BOC: Binghamton

[Nick English]

Sadly, I must report that Sat. nite's show in Bing was probably the
worst BOC gig I've seen. That doesn't mean it was necessarily
bad...or that it was ALL bad...it just didn't live up to other shows
I've seen.

The club was packed, but it's tiny. We're talkin' a couple hundred
people tops. I thought the acoustics were total crap.

Eric is singing everything differently than he used to. I haven't
seen a show in about two years, so this took me way off guard when I
first started trying to sing along with him. Since I have absolutely
no grasp of musical terminology, this may not make any sense, but it
seems like the variation in his voice comes at the points where he
would normally be belting it out...like he's trying something new to
lessen the strain or something...I don't know. I suppose I could get
used to it...maybe eventually like it better...but on first listen it
just sounded weird.

The worst part of it all was that the show lasted just a tad longer
than 60 minutes! When I heard Reaper I couldn't believe it! Then they
only did one encore...D&S. And again, Eric's singing just didn't do
it justice.

I'm not really sure what this has to do with the length of BOC's set,
but it's pretty interesting: The opening band, Triple-X, were doin'
their thing...getting closer and closer to 11:30-ish. Then, after
they finished a song, the PA promptly cut out on them and started
playing that "in-between-bands filler music". The guys looked a
little surprised, and the singer announced, "Okay, I guess we're
done. Stick around for BOC". I don't think there were any hard
feelings or anything, because the rest of the band also stayed for
BOC and seemed to be really enjoying it.

Anyway, enough of the negatives. Here's a couple things I liked:

Flaming Telepaths. Great to hear this song live. Love the strobe
effect during the "Joke's on you" part.

Joan Crawford is back in! Also of note: They didn't play that little
sound FX cluster with the car crashes, trumpets, alarm clocks, etc.
They did, however, play the whispering "Christina...mother's home!"

Bass solo during Godzilla:  Danny's good! It's nice to see him get to
show off a little...although the back-to-back bass 'n' drum solos
were maybe a bit much.

HF tunes in the show were the standard SYIB, HM, LFM. Eric was funny
introducing Live for Me. He said, "You should be hearing this one on
the radio right now...if not, call up the station and say, "Hey, let
me hear that new fuckin' BOC song!" BTW, when I was pulling into
Binghamton Friday afternoon, I heard it on KGB : )

THE NEW HEAVEN FORBID T-SHIRTS! I wasn't planning on spending, but
when I saw it, I had to buy it. Wearing it right now, in fact! It's
cool. Black, of course. The front is plain except for the left
breast, which has a picture of the lady screaming from the HF cover,
and it says "Blue Oyster Cult, Heaven Forbid Tour 1998". The back has
a big picture of an eye, with the symbol in the middle. Has the same
words as front, only bigger, obviously.

In closing, not a total waste of a night or anything...but a slight
let-down in comparison with other shows. I sort of got the impression
that their hearts weren't really in it. I'm still totally psyched
about the new shirt, though!

--  Nick