It's OK (loved Black Blade back in the days), and so is FOUO (I find it slightly stronger, but both are bearing the Birch mark), but their next one (RBN) is really very very average
Yeah, DFTR was played to death over the airwaves, so if I never hear it again in my life, I'll be fine. Always preferred their next big hit Godzilla
AOF is a classic album according to the masses but it's more like some crazy AOR phenomenum that sent teenage boys into a frenzy.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
This thread needs “More Cowbell”!
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Agents of Fortune is a masterpiece, but it's not there only one. Great, great band.
I think Tattoo Vampire is the weak track, not Debbie Denise. DD is a gentle album closer and there's nothing wrong with that.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Nobody's mentioned my favorite of their albums, Imaginos. It's a solid album, with several interesting guests (e.g., Joe Satriani), and the songwriting is as good as ever they got.
In my opinion.
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
Fire Of Unknown had some great songs on it, particularly Joan Crawford, Veteran Of The Psychic Wars, and Burning For You. I liked Fire Of Unknown Origin itself and Don't Your Back too.
As for Revolution By Night, yeah, that was a weird record. The best song is Shooting Shark, another of their songs that had Patti Smith lyrics (though Buck says what happened was he was going through some old papers and found a couple pages of unused lyrics of hers that he had, so he wrote music to go with it). It also has the distinction of having a future American Idol judge on it (yep, from Jean-Luc Ponty to BOC to Journey to American Idol, Randy Jackson has quite the career).
Beyond that, I like Take Me Away (co-written by Aldo Nova), Veins, Shadow Of California, and Light Years Of Love. The other songs are not bad, but they're not as good as those tunes.
Godzilla, (Don't Fear) The Reaper and Burnin' For You are all overplayed to death, but see, one of the nice things about not listening to commercial radio anymore is, you generaly don't hear those songs, unless they pop in a movie or a TV show somewhere, I don't hear the songs unless I put the respective album on. So I'm not bothered by hearing something "too much".Yeah, DFTR was played to death over the airwaves, so if I never hear it again in my life, I'll be fine. Always preferred their next big hit Godzilla
I happen to like Agents Of FOrtune a lot. This Ain't The Summer Of Love, Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Morning Final, Tenderloin, and Debbie Denise are all great songs. They had a habit of coming up with really great songs to end records with, stuff you know they'd probably never play live, but they were great songs to end an LP with, e.g. Redeemed, Quick Lime Girl, Astronomy, Debbie Denise, Nosferatu, etc.AOF is a classic album according to the masses but it's more like some crazy AOR phenomenum that sent teenage boys into a frenzy.
As for Mirrors, that's one of the ones I never got around to getting. I borrowed it from the library when I was like 9 years old, and I think I made a cassette from it, but I have literally no memory of what was on that record, beyond Dr Music (which I know from it's appearance on Extraterrestrial Live and it was in the setlist both times I saw them in the mid 90's) and In Thee (which I've really only gotten to know in the last few years).
The problem with Imaginos is, it's based on an epic piece of prose that Sandy Pearlman wrote back in the late 60's. As such, they really should have done that album in the early 70's, like as their second or third album, instead of just pulling a few pages here and there. Imaginos was apparently begun as an Albert Bouchard solo album, but it somehow got hijacked by the rest of the band. I remember a review at the time saying, "This could have been a GREAT Albert Bouchard solo album, but instead, it's a just ok BOC record". I seem to recall Sandy and Albert both continued to work on further re-imaginings of Imaginos during the 90's, but I presume they never really got anywhere with those projects.Nobody's mentioned my favorite of their albums, Imaginos. It's a solid album, with several interesting guests (e.g., Joe Satriani), and the songwriting is as good as ever they got.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The BOC “Imaginos” album is good, but it could have been so much better. The original concept was meant to be a 3-disc concept piece that incorporated all of what was eventually released as “Imaginos” along with many tracks from previous albums and a few unreleased ones. I think it could have been an epic project had it been done right. I mean, “Secret Treaties” is mostly made up of songs from the original “Imaginos” saga. As it ended up, I like the “Imaginos” album, but not sure why they mixed up the songs out of order from the storyline to make it a rather confusing mish mash.
I love every BOC album except Imaginos. I could only get through it once. I liked Astronomy (again). Enjoy every minute of it!
I did some checking for the 2012 reunion show. Trader's Den said the band requested that the audience recording of it be removed from circulation. Perhaps this means that they did have the tapes rolling that night but the question is, will it see the light of day?
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I dunno what happened with the record we eventually got. But as I said, they really should have just committed to doing the full blown Imaginos project in the early 70's. Like, the first three albums should have been Imaginos. Or maybe once they were they were arena headliners and "could do whatever they wanted", they should have done it then. According to Wikipedia, the band refused to commit to doing it properly at the time, though they continued to draw from the Imaginos storyline as recently as the two albums that immediately preceded Imaginos. Apparently, Shadow Of California off The Revolution By Night and When The War Comes off Club Ninja also relate to Imaginos. If you ask me, they waited way too long to do Imaginos.
What “Imaginos” should have been according to Al:
Disc 1 Imaginos:
Les Invisibles
Imaginos
Del Rio’s Song
Blue Oyster Cult
Astronomy
I Am The One You Warned Me Of
In The Presence Of Another World
The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle At Weissiera
Magna Of Illusion
Disc 2 Bombs Over Germany :
Workshop Of The Telescopes
The Girl That Love Made Blind
ME 262
The Red And The Black
Cities On Flame
Shadow Of California
Half Life Time
Veteran Of The Psychic Wars
Career Of Evil
Disc 3: The Mutant Reformation:
Take Me Away
The Vigil
E.T.I.
R U Ready To Rock
Heavy Metal
Flaming Telepaths
Gil Blanco County
Redeemed
I have also seen another version of this somewhere on the net that included "When The War Comes" from "Club Ninja", but I don't remember where it fit in. Seems like there were one or two other songs as well.
Last edited by SteveSly; 03-01-2020 at 12:18 PM.
I've seen that list before and attempted to make a compilation but there is such divergence in volume levels, mixing and production aesthetic from the '70s to '80s that I lost the drive to do so.
I seem to like "Revolution By Night" better than mos fans. For me it is pretty solid for the most part. "Club Ninja" was a big disappointment, although there are a few great songs on it like "Perfect Water". I always thought the single "Dancing In The Ruins" should have been a hit.
If one had access to master tapes before whatever production acoutrema du jour was slapped onto it (which they do but have no real reason to do so) I guess you could make a decent comp. Otherwise you can't remove or counter affect the reverb that dominates the '80s stuff. To make every song match up you're going to wind up adding reverb to the '70s stuff. And after listening to the track list above in order, I'm not sure it's all that cohesive anyway.
I like a few songs off RbN but find the rest tedious. Club Ninja was their answer to the metal wave that dominated radio and MTV. Dancing In The Ruins was the only single I remember hearing. It was also the only video I remember seeing.
And yes, Perfect Water is a stone cold Cult classic for sure.
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