Imaginos :Black & Silver

[John A Swartz]

Steve says:

>So you can stop getting high-handed about who has the "right" to
play guitar on a "BOC" album, because Imaginos ain't their album.

Which is too bad, because Imaginos is a better than anything that
BOC has done for 15 years.


Well, this kinda gets back to my thoughts of what the album "should
have" been - and that the original lineup should have all been involved
more.  Now, no doubt that most of the music was written by Al, so one
might argue that even if the original lineup did most of the tracks it
still wouldn't really be a BOC album.  BUT - how far of a stretch would
that have been from some of BOC's albums?  Look at how much Al contributed
on all BOC's previous albums - now look at how much Al and Joe together
contributed.  I just looked at the number of times a Bouchard was
credited to a song vs. no Bouchard being credited -- if I counted right,
44 out of 72 songs had a Bouchard song-writing credit from the first
album to FOUO (61%).  That percentage is higher if you only take into
account the first 3 albums - after that there was much more individual
contributions (starting with AOF) as each bandmember had his own multi-
track recorder and would bring his demos to the sessions.  Now, based
on what I've seen in Morning Final - typically Al and Joe would bring
the most material to these sessions.  So, not only did most of the material
used on BOC's albums come from Al and Joe, but most of the stuff that
*didn't* end up on the albums was also from Al and Joe.

O.K., what's my point?  Well, there is *some* credit to other BOC members
on some of the *Imaginos* songs -- Buck has some credit for "Magna of
Illusion" and "I Am The One...", and Eric has some credit for "Blue
Oyster Cult".  The rest, other than Pearlman, is credited to either Al
(mostly) or Joe.  But, what if the band as a whole had worked on these
songs in the studio together, instead of just re-doing what Al started.
Well, then perhaps there would be more credit to other members.  Now,
take some of the songs that fit in with *Imaginos* that were left off
the album - "Gil Blanco County", the original Stalk-Forrest Group
version, was credited to Allen Lanier, so he probably would have gotten
at least a partial writing credit for this (assuming the original SFG
credits were correct).  Also, "Flaming Telepaths", according to Morning
Final, was a song from the Imaginos story - Bloom and Buck also had
writing credits in the original version, and probably would have if
this song was included in the "complete" Imaginos.  So, my point is
that if this project went like I felt it "should have", the level of
participation from the non-Bouchards in the band would not have been
that much less than on BOC's other albums.  Oh, it would definitley
have been the most "Bouchard-heavy" BOC album, but I don't think it
would have been that outrageously so, especially when compared to the
first 3 albums.  And, I wouldn't have had a problem considering it a
"BOC" album, whereas the actual *Imaginos* we got can hardly be
considered such, as Steve and others have pointed out.

John