BOC: Summerdaze

[Andrew A. Apold]

Well, had about given up when I saw it in a box...

Anyways, here's what I think so far....

Cover:  Cool.  There's something to do with each
        band... a wolf for Steppenwolf, a reaper
        for BOC, some foghat guy, and for Travers...
        well, I imagine something else on there is
        for them.  The reaper has lightning behind
        him, and some lights in the sky, all appros
        for BOC....  There may or may not be a face
        in the clouds...


Inside:  Well, Steppenwolf's tracks are listed, they're
        all 1995 or later.  BOC is the only band that
        relied on "classics" in this CD... at least
        we get PUD.  And the picture of BOC is a
        relatively recent one, which is a relief given the
        number of latter-day BOC pictures on CDs
        that show Albert and Joe...  It appears to
        at least be after Eric got the trim on
        his Beard, but enough time for his and Buck's
        hair to grow out a bit again...  any guesses?

        The BOC tracks mention that Reaper and
        Godzilla are "performed live".  It doesn't
        mention any places or dates, presumably
        because they didn't want it known that
        these are from a few years ago.  Don't
        know if the line-up listed for BOC
        (Eric/Allen/Don/Danny Miranda/Bobby
         Rondinelli) is the same as back from
        those live tracks or from the studio
        PUD...


The Steppenwolf tracks all seem nice and competent,
nothing spectucular, but alright.... (I forced myself
to listen to them first while I looked over the cover)
They're all studio tracks, copyright in the last year
or two...

The PUD track is good, not used to it but I quite like
it.  Better than the Steppenwolf stuff at any rate...

The Reaper track...  Well it seems somewhat subdued
somehow, the vocals okay (better than Eric last year)
the drumming okay.....
but once it kicks in gear in the middle part, it's
much better.  It seemed the keyboards (I think Allen
but Eric seems to do a lot of that nowadays too) were
shadowing Don throughout much of the middle section,
which I didn't remember hearing before...  Don's
guitar is spectacular throughout...  There are a lot
of "thanks" at the end....

The Godzilla track has a nice intro from Eric, whose
done more variations on this than I care to guess...
This one comes off good, but there's something about
the way it's mixed (along with Reaper) that seems
annoying... other than that, it's a great track, but
still Godzilla....

Nothing wrong with that, but I really wish they'd used
Harvest or X'Ray or See you in Black to keep in line
with what everyone else was doing...  Miranda has a
Bass solo in this, like he usually does... but not
that long...  aha!  Eric confirmed my suspicions, the
line-up for the live tracks is not what is listed in
the CD, it's John Miccelli (sp?) on Drums here.  There's
a weird blank spot or two right about here, I'm almost
wondering if they didn't cut out a bit of a drum solo
in this track...

====
otherwise....

Foghat has live tracks also....   Where the BOC tracks
were mixed so the vocals sounded "echoy" (given the
volume they normally play at... it sounds a bit like
the live '1976 stuff when it was mostly on) and a bit
drowned out by the instruments, Foghat goes the other
way around, it's hard to hear the guitar clearly because
the vocals are mixed much louder.... I prefer the BOC mixing
 to this...  it sounds like listening to the guitar in another
room or something...  The second track doesn't do it as bad...


The Travers stuff stands up better than most of the other
stuff on this CD, IMO.

I want to qualify all this that I bought the CD during
my lunch break and was listening at work, so I couldn't
really turn it up, maybe a lot of what I'm saying will
be meaningless when played properly...

Anyways, still worth getting, since this may be the only
way we'll get Power Underneath Despair, which so far
I like the best of any track on the CD...






+---------------------------------------+
Andrew A. Apold (mordru at magg.net), aka  |
Roger Shrubstaff, Guildmaster of Reeves |
Barony of Silverwater (BL), Amtgard     |
aka Asgrim Dragon -=UDIC=-              |
+--------B-L-U-E--Ö-Y-S-T-E-R--C-U-L-T--+
 "I was corrupt before I had power!" - Random