Blue Oyster Cult. Where Did You Come in?

I was eighteen visiting my 27 year old cousin. He had both the first two albums. I stayed up most of the night listening to them nonstop using headphones. He came down from his bedroom more than once telling me to keep it down, just because I was pounding the armchair I was sitting in and he had to go to work the next day. What an ahole. No actually, he's still my favorite cousin.

 

Came in with the first album. Checked out with the appalling Mirrors.

 

I wanted both their hits, so wound up with ET Live, which was their current album. I spent the rest of the year drawing hooked crosses on all my notebooks.

 

Agree but checked back in with the later albums, they are quite good. Mirrors has a couple decent tracks but Dr. Music and the “Cars rip off” are embarrassing IMO.

 

Glad you came around to Spectres. I recall your original sentiment being prevalent at its time of release, but less because it was a drop-off from AOF and more because it put the nail in the coffin for those who were smitten with the first three albums.

I liked Spectres immediately. The middle of the first side and the two closing tracks are The Cult at the peak of their powers as far as I'm concerned.

 

Come darkness, you'll see him again.

 

These are my favourites:

Godzilla

Death Valley Nights

Fireworks

Celestial The Queen

I Love The Night

Nosferatu

 

My introduction was my older brother's On Your Feet Or On Your Knees album, around '77 or '78, which he cranked liberally. I got Agents of Fortune in '78, one of my first non-Beatles albums. Spectres was their current album, and my brother had just seen them in concert on that tour. Some Enchanted Evening came out shortly thereafter (while I was still in 6th grade) and I bought that one next. Both of those (Agents & Some Enchanted) are sentimental favorites to this day, even if Reaper kinda gives me the creeps now...didn't know what it was about when I was a kid.

They played Baltimore bars as Soft White Underbelly a couple times in the 80's, but all-ages shows were inconceivable in Maryland, alas. Finally got to see them in '93 ~ with my older brother : ) and our other brother. Was right up front. They were fantastic.

 

Especially Fire of Unknown Origin, it's easily one of the best they ever made.

 

I don't play On Your Feet much these days but it's still a special album to me.

 

I seem to remember Rolling Stone only liking the early period, any capitulation didn't last.

 

With "On Your Feet Or On Your Knees" BOC got the Great White Hope treatment from parts of the UK music press and IIRC from Nicky Horne on Capital Radio (he was the conservative Londoner's John Peel in the early > mid 70s but still played some decent stuff up to 1977) .

So I went and bought that, persevered and kind of liked it but they only really clicked for me with "Agents Of Fortune" but I never bought another record until much later.

I hadn't listened to the older catalogue albums until about 12 years ago when Julian Cope curated the track listing for a theoretical BOC compilation. That showed me the extent to which "On Your Feet" had done them a disservice.

He also did one for early Kiss and in another context he talks about seeing Kiss for the first time and makes the observation that Dolls fans should listen to Kiss to see how it's really done. All in the songs apparently.

"In Your Dreams Or In My Hole"
Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Unsung | Album of the Month | Blue Oyster Cult - In Your Dreams Or In My Hole

"Kiss Krossword"
Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Unsung | Album of the Month | Kiss - Krossword

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Julian Cope | Q&A 2000Ce | Favourite Music

 

I'm not sure at this point if my memory is faltering .. but I believe that BOC went undetected on my radar until "Don't Fear the Reaper" hit the FM radio waves. I remember having an 8-track tape of Agents of Fortune, which I played quite a bit of in those days, especially "Debbie Denise" which I talked my first band into learning and we played it in front of an audience just once at a backyard birthday party. I always get a little choked up when I hear that song now, remembering summer days of youth so fleeting.
Patti Smith had a hand in writing "Debbie Denise", and coincidentally, it was her radio hit "Because The Night" that happens to have been the last song that old band of mine ever played together.

 

I loved "Veteran Of The Psychic Wars" on the "Heavy Metal" soundtrack album. I also had "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" on some Columbia compilation double-LP.
A friend of mine loved "Veteran" too and bought a couple of 80s BÖC albums that I copied to cassettes. Later I bought all albums on CD.

 

I started and ended with Tyranny And Mutation.
No other BOC album topped it.

 

I didn’t really come IN in until a few years ago.

Growing up, they were omnipresent on rock radio in my area so I was well versed in Don’t Fear the Reaper et al long before I was out of junior high.

Over the years, I had a few comps, etc but never really took the plunge for whatever reason - until I started reading some
BOC threads here - that has happened to me a few times, get inspired by the thread to give a band another look from a different angle and I’ve come away glad I did it.

I got the Columbia box a few years ago and have come to appreciate something about each album. If forced to choose, I would lean heavily towards the first large handful of albums.

 

one of my best friends, growing up, was eric bloom's nephew. (still is!) so naturally i was in with the first album. my friend got us comp tickets to see the new year's show at the academy of music, and somehow our parents let us go in to the city to see it. we were 15. teenage lust, iggy and the stooges, and boc. plus an unadvertised opening act that neither of us had heard of -- i remember saying "who the heck is 'kiss'?"

years later i had the chance to chat with albert bouchard about that show. he said the band was hanging out backstage when all of a sudden their roadie came in and said "hey guys, i don't know how to tell you this, but they guy from the opening act just set his own hair on fire." albert was like, "#@&*!!!!! how are we gonna follow that?!?!?"

 

i still love the band. a local library had eric in for an interview a few weeks ago, right in his home town. if you look up the port washington library youtube channel you can find it. recommended.

 

Tyranny And Mutation. A pre-recorded cassette from Columbia Record and Tape Club (as Columbia House was know as back then).

Blew my young music mind away it did....

 

Fall of 2014 for me so I am a total newbie
Don’t know why I never actively pursued getting into their catalogue prior to this because as a really young kid in the 80’s I was always enamoured by their album covers when I would see them in record stores (specifically Agents, Fire Of Unknown Origins, and Some Enchanted Evening)... just as I was with album covers by Priest, Maiden, Cooper, KISS, AC/DC etc which I would always buy with my “allowance” and lunch money. But at the time I never ended up biting the bullet with BOC. My older neighbor even had a cool tour shirt from ‘82/83 that he would always wear.
Anyway, as I got into my early teens in the late 80s I became familiar with the “hits” Reaper, Burnin For You, and Godzilla...but that is where it ended for me. I think because as a 13 yr old I was so into image conscious bands of the time (Bon Jovi, Crue, KISS, Poison, Guns etc) BOC was just not on my radar.
Fast forward to fall of 2014 and I walked into my local Indie music store and the music they were playing got my attention... it was clearly something I had never heard before, but the style and vocals were familiar. It was proggy, almost a hint of jazz fusion, but it rocked and peaked my interest. It was Black Blade from Cultosaurus. I immediately purchased it along with Fire of Unknown Origins (as it was all they had in stock). I have been hooked ever since, but my interest stops at E.T Live and I own everything up to that record (on CD AND vinyl)
I even purchased the book written by Martin Popoff called Secrets Revealed. A great read which gives a fantastic breakdown and analysis of every album.
So....a long winded response to say I jumped on board with Cultosaurus in 2014. Better late than never.

 

Apparently (per Albert Bouchard in Martin Popoff's book) that Cars rip off song was made as a joke and not intended to be on the album, but there was a wee bit of a mixup in communication.

 

Started with Tyranny and Mutation when it was released, probably because of something I read, then backtracked to the debut. Bought everything through Fire of Unknown Origin shortly after release, but became disenchanted with the MOR trend. BOC were one of my top five artists for a while. I even did the "send SASE for BOC lyrics" thing, and still have that dot matrix printout of the lyrics through Secret Treaties. Who else could get you to bang your head while looking up a reference from the lyrics in the dictionary?

 

AoF when it was released (still a Desert Island Disc for me) then bought almost everything after as they came out.
Didn’t go backwards to the first three until the Legacy remastes arrived in the early 2000’s

 

Fire Of Unknown Origin - still think it's their best (despite of Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver).

 

I was given "Some Enchanted Evening" many years ago and loved it. Then when I was in law school... I took a course that Sandy Pearlman co-taught (strange but true)... and dived deeper into their catalogue. Great band.