy. It's all an obvious sham, but somehow that just frees the rational mind to let the magicqk in to do its work.

Their most unimpeachably awesome records-- On Your Feet, Tyranny And Mutation, Secret Treaties, Cultosaurus Erectus, Fire Of Unknown Origin. But every one of their LPs has at least a handful of brilliant things, and while their dud tracks are outrageously dudly, there's something really fascinating about the dud-ness that draws you back for many re-listenings.

They keep playing NYC without me noticing and I REALLY need to catch them soon.

By the way, do any of you past-expiry dudes know if that Goldmine article is online anywhere?

They are coming here in a few weeks, but prices are pretty high. I might wait a bit to see if they come down at all because it's still more than half unsold.

There were err...plenty of good seats still available at showtime last night

my 22 y/o informed music nerd kid went to see BÖC at thee Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. famous for inspiring The Shining I guess. his clips of show sound and look good enuf

Oh man that rules that they played there

So when each of our kids have turned five we give the option of getting to learn any instrument they want, no questions asked. Our second child decided harp, which we still have no idea where that instrument came into her mind.

Our youngest just turned five and she said she wanted to learn how to play the drums. So she goes over once a week now to her drum teacher’s house for lessons.

Her teacher is the BOC drummer. Her first set of drumsticks she’ll ever have owned will have a Blue Oyster Cult logo printed on them.

Seriously, A+ parenting.

amazing ❤️

Don't fear the (drum) teacher

happy 50th to agents of fortune

Her first set of drumsticks she’ll ever have owned will have a Blue Oyster Cult logo printed on them.

also this is incredible

happy 50th to agents of fortune

Strange...I hadn't seen anyone report this!

Should really have some sort of lavish legacy reissue. The earlier one with the four bonus tracks just ain't enough.

And it should include copies of those cryptic lyric sheets you could send away for.