p e n g u i n d e v i l

As the 1970’s stretched into the 1980’s and as the preteen becomes the teen, that is when the seedlings of musical taste really become planted. Though lots of bands and genres have come under my radar in the years since then, one band who had many early and influential appearances then was Blue Öyster Cult. While I don’t think I ever considered them the “American Black Sabbath” (I mean, come on… Black Sabbath?), they were still of monumental importance.

Now I am no collector, aficionado or expert about this band (though I did, in probably 1981 or 1982, see the film Black and Blue in the theater… With Let There be Rock, no less)… They became very key players in my 14-16 age world. There is Rock and then, there is Godzilla. From the opening massive guitar riffs, still timelessly some of the best laid to wax, to the back-n-forth Godzilla chanting, to the great lyrics, it sounded almost too good to be true. I recall that Godzilla was the first song with stereo effects that I remember listening to through headphones, which was amazing, it was also way better and more interesting than the eponymous movie and monster.

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

And when I was 16, my friend Kevin, somehow, had a VCR(!) and a video tape of Heavy Metal. A movie that I am still shocked that I do not own (well, on DVD… I own the VHS, of course). Not only is the movie a great, yet cornier, extension of the magazine featuring gratuitous cartoon nudity, excessive gory violence and some wonderfully fun storylines (including Richard Corben’s Den). I would watch the movie over and over again, in regular speed, frame-by-frame, whichever. But the soundtrack to the film? It is a monumental classic! Featuring “Heavy Metal” (Sammy Hagar’s only good song), Don Felder’s “Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride)” (even better than Hagar’s), some D-evo (one of my favorites bands at the time) and a couple of songs by the band Riggs (their great track “Radar Rider” was so damn good that I even went out and bought their album)… But the standout was BOC. “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”, not only was totally awesome, but it was co-written by Michael Moorcock, who was one of my three favorite writers at the time. The song is a slow one but it tells a nice little story and it remains a song that I feel the need to play fairly frequently (it is even in my top 50 plays iTunes list).

Aside from: the concert movie, the Heavy Metal soundtrack and Godzilla, what else? well, I had little interest in “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Burnin’ for You”, as they were a bit to poppy and, honestly, not sci-fi enough, for my tastes. But 1980 saw the release of Cultosaurus Erectus which had long been the only album of theirs that I owned. Now, this album certainly has some good songs, but the song “Black Blade” (written again with Michael Moorcock, and actually featuring his characters Elric and Stormbringer!) was just too good to not listen to constantly (now, 27 years later, it is at #14 on my all time iTunes playlist). Basically it tells the story of the sickly wizard king Elric, who doesn’t really mean much harm, but his sentient sword, which sucks souls to increase its own power, has a way about it to see that harm happens. Of course, this sends Elric’s fate down sad, blood stained paths. The lyrics sum up the great story, and they also sum up all that is grand about 1970’s rock. One thing missing from rock for the last few decades is the sci-fi/fantasy storytelling element. A lot of the soul went out of rock when that went away, and that’s why music can be so boring now. But Blue Öyster Cult were great purveyors of the stuff. Once Black Blade started off with:

I have this feeling that my luck is none too good
This sword here at my side don’t act the way it should
Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave
Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave

I knew exactly what that was about. It spoke right to my favorite fictional reality, and coupled with Godzilla and the Heavy Metal movie… Blue Öyster Cult was well established in my world.

Sadly, they followed that all to common path where they were quite prolific, then they got successful and became much less prolific and then, when their star dipped, they were “gone”. Another example of how success is bad for a career. Even a career of evil. They released 8 studio albums and 2 live albums in their first 10 years, and then after that last studio album made them biggie-big, there were only three studio albums and one more live album in the next ten years. Though, they weren’t totally gone. Even though they went as much as ten years without an LP, seemingly they continued touring most of those years, and I recall stories that even at their height of popularity they still snuck in small gigs under the Soft White Underbelly name. I recently read that Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma have performed upwards of 4000 shows! But then, it has been 40 years since the band got together.

Though I hadn’t spent anytime looking into anything new, I have continued to listen to those classic old tracks and pick up interesting looking LP’s when I come across them. It was just recently, after spending too much time listening to those same few tracks that I’ve been listening to forever, that I decided to try out their early albums. They are an interesting sound experience. Sounding heavily influenced by the 1960’s (though the earlier one seems less like the 60’s than the later one) and certainly with substantial helpings of Prog-rock, you can still feel the rock there. While the songs don’t hold as much rock as I would prefer, most of them have some good moments hidden in there, surrounded by a strange tasting progressive shell and some odd titles (“I’m On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep” and “She’s As Beautiful As A Foot” come to mind). While their debut is still my favorite of the oldies, Secret Treaties is growing on me… “ME 262” is the best track from it so far, and I may end up trying out their second album, Tyranny & Mutation next… I am also starting to get curious (even if it sounds scary, and to heck with Will Ferrell) about hearing their two newest albums, Heaven Forbid and The Curse of the Hidden Mirror, though the album covers sure pale in comparison to the early albums.

(the first penguindevil “by request” post…)