Oddly Melodious

Posted by TFG on August 20th, 2007

7 Responses to “Oddly Melodious”

1. otis Says:
   August 20th, 2007 at 11:11 pm

   there you are, pooka shells on, butt cut with wings wearing hair , “Lets Get Down” t-shirt logo , smoking a doobie, drinking Coors, working at Macdonalds and thinking this is as good as it gits. And you may have been right

2. jdallen Says:
   August 21st, 2007 at 7:09 am

   Oddly enough, one of my grandson’s favorite tunes in my ancient arsenal. Next to “409″, of course.

3. Kramer Says:
   August 21st, 2007 at 1:31 pm

   back when KZEW was a radical voice of the younger generation.

4. Phelps Says:
   August 21st, 2007 at 2:05 pm

   I miss the Zoo and the old Eagle.

5. fool Says:
   August 24th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

   I disagree. BOC were highly sophisticated and quite funny. You really had to listen hard to “get it,” but as is the usual case with bands of this kind, most of those spinning their discs back in that day were shallow, callow youths (and the majority of them stoned, to boot).

   From a blurb about the band on Rhapsody:

   Heavy friggin’ rock from one of the weirdest bands in history.

   Blue Oyster Cult are all about the early days of heavy metal, before blurry tempos and dog-whistle vocals. You always get the feeling that the joke is on you with BOC, since these are college-educated smart-asses and fringe members of the Patti Smith literary scene singing about truly dumb stuff: Joan Crawford, Japanese monster movies, UFO’s and the Grim Reaper.

   Getting their start in 1972, BOC were among the first bands on the American Metal bandwagon. They’ve always been tough to nail down, walking a fine line between big guitar indulgence and pure sarcasm.

   Guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser’s cocky, mullet-headed leads (especially in the live version of “Godzilla” on Some Enchanted Evening) squawk and squiggle with a protean rock power coupled with an uncharacteristic (for Metal) economy. Their best songs always take that Metal cliche to an unbelievable extreme.

   The final, mock-classical minutes of “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” may have lost their pasquinade punch in the subsequent years of the song’s perpetual rotation, but the joke is there in the bombast of those diagonal basslines and the trilling, frantic lead — the song can go no further at that point, the band having taken it as far as good (or bad, really) taste will allow, and they put on the brakes in the infinitesimal moment before they rock themselves right off the cliff. That’s a great moment in rock history and almost nobody got it.

6. TFG Says:
   August 24th, 2007 at 9:29 pm

   I seriously didn’t mean to imply that they weren’t. I mean, look at Buck in that gold lame muscle shirt in this video wooing the chick. Look at all the MTV tropes that they trash to pieces in it. Yet, the music is still very damn good.

   And I’ll always have the fan-boy love the triple guitar attack. Skynyrd comes to mind here, natch.

7. otis Says:
   August 25th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

   He picks up a bus and he throws it back down as he makes his way to the center of town

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