Tonight We Ride

So, for my first actual post about music, I figured I would tackle the title and address of this blog. Alert Blue Oyster Cult fans will recognize that said labels both come from, well, Blue Oyster Cult. Why the fascination with azure mollusk fanatics? Well, they were one of the first bands that I sort of stumbled upon following the inevitable "wait, Dave Matthews Band and Hootie & The Blowfish sort of suck, I wonder what else is out there" revelation. I mean, besides the obvious stuff like Black Sabbath and Guns and Roses. This was a band that I found myself! Well, I probably found it through hearing the song "Godzilla" in a great music video on the late, lamented TNT show Monster Vision, but you get the idea. That lead me to believe that they were a joke band, but I purchased the excellent two-disc anthology Workshop of the Telescopes on a whim, and loved it. Hell, by this point I've worn out the second disc, the one with all their poppy stuff on it. Basically, what I love about Blue Oyster Cult is that they were probably the smartest 70s hard rock/proto-metal band. Alice Cooper was clever, sure, Black Sabbath were scary, Deep Purple more overdriven, KISS bigger dumber fun, Led Zeppelin just more, but BOC were the most articulate and intelligent lyricists. Plus, they had great tunes and hooks, definitely a bonus. It probably helped that they had music critics and brilliant sci-fi/fantasy author Michael Moorcock writing for them. Unfortunately, they were probably too smart for their own good, to the point of obtuseness. They should have put on makeup and sung about girls instead. Probably would've been much bigger.

Relatively recently, Columbia started re-issuing their albums, so I decided to start with Agents of Fortune, i.e. the one with "Don't Fear the Reaper." I don't have much to say about this record that Chuck Eddy didn't cover in his essential book Stairway to Hell: the 500 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, but I highly recommend it. Spring for the reissue, which has an extremely catchy early version of "Fire of Unknown Origin," and a pre-cowbell, hippie-dippy demo of the megahit mentioned above. The cowbell was, indeed, an excellent choice.

(And please don't leave "More cowbell!" comments. They are neither clever nor funny.)