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.

Being chased around!
By the neighbor's cat!
It's so lonely in the state of Maine!

dumb clouds

Stairway to the Stars is such a monster. Just such an evil sounding song.

Top 10 Most Evil BoC songs?

Stairway to the Stars
Don't Fear the Reaper
ETI
???

Not supernatural evil per se, but I would put “Then Came The Last Days of May” in such a list.

It is definitely a classic of a drug deal gone bad.

Er, I don't think BOC was more ev-yul than on, well, "Career of Evil." They'd like to do it with our daughter on a dirt road? Then keep the ransom money?! But continue to rob us of our sleep?!! And fail to apologize?!!

This will not stand!

well, I mean, I'm biased, but "Joan Crawford" has a very evil vibe. "Searchin' for Celine" is kinda ominous. But if yr in the right mood p. much any BoC song is ominous as hell

My 12 yr old loves BOC, not as much as he loves Steely Dan but they're the hard rock legends he prefers above all others I've played for him. I think the fact they're both vv smooth and rock the hell out is a rare and potent combo.

omar raising the next generation right

My evil selections above I think lean into the lurid, seductive chaos type of evil. Like beckoning the listener, making them complicit.

"Veins" off The Revolution by Night

It's funny how their explicit Nazi song is actually one of their least ominously evil sounding.

Transmaniacon MC is pretty menacing.

Omar 🫡

They'd like to do it with our daughter on a dirt road? Then keep the ransom money?! But continue to rob us of our sleep?!!

more to the point, they're coming for your blue-eyed horseshoe

I Love the Night sucks you into the vampire lifestyle with gorgeous soft-rock harmonies and Buck's mellifluous guitar tones, and then "the lovely lady in white was by my side" and it's all over.

Dominance and Submission is just plain fucking contaminated by evil.

Career of Evil, definitely.

Transmaniacon MC is about the tension at Altamont, really sinister vibe.

Mistress of the Salmon Salt is crazy, a woman serial killer lures men, kills them, and uses them as fertilizer.

Killer 1979 club set from when BOC were touring semi-incognito under their old "Soft White Underbelly" name
https://ijwthstd.blogspot.com/2024/03/blue-oyster-cult-san-francisco-ca-1979.html

Stairway to the Stars is such a monster. Just such an evil sounding song.

Never heard these guys before but oh man, this is brilliant. I came late to the Rolling Stones and never fully got into even the classic LPs, probably because, from all I'd read and heard about them, I was expecting the Stones to sound like THIS.

Xpost
I was listening to that show a couple of weeks ago downloaded from a different source - was really liking its “Astronomy” when there was a big cut in the middle. Does this source have that?