This next entry is the last unreviewed record of my favourite band, but the first album they ever released. And so, on your feet or on your knees. Here they are, the amazing Blue…Oyster…Cult!
Disc 1505 is…. Self-Titled
Artist: Blue Oyster Cult
Year of Release: 1972
What’s up with the Cover? This cover is trippy as fuck. As a kid I would stare at it and let my mind drift on thoughts of the cosmos. Like, is this one massive expanse of one bedroom studio apartments, or is this just the same one-bedroom apartment, if you could see it connected to all of its fellow iterations across the multiverse?
Did I really contemplate the multiverse as an eight year old? I can’t remember, but it seems likely. I was a weird kid.
How I Came To Know It: I grew up with Blue Oyster Cult and they have been a fixture in my life almost as long as music itself. My older brother Virgil owned the record, and I listened to it with him. As an adult I bought it on various formats over the years, and currently own it on CD and vinyl.
How It Stacks Up: As you might expect, my Blue Oyster Cult collection goes to 11. Competition is fierce, but their self-titled effort still manages to land in 4th place overall. Since this is my last BOC album to review, here’s the full recap:
- Secret Treaties: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 866)
- Fire of Unknown Origin: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 751)
- Spectres.: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 514)
- Self-Titled: 4 stars (reviewed right here)
- Agents of Fortune: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 463)
- Cultosaurus Erectus: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 206)
- Tyranny and Mutation: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1273)
- Mirrors: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 685)
- Imaginos: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 838)
- The Revolution by
Night: 3
stars (reviewed at Disc 1159)
- Club Ninja: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 780)
Ratings: 4 stars but almost 5
I’ve listened to Blue Oyster Cult’s 1972 debut many times, but every time I put it on, I am struck anew with just how weird it is. Weird and wonderful.
While BOC would go on to make many a stadium anthem through their career, in the early years their music was a mix of acid trip rock, prog and bar blues. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia notes that this record peaked on the charts at #172, with no singles. It is a travesty that people didn’t understand how amazing these guys were until much later, and even then, few would become devotees willing to drill backward to see what they missed.
What they missed was some innovative music, played with precision and passion. A key element of Blue Oyster Cult is that they are first and foremost a band – a cohesive unit, where everyone brought value. Every member also contributed meaningfully to the writing, and four different members take on lead vocals at various points on the record.
In fact the most “radio friendly” (although apparently not played) song, “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll” isn’t even sung by Eric Bloom, but by drummer Albert Bouchard. Bouchard has that less-than-perfect grimy voice that is perfect for this riff driven tune. Almost fifty years later, it also has one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock and roll. It is so awesome, the lyrics even come with a warning:
“Three thousand guitars they seem to cry
My ears will melt, and then my eyes.”
So, you know, listen responsibly.
The song features guitarist Buck Dharma rocking out, but his finest ever moments are captured on the bluesy and dreamlike “Then Came the Last Days of May”. The song is about a drug deal in the desert gone wrong, but the rather straightforward tale is lifted to new heights by Dharma’s incredible playing. If you ever want to know what musicians are talking about when the reverently talk about “great tone” then look no farther than this song, which is easily one of my top 5 favourite songs by BOC of all time. Probably top 3.
These are two of the more accessible tunes, but the record is full of other treasures once your ear adjusts to the weird mixture of sounds I noted earlier. “Transmaniacon MC” has the weirdest mix of groove and prog you’ll hear to start a tune, and while at its core it is bar blues, it is so dressed up with crazy flourishes and musical shifts you’ll start to suspect the bar they’re playing in is not of this world.
They double down on “I’m on the Lamb, But I Ain’t No Sheep” a song I always liked as a kid because it mentions the RCMP (“Canadian mounted, baby!”) but gets progressively weirder from there, and by the third stanza we have lines like:
“Hornswoop me bungo pony on dogsled of ice
Make a dash for freedom baby”
I have never been sure what this song is about. I think it is sex. Also drugs. So sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Subject wise the record has all kinds of range. Science fiction references on “Stairway to the Stars”, more sex and drugs (“Before the Kiss, a Redcap”), and something between kink and cannibalism (“She’s As Beautiful as a Foot”).
The crazy topics and brilliant musicianship come together on one of the record’s best tracks, “Workshop of the Telescopes.” Dharma’s guitar lays down a complicated mix of blues solos and sixties psychedelia in one of the best sneaky-good guitar bits you’ll hear from a guy who has made a career of being sneaky-good. This one is sung by “main” vocalist Eric Bloom, who’s excessive rock style knows just how to infuse lyrics like:
“By Silverfish imperatrix whose incorrupted eye
Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives
By Salamander Drake and the power that was undone
Rise to claim Saturn, ring and sky.
By those who see with their eyes closed
You’ll know me by my black telescope.”
With import and meaning.
The record ends with the relatively straightforward jangle tune “Redeemed.” The words are fanciful in ways that would take too long to explain, but after all the psychedelic prog, the band finds one last way to surprise you, playing something with a very traditional sixties hippy sound that they twist into something delightfully grotesque.
When I am trying to get someone into Blue Oyster Cult, I do not start them with this album. It is wild and wonderful, but your first reaction may well be, “what the hell?” I implore you to keep listening, because this is some of the most innovative, thought-provoking and – yes – enjoyable music made in the past half-century. It is the redcap after the kiss – take it and see just how deep the rabbit-hole of this amazing band can go.
Best tracks: Transmaniacon MC, I’m on the Lamb But I Ain’t no Sheep, Then Came the Last Days of May, Stairway to the Stars, Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll, Workshop of the Telescopes, Redeemed
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