BOC: Sunday Times review

[Jason Scruton]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2279023.html


The Review: Still rocking ­ and still naff

David Pollock
Blue Oyster Cult, The Ferry, Glasgow, Tue

Usually when old bands of a particular vintage come around to play again, 
there is a certain level of nudging and winking between those on stage and 
their audience. “We know we looked and sounded kind of daft all those years 
ago,” their demeanour implies, “but you were young with us, weren’t you? 
You understood what it was all about.”

Blue Oyster Cult’s knowing asides and smirking glances at each other 
indicate that they are all too aware of how open to parody they are. Their 
thinking must be: if anyone’s going to make money from it, it might as well 
be us.

It’s difficult to imagine when you look at the embarrassing richness of 
theme and genre in popular music today, but once Blue Oyster Cult were 
considered cutting-edge. Kind of like an American riposte to Black Sabbath, 
they married a few meaty guitar riffs to some luddite goth poetry and sold 
by the barrowload. Nice work if you can get it, but when does such youthful 
foolishness grow tired? Apparently never, at least for longtime Blue Oyster 
Cult members Eric Bloom, Allen Lanier and Buck Dharma (or Donald Roeser as 
his mother named him).

Another tacitly accepted truth of classic bands is that the most successful 
look least like their own road crew.

So, while you couldn’t imagine Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger getting their 
hands dirty, Bloom and Dharma are hard to distinguish from the guys tuning 
up onstage before they appear.

Only with their sunglasses on ­ The Ferry has exterior windows, but we’re 
hardly blinded by the glare ­ do the Cultists make a stab at adopting a 
rock-star persona. Their much younger bassist, Richie Castellano, follows 
their lead with the facial furniture and plays while wearing a retching 
expression that suggests he may have food lodged in his throat. Despite the 
urge to offer a Heimlich manoeuvre, his gurning, duckwalking enthusiasm is 
a nice balance to the elder members of the band’s seen-it-all-before 
nonchalance.

As for the music, it takes a sense of humour to appreciate. Then Came the 
Last Days of May, says Bloom,

is a true story about some guys from New York who rented a car and drove 
out west to buy some drugs. There, he says, they “met a fate they didn’t 
deserve”.

It’s an appropriately foreboding song, but with stumbling lyrics such as: 
“They all had the money they had/ Money they hoped would take them very far.”

This Ain’t the Summer of Love includes the line, “This ain’t the garden of 
Eden/There ain’t no angels above”, and it’s one of many references to 
angels, demons and fantastical tableaus that wouldn’t appear out of place 
in a Michael Moorcock novel.

For those not overly impressed by such dope-shrouded musings, the music 
outweighs the naff lyrics by at least a 2:1 ratio. That’s thanks to the 
customary five-minute guitar solo at the end of every other song, as Bloom 
and Castellano hilariously strafe the crowd with imaginary machine-gun fire 
from their instruments. Truly, Blue Oyster Cult world is a boy’s playground.

Still, Godzilla is at least meant to be humorous ­ with its meaty “there 
goes Tokyo” chorus ­ while the obligatory (Don’t Fear) The Reaper was Blue 
Oyster Cult’s one stumble across a great song.

In the pompously titled Golden Age of Leather, however, another dodgy lyric 
stands as the most revealing: “Raise your can of beer on high/And seal your 
fate forever/Our best years have passed us by/The golden age of leather.” 
I’ll drink to that.