BOC: A "dizzying excursion into Pearlman's world"

[Ted Jackson]

>>> cea at CARLAZ.COM 9/14/2004 4:28:50 AM >>>
jswartz at mitre.org wrote:
> Personally, I was much more put off by some of the comments
> of Pearlman, Meltzer, and Krugman.  Of course, I wasn't in the
studio
> with you guys, but I still think they take way too much credit for
the
> band's successes, and have no qualms about pointing out how if
everyone
> had just listened to them, the band would have had fewer failures.

I can't remember whether Pearlman, Meltzer, and Krugman were still
much
involved by the 80s,

They weren't hugely involved after Secret Treaties.  that might tell us

something!



 but whatever advice was being taken in the wake of
(or contributing to) the Bouchard Bros. various departures was clearly
the wrong advice, whether artistic or commercial.

True, but Al was sacked, and Joe stayed on several years, so he either
tacitly agreed with the move, or decided it was in his best interest
to
stay in an established band, even if they did screw over his brother.
Can't blame him, really.  He had a family to support...


 Up to and including
_FoUO_ ... well, there were stronger and weaker moments (artistic and
commercial), but that's true for any band.  But it's only up to and
including _FoUO_ that the work is indelibly branded in my mind as
"proper BOC".  Thereafter its divided between "Imaginos" (which is
cool,
but not really BOC) and "BOC no longer on message" :/

Some fans would argue that the band was never the same after
 Secret Treaties.  Not sure I agree with it.  I'd put the the turning
point after Spectres, even though the band still recorded some great
stuff after that.  the hallmark of the Pearlman era was consistency.
The early discs were uniformly perfect, wheras the later stuff often
included songs that might not have appeared on the earlier albums.
Once Al was fired, the quality dropped even more.  You do the math!


I don't know if the trail-off after _FoUO_ is wholly due to a lack of
Bouchard and/or Pearlman/Meltzer/Krugman involvement, but its an
evident
trail-off to me. Not that all the BOC output post-FoUO is bad; there
are
definitely some good songs (I will, for example, defend "Take Me Away"

Yeah, I liked a lot of stuff of RBN, but the writing was on the
wall...


to the death and I even enjoyed some of the Bad Channels stuff :) but,
on the whole, it's been ... less than stellar ;)


Most songwriters have a finite number of ideas [Al B. not included!]
I
think after you've been doing it a while, it's hard to maintain
creativity...

theo