Blue Oyster Cult 30 Years Later
By: Adrien Begrand |
Sunday April 01, 2007 |
| I need more cowbell!! |
| "Dropped acid, Blue Oyster Cult concert, fourteen years old, And I
thought them lasers were a spider chasing me."
- Drive-By Truckers, "Let There Be Rock" "Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription...is more cowbell!" - Christopher Walken Thanks to that one uproarious Will Farrell sketch on Saturday Night Live, Blue Oyster Cult will be inextricably linked with post-2000 popular culture, but for all the cowbell jokes about fictional band member Gene Frenkle and the renewed popularity of "Reaper", younger audiences remain largely unaware of just how massive a band Blue Oyster Cult had become in the mid to late-70s. By releasing a steady stream of superb hard rock albums that got progressively slicker as the decade wore on, and by touring relentlessly during the entire decade, the New York band had cultivated a huge fanbase, all of which leading to live shows that became more and more elaborate and hi-tech (they became the first rock band to fully integrate laser lighting into their live shows). By the time "Reaper" broke in America in late 1976 and the album Agents of Fortune cracked the top 30, the world was, well, their oyster, and the band cashed in on the mainstream fame by doing the only thing they knew how to do: record, and tour nonstop. The two albums that followed the smash hit Agents of Fortune are the latest Blue Oyster Cult releases to get the expanded reissue treatment, and while both struggle with inconsistency at times, they're nonetheless the sound of a band at its creative and commercial peak, trying their damndest to sustain their fame for as long as possible. More than a year in the making, 1977's Spectres was an ambitious follow-up, blowing up the band's sound and image to a bombastic level, and featuring a sound even more immaculate than that found on on Agents, but at the same time, one that often allowed for some adventurous songwriting to go along with the arena rock shtick. Blue Oyster Cult is often linked with 1970s heavy metal, but in all honesty, they were metal moonlighters, a rock band that only wandered over to the metal side sporadically. Hell, even with such a metal-sounding song title as "Don't Fear the Reaper", what resulted was a song that was soft AOR rock at best. They had a hard edge, led by guitarists/vocalists Eric Bloom and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, but they evoked classic rock 'n' roll more than anything, and the supporting members proved to be just as valuable: Joe Bouchard's basslines were very melodic, drummer Albert Bouchard was capable of lithe percussion alongside the thunderous beats, and Allen Lanier used synthesizers for hooks, and not wankery, as other bands like Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer were wont to do. The sheer versatility of the quintet remains this album's strength. Lyrically speaking, "R.U. Ready to Rock" has not aged well, sounding like it tries far too hard to impress, but musically, the band is scorching, led by Dharma's hooky riff and Lanier's barrelhouse piano. Lanier's synth hook and piano stabs dominate the midtempo, shimmering "Celestial the Queen", while "Goin' Through the Motions", a collaboration with Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter, is a revelation, a gorgeous combination of Phil Spector's grandeur (that drum beat is a dead giveaway) and glam rock's triteness, featuring one of Bloom's finest lead vocal turns. Dharma's "Golden Age of Leather" is a bit of an oddity, starting off with a ridiculous a cappella chorus, but it turns into a tight little progressive rocker, highlighted by a slick, Beach Boys-inspired bridge and a phenomenal solo break by Dharma himself. Blue Oyster Cult was never above adding a dark tinge to its sound, as "Death Valley Nights", "Fireworks", and "Nosferatu" are all dominated by a sober, haunting quality. The blend of dark themes and mainstream hard rock works most perfectly on the stunning ballad "I Love the Night", as Dharma waxes poetic over a languid, restrained musical backdrop, the song remaining on a hypnotically even keel for its entire four-minute duration. Only does the awkward "Searchin' For Celine" stumble, its clunky attempt at funk ringing false. The variety might win over the critics, but the riffs win over the public, and Blue Oyster Cult had no mightier riff than the one that dominates the appropriately-titled "Godzilla". Built around a lumbering riff and featuring memorable fretwork by Dharma (one of the most economical, tasteful lead guitarists in rock history), the song alternates between odd social commentary ("History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men") and moments of downright campy cartoonishness, such as the faux-ominous bridge (dig the Stanley Clarke-inspired bass solo) and the Japanese announcements telling people to flee. Arguably the band's most "metal" moment, it's a corny riff rock anthem for the ages, the highlight of an uneven yet terrific album (only one of the four bonus tracks, the likeable "Night Flyer", holds up well; the rest, including an awful cover of "Be My Baby", are forgettable). Thanks to the success of Kiss's Alive and Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive!, the live album format was never more popular than it was during the late-70s, and not only was 1978's Some Enchanted Evening Blue Oyster Cult's second live album in three years, it went on to become their second-biggest seller of all time, right behind Agents of Fortune. Originally a scant, seven-track LP that seemed more like a cynically-assembled cash grab than a look back at the band's biggest tour to date, it's been expanded to a much more satisfactory 73 minutes on the 2007 reissue, and we're now treated to a very impressive compilation of performances spanning four albums. "R.U. Ready to Rock" burns with much more intensity than on Spectres, "Godzilla" and "Reaper" sound as godly as one would expect (though no cowbell on "Reaper", sorry), and earlier tunes like "Hot Rails to Hell", "ME 262", and "Harvester of Eyes" show the band had not lost its edge, despite the more polished studio sound. The real draw of this expanded release is the accompanying DVD, which features an hour-long segment of a 1978 performance in Landover, Maryland, offering us a glimpse of Blue Oyster Cult's imposing live presence. The bearded, curly-haired Bloom, sporting his mirrored sunglasses, is the flamboyant yin to Dharma's more businesslike yang (in fact, Bloom is dressed all in black, Dharma clad in white), and the duo feed off each other, Bloom displaying manic energy at times, shifting from guitar to keyboards, while Dharma tears off solo after solo on his Les Paul. Although "Godzilla" and "Reaper" are conspicuously absent, we do get a strong performance of "Golden Age of Leather", as well as ten other tracks that appear on the CD. However, nothing quite compares to the more excessive stunts; the raucous cover of "Born to Be Wild" features Bloom and Dharma rubbing their guitar necks together, creating a wall of screeching noise, the bass solo after "(This Ain't The) Summer of Love" is painfully tedious (is there any bass solo that isn't?), the covers of "Kick out the Jams" and "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" are ill-conceived, and the five-man jam "5 Guitars" is as over the top as the title would indicate. The true show-stopper on both the album and the DVD is the performance of the classic "Astronomy", from 1974's Secret Treaties. Visually, it was a marvel at the time; Blue Oyster Cult's laser show quickly became the stuff of legend (including a famous urban legend about how a fan was blinded by a laser at a concert), and they put it to brilliant use during the song's climax, as a green laser shoots from behind the drum riser and reflects off a gigantic mirror ball. Compared to the stunts we see these days, the laser is rather primitive, but this was a defining moment, not just for concert going in the 1970s, but for stoner culture as well, as dozens and dozens of thin lines of light are refracted in every direction. Musically, though, is where the band shines the most during the song, Dharma in particular. Bloom handles the lead vocals, but the song is all Dharma, his nimble solos carrying the entire track, the song building in intensity over nearly nine minutes. After Spectres, Blue Oyster Cult would struggle to regain its popularity. 1980's Cultosaurus Erectus and 1981's Fire of Unknown Origin, both produced by UK ace Martin Birch, were good returns to form (81's "Burnin' For You" would become the band's third major hit), but the success of the 70s would fade as a new generation of heavy rockers would rise to prominence, rendering the band more and more irrelevant as the 80s wore on. Still, for a decade Blue Oyster Cult left us with a very solid back catalog, their influence not lost on many bands (Metallica famously covered "Astronomy" in 1998), and both Spectres and Some Enchanted Evening serve as career milestones, proof that even at its most excessive, 1970s arena rock could be as thrilling as any genre. Cowbell, or no cowbell. |
