Blue Öyster Cult [Bonus Tracks] [Remaster] (CD - 1972)

Blue Oyster Cult: Eric Bloom (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser (vocals, guitar); Joe Bouchard (vocals, bass); Albert Bouchard (vocals, drums); Allan Lanier (guitar, keyboards).

Producers: Murray Krugman, Sandy Pearlman.

Reissue producer: Bruce Dickinson.

Recorded at The Warehouse, New York, New York in October 1971. Originally released on Columbia (31063). Includes liner notes by Lenny Kaye.

Digitally remastered by Vic Anesini (Sony Music, New York, New York).

Personnel: Eric Bloom (vocals, guitar, electric guitar, keyboards); Albert Bouchard (vocals, guitar, harmonica, drums); Joe Bouchard (vocals, guitar, piano); Donald Roeser (vocals, guitar, keyboards, synthesizer); Allen Lanier (vocals, guitar, keyboards).

Liner Note Author: Lenny Kaye.

Recording information: CBS Studio B, NY (07/21/1969-10/??/1971); The Warehouse, NY (07/21/1969-10/??/1971).

Photographer: Sandy Speiser.

Although Long Island, N.Y.'s Blue Oyster Cult would become one of the top rock bands of the '70s with such metallic radio hits as "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Godzilla," the band began as a spacey psychedelic band, as evidenced on the group's self-titled debut from 1972. While distorted guitar riffs hint at the band's future hard-rocking direction, the songs have a dreamy quality and sport such mysterious titles as "Before the Kiss, a Redcap" and "She's as Beautiful as a Foot." But Blue Oyster Cult's first three releases, (1973's TYRANNY AND MUTATION, 1974's SECRET TREATIES, and their self-titled debut), proved to be an important influence on a wide range of future bands, such as punkers the Minutemen and headbangers Metallica.

While several tracks are well known to most B.O.C. fans (such as the rockers "Transmaniacon MC" and "Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll"), the more obscure selections are just as exceptional. The aforementioned "She's as Beautiful as a Foot" is downright eerie, while "I'm on the Lamb, But I Ain't No Sheep" is an early version of the band's later standard "The Red and the Black." BLUE OYSTER CULT remains one of hard rock's finest debuts.

Blue Öyster Cult's debut album provided the missing link between the heavy, blues-based rock of the late '60s and the bombastic heavy metal of the '70s and beyond. You could hear major influences like Steppenwolf, with its melodic, aggressive rock, the Rolling Stones (post-1965), and even boogie bands like Canned Heat in their sound. But BÖC streamlined the approach, picked up the tempo, overlaid the guitars, brought the rhythm section up in the mix, and de-emphasized the blues, giving the music a machinelike propulsion. Manager/co-producer Sandy Pearlman (who co-wrote five songs) and lyricist Richard Meltzer (who co-wrote two) may have seen the group as a vehicle for their "clever" (in fact, pretentious) lyrics, but in fact lead vocalist Eric Bloom was the weakest element in the band, and you couldn't make out much of what he had to say over guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser's furious power chording. What you could seemed to express some sort of mythology -- or demonology; future metal bands would fill their songs with just such half-baked philosophies. Blue Öyster Cult was not quite full-fledged heavy metal: the production was too compressed, the playing too light and energetic. But it was the sound of something new and different in the world of hard rock. [The 2001 CD reissue on Columbia/Legacy adds four previously unreleased demos from 1969, when they were known as Soft White Underbelly, including a cover of Bobby Freeman's "Betty Lou's Got a New Pair of Shoes."] ~ William Ruhlmann minimize