Here’s a question for you trivia buffs: how many drummers have left the Blue Oyster Cult fold since the departure of original drummer Albert Bouchard in 1981? The answer: seven. That’s enough drummers to form a drum circle in any city park. Shit, BOC’s run through more drummers than Spinal Tap.
But that’s the way it goes with bands on the downslide—original members split and replacements come and go, until the elevator stops on the bottom floor and it’s empty. Hell, Lynyrd Skynyrd doesn’t have any original band members left—just a tooth. Nobody knows which original member the tooth belonged to, but it sits on a monitor at every live show, not contributing much musically but proving that some connection with the original band still exists.
Blue Oyster Cult has yet to plumb such depths: the band may have come down in the world since its heyday of laser shows and limousines, but at least its two most important original members (singer/guitarists Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser and Eric Bloom) remain on board. Still, it’s sad to witness a band’s decline and fall, especially when that band is Blue Oyster Cult, one of the world’s rarest entities—a heavy metal outfit with a sense of humor.
A quick history: BOC released its eponymous first album in 1972 and, despite lukewarm sales, critics creamed over it: Village Voice scribe Robert Christgau went so far as to call it “the tightest and most musical hard rock record since—dare I say it—Who’s Next.” Subsequent albums sold better, but it wasn’t until 1976’s Agents of Fortune and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” that the band found themselves bona fide superstars. Unfortunately, follow-up Spectres didn’t sell as well, beginning a commercial freefall that continued largely unabated until 2001’s Curse of the Hidden Mirror, lackluster sales of which led BOC’s record label to give it the bum’s rush. By that time the band had pretty much abandoned its baroque sound and obscurantist lyrical predilections in favor of straightforward pop rock songs in a bid for MTV airplay.
I said earlier that Blue Oyster Cult had a sense of humor. In fact I would go further, and argue that BOC’s whole career was a practical joke, and a great one at that. Of course, not everybody saw it that way. Growing up, I had friends who seemed to believe that Blue Oyster Cult was, well, a real cult. And who took the band’s supernatural preoccupations and intimations of evil at face value. The proof was in songs such as “Career of Evil” and “Hot Rails to Hell,” not to mention the invocation to “Lucifer the Light” at the end of “7 Screaming Diz Busters.” Besides, if they weren’t evil, what were they doing posing next to a Nazi jet fighter on the cover of Secret Treaties? Then there was “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” which according to urban legend inspired lovelorn teenagers to fulfill suicide pacts from Wichita to Weehawken.
Those friends of mine were full of it, of course. As Eric Bloom sings on “Flaming Telepaths,” “The joke’s on you.” But for a long time, I shared one fatal misconception with them: I thought Blue Oyster Cult was in earnest. But what strikes me now is that, while BOC played it with a straight face, it was all shtick—a bunch of nice Long Island boys play-acting with Nazism, Satanism, and alien contacts. Even the most cursory examination of the band’s lyrics –“Hot Rails to Hell,” for example, turns out to be about an uncomfortably hot subway ride, and “The Red and the Black” is an homage to, of all things, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—reveals they were playing it tongue in cheek. Add to that the fact that one of the Cult’s many lyricists was Richard Meltzer, a Crawdaddy! writer and notorious prankster not given to taking anything seriously—he’s the genius behind “She’s as Beautiul as a Foot” off the band’s debut album—and a good argument can be made that Blue Oyster Cult was a brilliant shuck.
BOC hasn’t recorded an album since 2001’s Curse of the Hidden Mirror, and in effect has become a full-time touring outfit. They made a stop at the State Theatre in Falls Church on Saturday, December 8 as part of what they’re calling their “40th Anniversary Tour.” In addition to Dharma and Bloom, the band’s current lineup features Jules Radino on drums and percussion, Richie Castellano on keyboards, guitar, and vocals, and Kasim Sulton on bass.
I wish I could say I was blown away, but I found the show to be a disappointment, a fact that can be explained with two simple words: song selection. Instead of focusing on the classic songs of the golden age from their first album to Agents of Fortune—songs such as “This Ain’t the Summer of Love,” “Astronomy,” “The Red and the Black,” “E.T.I. (Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence),” “Stairway to the Stars,” and “Cities on Flame with Rock’n’Roll,” just to name a few—BOC perversely chose to perform numbers recorded when they were well past their creative prime. What, for example, possessed them to play the mediocre “Dancin’ in the Ruins” from 1985’s abysmal Club Ninja is beyond me. The same goes for such second-raters as “Goin’ Through the Motions”—which couldn’t even be saved by an Ian Hunter co-writer’s credit—“Shooting Shark,” “The Vigil,” and “Black Blade.” Why, they even played a song, “Summa Cum Laude,” that never got beyond the demo stage and was written exclusively for, but never made it onto, the soundtrack of a 1984 film called Teachers. And as part of the encore yet.
Of course they played the hits: “Don’t Fear the Reaper”—yes, the cowbell REALLY is that loud—“Burnin’ for You,” and “Godzilla.” The audience wouldn’t have let them out alive if they hadn’t. But in another bizarre move that left my head reeling, they chose to interrupt “Godzilla” with a long interlude during which they played excerpts from hits by bassist Kasim Sulton’s former bands—such as “I Don’t Won’t to Work” by Utopia, “I Love Rock and Roll” by Joan Jett, and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf. As if this wasn’t annoying enough, the band then left the stage for a 5-minute bass solo by Sulton followed by—I swear to God—a 10-minute drum solo by Jules Radino. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where there are drum solos, and I don’t want my children to grow up in a world where there are drum solos, and it was all I could do not to scream, “Cease this abomination!”
The show did have its high moments. BOC opened with, as was to be expected, “R.U. Ready 2 Rock,” a big dumb wonderful call to rock arms that makes up with sheer enthusiasm and power chords what it lacks in depth. Other highlights included “Career of Evil,” with its ominous guitar riff and cool chorus. Why, not even its typically obtuse lyrics by Patti Smith (“I’d like your blue eyed horseshoe/I’d like your emerald horny toad”) could ruin it. Also excellent was “Me262,” which Buck Dharma introduced by saying, “This song goes the whole way back to World War II.” BOC’s song about the Nazi jet fighter—a high-octane number and guitar showpiece—opens with the campy lyrics, “Goering’s on the phone to Freiburg/Say’s Willie’s done quite a job/Hitler’s on the phone from Berlin/Say’s I’m gonna make you a star.” Last but not least there was the excellent show closer “Hot Rails to Hell,” which with its power chords and cool 50s guitar riff by Buck Dharma demonstrated that BOC is still a tight and formidable rock outfit.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the evening came during the beginning of “Golden Age of Leather,” when the whole band sang, “Our best years have passed us by.” Rock’n’roll is a cruel mistress, and nobody must know that better than Blue Oyster Cult. Still, they’re survivors, and they show no signs of giving up the ship. Here’s betting that they’ll be around for a 50th Anniversary Tour. Let’s just hope their only surviving member isn’t a tooth.
