Album of the Day 1/9/11

OK, mini-vacation is over, we’re firing up the engines again. To get things started, as we do every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues, all the way to #1. Sunday’s is #751:

Blue Oyster Cult – Tyranny and Mutation

The artsiest and most ornate metal band, at least until the new wave of British metal of the late 70s/early 80s, Blue Oyster Cult blended elegant classical flourishes and epic grandeur into their riff-rocking roar and stomp. Sarcastic, vicious and sometimes satirical, they collaborated with Patti Smith and were a considerable influence on punk, new wave and goth music, covered both by Radio Birdman and the Minutemen. This is their best studio album, from 1973. It kicks off with the split-second precise tripletracked riffage of The Red and the Black, followed by the gorgeously crescendoing O.D.’d on Life Itself. Hot Rails to Hell, Baby Ice Dog and Teen Archer are the heavy tracks here; 7 Screaming Diz-Busters is something of an epic, with a deliciously evil siren of an outro. Mistress of the Salmon Salt is catchy and matter-of-factly macabre; the best song here is the ghoulishly watery Wings Wetted Down, punctuated by a beautifully dark chorus-pedal solo by lead guitarist Buck Dharma. Everything the band released  through the live On Your Feet or On Your Knees album is worth hearing; forty years after they started, they’re still touring with a slightly revamped lineup and can still put on a good show. Here’s a random torrent.

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Concert Review from the Archives: Blue Oyster Cult at Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, Long Island 6/13/97

[Editor’s note – out of town for the weekend, we’re mining the archive as we used to do during slow periods, our first year. This doesn’t qualify as a NYC concert since it was out in Westbury but here it is anyway]

Spur of the moment decision: ten minutes after dinner, we were on the LIRR on a cruise to nowhere. The crowd was as expected: kids from the smoking section in high school, twenty years later, with bigger beer guts and more cellulite. Pat Travers opened and only got about 25 minutes ending with Snorting Whiskey and Drinking Cocaine – he actually has good technique and a sense of melody, but bends every note he plays gratuitously like Jimmy Page at his most, well, gratuitous. Foghat followed and got a standing ovation. A long, long cover of Sweet Home Chicago (looks like they didn’t have enough tunes for a whole set), led into a wildly applauded Fool for the City and Slow Ride: enough mindless, audibly painful guitar masturbation for a lifetime. How someone as cool as Lynda Barry can like a band this awful stretches the imagination. Blue Oyster Cult vacillated between boredom and inspiration: half of lead guitarist Buck Dharma’s solos went nowhere. But the best wailed, hard. This particular version of the group has a new rhythm section (the Bouchard brothers haven’t been in this unit in awhile), but Dharma, guitarist/keyboardist Allan Lanier and frontman Eric Bloom are still in the band and game to be plying the nostalgia circuit. Bloom, in fact made it a point to mention how they were playing their old stomping ground, lapsing into his best Lawn Guyland accent with the knowing authenticity of someone who’d had the misfortune to grow up here. They opened with a swinging version of the art-rock anthem Stairway to the Stars opened, later ripping through a fast take on the drug dealer murder ballad Then Came the Last Days of May, where the band picked up the tempo and went almost doublespeed on the break before the last verse. The instrumental Buck’s Boogie screamed, like ZZ Top if they’d been born in Europe (impossible, but just try to imagine it) and featured a pleasantly brief drum solo; Cities on Flame and Godzilla were metal by the numbers as expected. The powerpop smash Burning for You was absolutely smoking; Dharma’s solo started wildly metallic, then suddenly note for note with the furious version on the live On Your Feet or On Your Knees album. Without much fanfare, Don’t Fear the Reaper closed the show, stripped down and a bit cursory. Since the venue was on a tight schedule, there no encores; Steppenwolf or whatever’s left of them were next so we were out of there after Sookie Sookie and two other awful tunes.

Song of the Day 6/21/09

Happy solstice! Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Sunday’s song is #402:

Blue Oyster Cult – Nosferatu

Gorgeous, majestic, epic grand guignol vampire anthem from the legendary 70s artsy metal band, marvelously lowlit by Allen Lanier’s darkly graceful piano cascades. From the otherwise forgettable 1979 Spectres lp; mp3s abound.

Song of the Day 6/19/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Friday’s song is #404:

Blue Oyster Cult – Wings Wetted Down

Throughout the 1970s, this artsy Long Island band was arguably the best heavy metal act on the planet. Augmenting their richly layered guitar attack with classically inflected piano, they bridged the gap between boorish Led Zep stomp and ornate Pink Floyd artistry with a menace rarely found in bands of the era. This is a quiet, methodical, absolutely bloodcurdling midtempo ballad from the classic Tyranny and Mutation album, 1973. Buck Dharma’s watery guitar solo through a Leslie organ speaker is a classic. Mp3s are everywhere.

Song of the Day 2/6/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Friday’s is #537:

Blue Oyster Cult – Joan Crawford

Surreal, bizarrely comedic art-rock masterpiece about what happens when Joan Crawford rises from the grave: ornate classical piano intro, all kinds of weird effects (“Christina! Mother’s home!”) and a killer bassline by lead guitarist Buck Dharma. From the 1981 lp Fire of Unknown Origin, typically found in the dollar bins wherever vinyl is sold; also available wherever there are mp3s.