Okay, let’s be perfectly upfront with our Pencil Storm readership; due to some technical & covid-19 issues we wound up without a Saturday Night Special entry for this week, so this is going to be something of a Stopgap Last Minute blog. (By the way, speaking of covid; how does ONE federal judge - in FLORIDA, for Chrissakes - strike down the ENTIRE NATIONWIDE TRANSPORTATION MASK MANDATE to the point where airline passengers can 86 their masks MID-FLIGHT? What if ONE federal judge declared we don’t need to have driver’s licenses anymore or that 13-year old girls in all 50 of our United States are fair game from now on? How would that go over?)

But I digress…….

I read Jeremy’s Judas Priest Live piece a coupla Saturday’s ago with some interest, but since I have almost nothing but bad associations with Judas Prist (see In 1979 Romantic Noise Opened For Judas Priest; It Didn’t Go Well) mostly all it made me do was pull out my trusty Blue Oyster Cult compilation CD (track listing reproduced below) and BLAST all the live tunes from BOC’s 1975 On Your Feet Or On Your Knees release until my lovely wife Debbie had to come downstairs from her home office and yell, “COULD YOU TURN THAT DOWN, PLEASE?” Oooops.

Let’s face facts, dear readers, if you look up the phrase “Spotty Recorded Output in Rock & Roll” in the dictionary, Blue Oyster Cult’s picture just might appear there (alongside Pink Floyd, Eagles, and many others). Their self-titled debut disc in 1972 (PRE-DATING BOTH The New York Dolls AND Kiss, by the way) was just okay, ‘73’s Tyranny & Mutation was KILLER start to finish, and Secret Treaties in ‘74 & 76’s Agents Of Fortune had individual GREAT MOMENTS but were hardly masterpieces.

As a LIVE BAND though, cats & kittens, Blue Oyster Cult had VERY FEW equals in that early to mid-70’s era. I saw them live 5 or 6 times between 1974 & 1978 and they were never less than PHENOMENAL live: Four lead singers among the five members; GREAT stage outfits and presentation (including - but not limited to - whips, lasers, and all five guys playing lead guitar at the climax of “ME 262”); Buck Dharma (aka Donald Roeser), one of the five best lead guitarists in American metal or hard rock (and definitely the most underrated); and - most importantly, along with early ‘70’s Aerosmith - the best SONGS (as opposed to just riffs with lyrics tacked on as an afterthought) in their genre.

But hey, before this turns into one of those Bob Lefsetz “I’m gonna write 1000 words and not say ANYTHING” blogs, let’s just jump to the tunes…….

(I discovered in my BOC YouTube research that there is literally NO mid-70’s live footage that does justice to the band, so we’re gonna have to go with the live songs from On Your Feet Or On Your Knees. My apologies.)

BEFORE THE KISS, A REDCAP

(lyrics follow below the video, on accounta they’re SO GOOD…….)

So grab your rose and ring side seat,
We're back home at conry's bar
The blond girl with her tattoo,
Reds and wine, cokes of course
Oh my suzy, my suzy,
Why did we ever start
It's morning now, you'd never know
The gin, the gin, glows in the dark, glows in the dark
And underneath, the black light,
Underneath it all
Four and forty redheads meet,
Come to doom 'til the dawn
With threats of gas and rose motif
Their lips apart like a swollen rose
Their tongues extend, and then retract
A redcap, a redcap, before the kiss, before the kiss.
Doors like flint and window panes
An endless shadow bar
The owner's boys have gone to work
To stop big deals behind the bar
While outside on the turnpike
They got this new hit tune
Where thrills become as cheap as gas
And gas as cheap as thrills
One thrill and mundane here at last
Expect the cross one more
Lecherous invisible
Beware the limping cat
Whose black teeth grip between loose jaws
Still ripe and fully bloomed
A rose that's not from anywhere
That you would know or i would care
And the owners boys act most cheerfully
Back home at conry's bar
When their patrons' thoughts at last
Grow too big for their skulls
And awful things are happening
We've let this drama fold
And now the time has come at last
To crush the motif of the rose.
So grab your rose and ring side seat
We're back home at conry's bar
The blond girl with her tattoo
Reds and wine, cokes of course
Oh my suzy, my suzy
Why did we ever start
It's morning now, you'd never know
The gin, the gin, glows in the dark, glows in the dark

 lyics; Pearlman & Krugman / music; Roeser & Lanier

BUCK’S BOOGIE

THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY

ME 262

encore; I AIN’T GOT YOU

Closing words; Yeah, yeah, yeah, I fully realize all of the songs are too long, and longtime devotees of Ricki C. know my Lifelong Dedication to the PERFECT 3-minute rock & roll song, but goddamn, these tracks are just SO FUCKING ROCKING.

I kinda gave up on Blue Oyster Cult after 1977 when my attention shifted to The Dictators, The Patti Smith Group, The Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, David Johansen and a dozen other punk-rock acts, but I would put Blue Oyster Cult and Aerosmith of 1974-1975 against ANY of them and I believe my Long Island and Boston boyz would emerge victorious a good amount of the time.

As mentioned above, I consider Blue Oyster Cult’s recorded output spotty. The “hits” - “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Burnin’ For You” - were ruined decades ago by Constant Repetition on Classic Rock Radio, and “Godzilla” was ALWAYS an embarassment. Here’s my CD compilation track listing, it’s ALL you really need.)

(I suppose nowadays this would be a Spotify playlist, but I’m always at least one or two technologies behind at my advanced rock & roll age.)

compilation Blue Oyster Cult

studio tracks

 1)     Cities On Flame With Rock & Roll

2)     Before The Kiss, A Redcap

3)     Buck’s Boogie

4)     The Red & The Black

5)     O.D.’d On Life Itself

6)     Hot Rails To Hell

7)     Baby Ice Dog

8)     Wings Wetted Down

9)     Mistress Of The Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)

10)  Astronomy

live tracks

11)  Then Came The Last Days Of May

12)  Cities On Flame With Rock & Roll

13)  Buck’s Boogie

14)  Before The Kiss, A Redcap

15)  I Ain’t Got You

16)  Born To Be Wild

 Eric Bloom, vocals & rhythm guitar / Buck Dharma, lead guitar & vocals

Allen Lanier, 2nd lead guitar & keyboards / Joe Bouchard, bass & vocals

Albert Bouchard, drums, percussion & vocals

 Sandy Pearlman & Murray Krugman, lyrics & direction

bonus track; ASTRONOMY

(for die-hards only, if you’ve made it this far; I can’t decide from this track if BOC was the last band of the 60’s, or the first band of the 70’s)

Astronomy

 The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Like acid and oil on a madman's face
His reason tends to fly away
Like lesser birds on the four winds
Like silver scrapes in May
And now the sand's become a crust
And most of you have gone away

Come Susie dear, let's take a walk
Just out there upon the beach
I know you'll soon be married
And you'll want to know where winds come from
Well it's never said at all
On the map that Carrie reads
Behind the clock back there you know
At the Four Winds Bar

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Four doors at the Four Winds Bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door to let to take you in
The other one just mirrors it

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hellish glare and inference
The other one's a duplicate
The Queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Or the light that never, never warms
Or the light that never
Never warms
Never warms
Never warms

The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Miss Carrie nurse and Susie dear
Would find themselves at Four Winds Bar

It's the nexus of the crisis
And the origin of storms
Just the place to hopelessly
Encounter time and then came me

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Call me Desdinova
Eternal light
These gravely digs of mine
Will surely prove a sight
And don't forget my dog
Fixed and consequent

Astronomy... a star (repeats) 

lyrics; Sandy Pearlman / music; Albert & Joe Bouchard

(post-script; My best rock & roll friend Kyle & I saw BOC at some Q-FM Wing-Zing kinda “event” sometime in the early 2000’s at an outdoor venue like the parking lot of the old Promo West Pavilion and it couldn’t have been sadder. They played okay, but every bit of edge was gone. Plus Q-FM scheduled them in BROAD DAYLIGHT and my former Dark Lords of early-70’s Heavy Metal wound up looking like accountants. It put me off reunion shows TO THIS DAY.)