Blue Oyster Cult - The Symbol Remains (2020)

there's also an albert bouchard demo tape of imaginos from back in the day, floating around the internet.

ooh I'd like to hear that

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

Yeah I wish those demos sounded just a tad better, a lower generation source must exist

I’m kind of split on imaginos, Albert did not quite have the voice to carry the whole thing but then the official release is such an awkward monster

I must say I weirdly enjoy the cock rock singer they bring in for “Siege & Investiture” though

Also while we are on the subject Albert’s album with the Brain Surgeons, “Denial of Death”, is kind of essential

i saw the brain surgeons circa that record, at a backyard in brooklyn. i spoke to albert for a few minutes. we were chatting about the kiss/teenage lust/iggy/BOC show i'd seen when i was, like, 15 at the old academy of music (later the palladium, now an nyu dorm). it was kiss' first appearance in a concert hall. albert remembered their roadie running in to the dressing room and saying "hey guys, the singer for the opening act just set his hair on fire!" albert was, like, "fuck, how are we gonna follow that?!?"

'Brooklyn Woodstock' breast cancer benefit on a Midwood porch, Sat 6/10

^LOL!!

I’m kind of split on imaginos, Albert did not quite have the voice to carry the whole thing but then the official release is such an awkward monster

― covidsbundlertanze op. 6 (Jon not Jon), Saturday, October 17, 2020 6:47 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago)

tbf these are not his best vocal takes, maybe he's just getting ideas down but yeah listening to this I wanna hear Eric Bloom singing and Buck Dharma playing guitar. It's like a cupcake without the icing or something, it's still recognizably a cupcake. Idk that sounds dumb.

See, this is where Blue Oyster Cult starts to lose a little of its potency, when they brought in these damn portastudios and then Agents of Fortune is more like the White Album where everyone has their little corner and the band reconvenes to basically copy shit off the demo. BOC do not need portastudios, they just need a pile of Sandy Perlman lyrics and a dilapidated house in Long Island where they can convene in a moldy basement to put their stuff together collaboratively. Not that those later records are bad by any stretch, don't get me wrong I like that stuff a lot too.

I Ching this morning said 枯楊生稊，老夫得其女妻，无不利。(rougly: A withered willow tree sprouts new shoots, an elderly man takes a young bride, there is nothing that is not beneficial). I think the advice in this is to check out the new BOC record.

Full disclosure, Albert Bouchard is my friend's dad and I used to go to parties at his house in fuckin' Great Neck when I was younger. Fwiw I don't think I am biased because he was my favorite member of BOC for years before that.

I agree that it becomes a different band agents through mirrors (cultosaurus and fire kind of seeming to blend that vibe back with the original 3 album one somehow) that demands a different appreciation

haha full disclosure: eric bloom is the uncle of my best friend when i was growing up, which is how i wound up at the academy of music when i was 15.

damn crazy BOC connections

my controversial opinion:
Spectres is secretly better than Agents of Fortune but Reaper is so iconic it fools people

Only listened to this album once through but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. It's kind of like the most recent Judas Priest album where it's like "here's one of basically everything you guys like about us" — and that's good, because *ducks* BÖC have no front-to-back great albums; they always go off the rails somehow (usually with a fake doo-wop song or some gooey ballad) so this "new songs that sound like a greatest hits comp" approach was absolutely the right move. I'm gonna listen to it a few more times for sure.

I haven't heard the new Deep Purple album because to me DP were even worse than BÖC at the whole "two or three great songs, everything else is mediocre or awful" approach to album-making. May I recommend that y'all check out the last few Uriah Heep albums, though? They've done about five in a row now since 2008 that have been ridiculously solid — not great, because they were never great, but B+ material for sure.

xp dpectres is better than agents of fortune! reaper is not even the best song on it imo, i would say their best album is secret treaties, followed by tyranny and mutation but i don't have all the later ones so am unqualified to say. i would probably like their early 80s albums a lot.

heh, well, at least you ducked :)

yeah that’s certainly blatantly wrong

You think they have a front-to-back great album with no bad songs or missteps? Which one is it? I own everything from the debut through Fire of Unknown Origin and the only one where I never skip a track is Secret Treaties.

Secret Treaties is perfect

there are no bad tracks on either secret treaties or fire of unknown origin. tyranny and mutation too

honestly i love every song on agents of fortune and spectres too

Cagey Cretins is the somewhat skippable track on Secret Treaties imo. Tyranny and Mutation is more reliable but the highs are higher on Secret Treaties. Supposedly The Marshall Plan is the real dog on Cultosaurus but I harbour a sneaking admiration for it.

I feel like Fire... falls apart in the second half. The best song after "Sole Survivor" is "Joan Crawford," and there are some painful keyboard choices on "After Dark" and "Don't Turn Your Back."

man who gives a shit both of those songs rip

"after dark" in particular boogies

i recommend not listening to it through one's hangups about synth tones but i also loooove the 8-bit-sounding chimes on "after dark"

painful keyboard choices

8-bit-sounding chimes

Okay, clearly I NEED this record.

Adore all the synth work on FOUO

my controversial opinion:
Spectres is secretly better than Agents of Fortune but Reaper is so iconic it fools people

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

even more controversial opinion:
side 2 of agents of fortune is better than side 1. morning final/tenderloin/debbie denise ftw.
i agree with brad tho, love every song on it.

so I streamed FOUO on youtube and about half the new album.

can't write a long post now but when i heard them sing "joan crawford has risen from the grave!" for the first time I laughed so hard my side hurt.

only regret is that i waited so long to check out this wonderful album.

reaper is insanely great i think i just feel this disconnect between reaper and everything else, so when i feel like listening to blue oyster cult it's not the vibe i have in mind, and when i feel like listening to reaper none of their other songs really satisfy that.

yeah reaper is such a singular work of art
i hate that fucking stupid snl sketch
but nothing anyone ever did is like it

"I Love the Night" maybe comes close to the vibe, the weird romantic creepiness

Fire of Unknown Origin is so good

even more controversial opinion:
side 2 of agents of fortune is better than side 1. morning final/tenderloin/debbie denise ftw.

it's true

also: mirrors is really fun and consistent

I wish Mirrors didn't have such brittle production

I'm pretty on board Side 2 of AoF being better but only ETI is making me pause

that anthemic chorus melody mixed with the bizarre lyrics

All praise
He's found the awful truth, Balthazar
He's found the saucer news

is one of my fav BOC moments ever

I think I underrated Mirrors for a while because it kicks off with Dr. Music one of the corniest songs they ever wrote

In Thee is one of their prettiest songs

yesss "eti" is one of my absolute favorite böc songs

BTW was looking up lyrics on the new album and I really like the pre chorus (?) on It Was Me, but I'd been hearing it as "I'm the sad man that the ladies tease" and it's really "I'm the Saturn man that ladies tease"

classic wtf BOC word choice.

Do we know who wrote lyrics on this? My friend said one was a Richard Meltzer

You'll feel me in the urban breeze
I'll be there when the moment's seized
I'm the Saturn man that the ladies tease
Yeah, my darlin', that is me

According to wiki the lyrics for that one are from author John Shirley. Meltzer only wrote for "The Return of St. Cecilia" on this new one.

hmmm interesteing. "St. Celicia" is a callback to the Stalk-Forrest Group song (which oddly Meltzer didn't write) so I wonder if it is something old of his they had sitting around?

I know that has happened before, he was pissed about Burning For You I think because they hadn't been in contact with him and just used it, not sure what their relationship is now

thought I suppose Meltzer has probably softened some and tbh could probably use money coming in the door

"Box in My Head" feels very They Might Be Giants to me ("Dead," "Birdhouse in Your Soul").

Something I like about early BÖC is that they're in this uncanny space between dangerous and goofy. The murky, distant sound of the first album captures this best for me, where you can't quite discern whether you're on genuinely evil territory or not. The band sounds sharper after that, but never as mysterious. It feels of a piece with the schizophrenic attitude toward sheer evil in Last House on the Left (released the same year), an end-of-the-sixties thing, even though album and film are totally different experiences.

that anthemic chorus melody mixed with the bizarre lyrics

All praise
He's found the awful truth, Balthazar
He's found the saucer news

is one of my fav BOC moments ever

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, October 19, 2020 10:23 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is my fav BOC moment ever.

It's the song I'd like playing as I line dance into the alien ship come to abduct me.

The rest of the album is incredible, too.

everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1980, on the second side of cultösaurus erectus, at some point in the middle of “fallen angel.” it’s scientific fact

I thought that moment occurred during the jazz interlude of "Monsters."

in other BOC new - Albert Bouchard's Re-Imaginos is up on streaming

pretty interesting take on the project....sounds *so* much better than the horrid production of Imaginos. Albert's vox can be a little rough at times but I dunno, it's growing on me...

sad Imaginos wasn't tackled around the time of Spectres as Pearlman wanted to

"the girl that love made blind" is gorgeous

omg hooray

i got so obsessed with the imaginos lore when i wrote an essay about heavy metal a few years ago. the one deleted sequence from the movie is kind of an imaginos story in itself

is that up?
I think you'll really like this

only bright spot of 2020 is an unexpected BOC revival

that essay's definitely still up but there's a nonzero chance i will find it mortifying, it was for bright wall/dark room though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miar5eKG4uY

this is the very rad deleted/unfinished heavy metal scene

That's better than most of the finished sequences.

otm

all is explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzjxgU6OcPI

Weird
So it’s kind of a restoration/completion of various unreleased outtakes?
I’ll certainly take it.
My observation today is that “lips in the hills” is the kind of track that makes you believe in hard rock all over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY4ZCT4nyXA

It's great to hear Joe again. Cool track, very Mirrors-y.

it like it - the verses are wonderful, i do wish the chorus wasn't so stock sounding but still really good stuff

Lol buck proving his own point (from a January interview)

Do you have a favorite Blue Oyster Cult guitar album?

“I’m not an expert on our records. You listen to them so many times when you make them, and then they recede into memory. But working with Martin Birch was a highlight as a guitarist. The album I’d choose as far as guitars would be Cultosaurus Erectus. It was memorable and had Burnin’ for You, which was great.”

haha subbing Burnin for You for the Mashall Plan would bump Cultosaurus up the list considerably

Subbing anything for the Marshall Plan would help

“The Marshall Plan” was the first BOC song I heard as a new song of theirs. It was so weird!

I could probably deal with like a singles edit that didn’t include Marshall’s rap where he’s conceiving his Plan. As I’ve said before BOC were the masters of a unique brand of lame-cool e.g. RU READY 2 ROCK but on a few occasions it gets away from them unlistenably - Marshall, dr music, let go

Great revive!