Songs that Set the Hook

[Jon Jarrett]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Nick English wrote:

> I'll third this motion, but I still think SYIB is
> good.  It's not perfect, but it's head and shoulders
> above Shirley's other contributions.
>
> I think a lot of BOC fans -- myself included here --
> are in denial about how inadequate HF is as a Blue
> Oyster Cult album.  But we can hardly be blamed for
> wanting to like it!!!

        I do agree that Shirley by and large shouldn't have. His lyrics
are really inadequate, and how the band can find it in themselves to use
them beats me. But anyway. _Heaven Forbid_ is I think not so bad as you
make out. I wasn't very impressed with when I first got it, although even
then I thought it was pretty good. As far as I was concerned, it only had
to be better than their last one, which considering that if you left
_Imaginos_ aside meant it only had to beat _Club Ninja_ was easy enough. I
ranked it like this - what did it beat - and at the time, I reckoned it
also beat _Mirrors_ and _Spectres_ and at first tied with _Revolution By
Night_ until I played that one so much trying to decide that I eventually
gave up and ranked it above.

        My reasoning goes something like this. None of these albums really
have the *magic* of a good BOC release when everything was firing on all
cylinders, or even when it wasn't, on FoUO, but the goods still came up
anyway. RbN does feel like an album, rather than just a collection of
songs, to me, and I like that - HF doesn't, really, and there's too little
of it anyway. On the other hand it has two great songs, `Harvest Moon' and
`Cold Gray Light of Dawn', two damn good ones, SYIB and `Hammer Back', and
I'll give a certificate of health to `Power Underneath Despair' despite
the 2-Unlimited chorus, and to `Still Burnin'' because it's quite fun. I
don't think any of the three I put below HF can match that - _Spectres_,
though the production really does kill it for me, has `Godzilla' and
perhaps `Golden Age' - then there's `Nosferatu' and I think `Fireworks'
and none of the rest of it really makes me want to listen. Some of it I
actively dislike, which on HF I can only say of `Live For Me', which has
one of Shirley's better lyrics but really gets on my nerves. _Mirrors_ has
`The Vigil', which is marvellous, and `Dr. Music' which is good but I
could pretty much forget everything else. And again, there are things on
it I really don't like, though not as badly as _Spectres_, and again, the
production saps it, in a different way but no less devitalising. And on
_Club Ninja_ there are only the half-good songs. I quite like `Dancing in
the Ruins' though I used to hate it, and `Perfect Water' is interesting at
least - `White Flags' is OK, and I would relly like `Beat 'Em Up' but for
the lyrics which do show that the band could have done worse than Shirley
for HF. On the other hand `Madness to the Method' is lameness itself,
`Shadow Warrior' just never gets into any gear where it can exert traction
upon me, and `Make Rock Not War'... well, the title says it all. While I'm
slagging off CN I should also reserve some bile especially for `When the
War Comes', on the grounds that it begins with what may be one of the
world's all-time riffs, which when I heard it first time made me think of
old tired soldiers giving their all in the last battle, and then it does
that godsawful upward key shift into Buck's singing range and spouts some
of the most meaningless claptrap in the guise of revealed wisdom that
exists in rock. Someone should rescue that riff and build the song the way
it ought to have been.

        So, I think HF stands up well to any of those, and knocks CN to
the floor laughing at it, indeed. Try this sort of comparison against any
of the others and the totals of great songs, good songs and OK songs start
to even up and if you go far enough back there just aren't any bad
songs. So the others will tend to beat it, for me, but I'd say 12th place
out of 15 is still a lot better than it could have been and with BOC the
average quality and basic musicianship is still so high that makes it a
pretty good record. It is on the other hand still shamefully short and I'm
convinced `In Thee' is only there because of that and because otherwise
Allen would have no credits.

        Given that `X-Ray Eyes' would be a psych-pop song in anyone else's
hands I think they should try re-recording an SFG number or two just for
variety. Or even the SWU stuff. Could they do that legally? I know Elektra
own the only actual recordings of it but as long as they pay appropriate
royalties they could surely do a `cover' of it. Anyone better at this
stuff than I am? Yours,
                        Jon

--
 |  Jon Jarrett (01223 741219)           jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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