Los Angeles / give me Norfolk, Virginia / dial one oh four ten oh nine / tell the folks back home th...
Los Angeles / give me Norfolk, Virginia / dial one oh four ten oh nine / tell the folks back home this is the promised land calling / and the poor boy is on / the line
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According to Homer Simpson, 1974 was the year that rock reached perfection. Personally I think they were out by a year, but the writers of that show must have been thinking of releases like this, the third album from New York City's famous hard rock band Blue Oyster Cult.
Pigeon-holed as gonzo headbanging rockers to start with, BOC soon showed they were the thinking mans rock band. At a time when the majority of bands were singing about coke, sex and their libidos, BOC carried on from where bands such as The Doors and Love left off, taking the West Coast vibe and marrying it to their own harder-edged Eastern seaboard rock sound. This is no mere cock-rock, the subject matter here include such as lesbianism ("Astronomy") incest ("Dominance And Submission") and even World War 2 ("ME262"). Leave behind any pre-conceptions of BOC as "that wierdo space-fantasy HM band", this is just good old straight up rock and roll with a twist in its tail.
The twin lead guitar partnership of Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom shows the way, the musical genius Allen Lanier fills in on the third, rythym, guitar and keyboards, whilst brothers Joe and Albert Bouchard make up the rythym section. Released in April 1974 on Columbia (CBS in the UK) it reached #53 on the US album charts, and still remains one of the most popular albums among the Cult fans. The CD was
reissued in 2001 on Sony with five bonus tracks.
Fellow Noo York songwriter Patti Smith (she of "Horses" fame) co-wrote the opener, Career Of Evil, a straight up and down chord job, the drummer Albert wrote the rest. Originally intended as a single, the "scary" lyrics were heavily edited on the 7", which also appears on here as a bonus track. "I'll choose to steal what you choose to show....." musically it's solid enough but not the best song on this album. The next track Subhuman, certainly is one of the best, a slithering bassline leads the band into the power chords of the chorus. This is what I so love about early 1970's rock music, it's for the most part just simple 4/4 but when its played so well as this it the groove does exactly that, groooooove,. "So ladies fish and gentlemen, welcome to my dream". A gorgeous middle section here too, as the song slowly closes out.
The powerhouse rocker Dominance And Submission tears this album open, with a story of sibling incest in the backseat of a car "back in 1963". A simple but ingenious riff leads the way with dead-on drumming. It's a terrifying ending too...the band come in and out with "dominance", after which Eric replies with "submission", getting ever more desperate as if it is him in the studio committing that most hideous of crimes.
No pause as it's straight into another driving rocker, ME262. Now this got quite a bit of flak at the time (no pun intended). This one track got the album banned in both Germany and Israel, for obvious reasons! The ME262 was the Luftwaffe WW2 jet fighter and this is a song, very possibly the only one ever, about that aeroplane. It's the one on the cover with the band stood around it, and is told through the pilots eyes as if he is a 1945 wanabee rock god...."Hitler's on the phone from Berlin, says he's gonna make you a star...", we follow the story as the pilot comes up to a flight of English bombers "hanging defenceless from the sky...like some heavy metal fruit...." the SFX of marching jackboots and bombs dropping only add to all the craziness. What a fab five minutes this is.
Oooh, cagey what you got? The almost pop Cagey Cretins, led along with a pummeling rythym section and an excellent Dharma guitar solo, brings a bit of light relief to an album threatening to get just a little bit out of control.
Harvester Of Eyes, despite its spooky sounding title, is the one weak link on this record, though that is just going by what comes before it, on its own it's a bouncy jolly(?!) little number, that reminds me a bit of The Doors' more Brechtian moments. A gasp for breath and then leading right into the power chords of Flaming Telepaths, "Well I've opened up my veins too many times, and the poison's in my heart and in my mind", this driving rocker has a nice bit of synth work from Allen Lanier in it, apparently he found it gathering dust in the studio and just built a riff on it.
Astronomy was the original albums' big set piece finish, a lovely number that sees the band improvise off a standard sounding big riff, returning to it every so often like all good musos should, with alternate quiet and bombast, though the final bars sound exactly the same as the opening bars to Bowie's "Panic In Detroit"! Just a coincidence surely. It tells the tale of two "laydeez" in a very ironic, knowing fashion. "The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst, out at you from their hiding place, Miss Carrie nurse and Suzy dear, -would find themselves at the four winds bar". Work it out for yourselves.
None of the bonus tracks here really add much. Bormann The Chauffer reminds me of that old Who track Boris The Spider, it's not too bad really, but the others aren't up to that standard. We get the 7" edit of Career Of Evil, the anti-female Mommy, Mes Dames Serat (which is a rerun of ME262) and a rather limp Born To Be Wild, yes, that Steppenwolf one.
Later albums like "Agents Of Fortune", featuring the monster hit Don't Fear The Reaper, and "Fire Of Unknown Origin" would sell many more copies, though they lack much of the creativity of this one, and sadly by the mid 80's BOC had turned into just another corporate money-making machine. 2001's "Curse Of The Hidden Mirror" saw something of a return to the good old days though, and BOC are still out there, now a part of the highly lucrative classic rock scene.
Call me desdinova, eternal night, these gravely digs of mine, will surely prove a sight. Yeaaaahhh. Baby.
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