BOC: Feet/Knees ...stuff

[Richard Manny]

-----Original Message-----
From: BREVARD, Adrian R. <abrevard at SHL.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list BOC-L <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Date: Friday, December 04, 1998 3:15 PM
Subject: BOC: Feet/Knees ...stuff


>Does anybody know what the standard opening song was circa 74-75? Stairways
>perhaps?  I know I saw them in '75 and do recall them playing everything
off
>Feet/Knees but I'll be damned if I can recall what the opener was.
>
>Listening to Subhuman with headphones I found a few things I never really
>noticed before.
>
>Best Bass I've ever heard from Joe.  Phenomenal on this track.
>
>Eric is playing some pretty good stun guitar, vocals are definitely top
>notch...


This is the song that got me hooked on BOC.  Let me ask a question of the
group.  Do you remember the days when you could go to the local department
or variety store, look through the 8 tracks (yes, this dates me), find a
tape that looked cool, and then get excited when you got home and played it
because the music was inventive, interesting, even enrapturing?  This is
what On your feet or on your knees did for me.  The Subhuman was a
remarkable choice to start the album, enough of a jazzy-feel with a solid
foundation in intelligent rock and roll to have prevented the song from
becoming "fusion jazz" pastiche.  The drums, bass, keyboards, vocals and
lead guitar were remarkable.  Everything worked.  This is one of my top
three BOC songs; Astronomy (ST version) and Flaming Telepaths are the other
two.

Now, as to the openers for that era--I saw BOC as the penultimate band in an
Atlanta Stadium show that featured, .38 Special, Bob Seeger and the Silver
Bullet Band, Johnny and Edgar Winter, BOC, and KISS (IMHO, this KISS
performance did more to turn me off to KISS than any other single thing that
they have ever done, intentional or unintentional.  There performance
depended on excessive pyro, excessive volume, excessive delays, excessive
staging, and excessive attitude.  Missing was musical skills.  They missed
many notes, cues, and were off key.)   BOC came on just as it began to rain
and this caused the group to get shocked as they played.  They had to exit
the stage once and Albert, bless his heart, stayed on stage and drummed
until the weather cleared enough to the techs to mop up the stage.  BOC
opened with Harvester of Eyes (the SEE era version, sans synthesizer intro).
The year was '76 (I think).

When I next saw them in Atlanta for the SEE recording session at the Fox
theater, they opened with RU Ready to Rock.  Stairway to the Stars followed.
I have long expected that BOC had hoped to get more usable songs for SEE
from that show, but some jerk kept firing bottle rockets at the stage.  At
least once, either Eric or Buck had to use their guitars as a shield from
these missiles.  Finally, Eric stopped the show and lambasted the jerk for
firing the bottle rockets.  In fact, he encouraged the person standing next
to the culprit to "Say, Sir, you are a f*cking asshole.  Then punch him in
the f*cking mouth."  Had any of the people been close enough, we would have
happily, if not earlier obliged.

Richard