Michael Moorcock meets Blue Oyster Cult

Anyone else going to DragonCon this year? It's on my list of things to do, having never attended.
In the past, DragonCon has usually had some great musical acts lined up: Ghoul Town, Unknown Hinson, GWAR ... and this little oddity from back in the late '80s: Eric Blood of Blue Oyster Cult performing with author Michael Moorcock. The Elric author wrote the lyrics to three BOC songs, including Veteran of the Psychic Wars from the Heavy Metal soundtrack.
The magazine clipping is from an issue of Starlog, one of those classic movie journals that was (gasp!) published on actual paper.

Concept Albums: Imaginos

Released in 1988, Imaginos was the last album released by Blue Oyster Cult on CBS, the label that had been their home since their first release in 1972. But, despite the prominence of their name of the album cover, it's pretty easy to argue that Imaginos is a Blue Oyster Cult album in name only.

The story is fairly complicated and extremely plot heavy when compared to other narrative concept albums. Voodoo, European explorers, invisible gods and Lovecraftian fish cults linger at the fringes of a tale that surrounds "an actor in history," a man created by divine (or alien) forces to help shape the destiny of humanity. The punchline to his lifetime(s) of service is World War I, which begins after Imaginos captures a black mirror from a Mayan pyramid and brings it back to England where it slowly poison the dreams of Europe.

And, just in case you had no trouble following the story, the songs are all sequenced out of order to create a "random access myth." Any brain tumors you develop from trying to crack this story are your own problem.

That's the story presented on the album. The story behind the album is kind of unpleasant, too.

The members of Blue Oyster Cult are glorified guest stars on Imaginos. The basic tracks had been recorded by Albert Bouchard, BOC's original drummer (and primary songwriter,) for a possible solo album in the early '80s. Bouchard was kicked out of the band after the release of Fire of Unknown Origin in 1981 but continued to work on the solo project. When it became clear that CBS had no intention of releasing the album with Bouchard's vocals, they suggested he and Blue Oyster Cult reconcile and release the album together.

A few members of BOC recorded overdubs, mostly vocals on many (though not all) of the songs, as well as some new guitar tracks. Additional lead guitars were provided by a number of outside hands, including Robbie Kreiger of The Doors and Joe Satriani, who earned studio time to record Surfing with the Alien by cleaning up tracks for Imaginos. There were so many guitarists present on this album that they are credited under the banner of "The Guitar Orchestra of the State of Imaginos."

The new Bouchard/BOC partnership was brief. In the end Bouchard lost his solo album, Blue Oyster Cult ended their relationship with CBS and they all parted ways for good.

There's a great deal more to this story, some of which can be found on Wikipedia. There's more that might fall under the heading of "gossip" but those stories shouldn't be hard to find if you know which message boards to haunt.

Meanwhile, Albert Bouchard's Imaginos demos leaked onto the Internet a few years ago and they're worth checking out. Included are a few tracks that didn't make the final album, such as the marvelous (and Springsteen-esque) song The Girl That Love Made Blind. It's the closest thing you will ever hear to a Blue Oyster Cult Christmas song.

Track listing:
01 I Am the One You Warned Me Of
02 Imaginos
03 Gil Blanco County
04 Del Rio's Song
05 Blue Oyster Cult
06 Les Invisibles
07 The Girl That Love Made Blind
08 The Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria
09 In The Presence of Another World
10 Blue Oyster Cult (reprise)
11 Astronomy 1984
12 Magna of Illusion
13 Magna of Illusion Chorale

You can download the demo album from Megaupload here.

What's white and sells hamburgers?

Confessions of a Rocky Horror Virgin

So, I'm talking to Buck Dharma outside Rocky's nightclub in Charlotte, N.C., around 1993 ...

(This isn't the oddest story involving members of Blue Oyster Cult I could share with you. It's not even a story about BOC, so be patient.)

Rocky's used to be a nightclub on Independence Boulevard, an establishment that changed hands and names so often that I've lost track of its spiraling personality disorder. I think Public Enemy was on the bill the week before BOC played the club, which should give you an example of how effed up this place was. It changed names so often that it might not even have been called Rocky's when this story (kinda) begins.

I think it was the second or third time I saw Blue Oyster Cult, and afterward I worked up the nerve to flag down the band members afterward for some autographs and a quick chat. Next door was a theater (which was closed at that point) called the Silver Screen Cafe, which had been the best place in town for midnight movies. Frozen on its roadside sign were the last movies it had played before going out of business. One of them was Heavy Metal, for which BOC contributed a song.

I believe the Silver Screen Cafe was also the place to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I've been a Rocky Horror fan forever, but would you believe I've never had the chance to see it in an actual theater? Ever? The opportunity has literally never presented itself.

It's not that I've never been in the same town as a Rocky Horror screening. But there were always social barriers between me and the movie ... which is understandable when you're an underage military brat. Asking an adult to take me to something like Rocky Horror would have been like asking them to sit with me on a float at a Gay Pride Parade. It doesn't especially matter that I'm not gay, but since I didn't share the Universal Sense of Disgust(tm) that all right-thinking Americans were supposed to share, then I might as well have been. It was the 1980s, after all.

You can see how this situation actually made me more curious about the movie, and how its content so easily won me over.

I had spent most of my childhood wondering what was so appealing about that strange, perverse movie. I'd first seen ads for it in newspapers in the late 1970s in Virginia, then read an article about it in Starburst magazine after Shock Treatment was released. When my family moved to Charleston, S.C., the first thing we did after arriving was see The Terminator ... which was playing across the street from a theater showing Rocky Horror. I've got a memory for certain details that is a category 4 Rainman.

One birthday in Charleston, though, I found myself at a mall with a pocket full of cash. Some vendors were selling movie posters in the walkway and I picked up the original one-sheets for Back to the Future and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

And, at a record store, I bought The Rocky Horror Picture Show Audience Participation Album. I had NO idea what I was getting myself in for.

I grew up in the military, so I had heard profanity. I'd also heard a few Richard Pryor albums, as well as Eddie Murphy's first (and only?) two comedy albums. So, at age 14, there weren't a lot of words I'd hadn't heard.

But there was a feeling of chaos on the Rocky Horror album that was a little terrifying to me. In a good way. By this point I enjoyed a good audience response to a film because that sense of energy is contagious. It's the reason we watch movies together.

The Rocky Horror recording sounded like outright anarchy, though. Only it wasn't. While everyone was screaming their lungs out, they seemed to be doing so in chorus with each other. And it was hilarious.

For parental security reasons I had to listen to this album with headphones on. I was also left wondering about some of the gags that obviously involved something on-screen which, of course, I couldn't see on a record. But I was intrigued and have loved the movie ever since ... even if I didn't see it until the inevitable home video release around 1990.

Pop Art: From my personal stash

Eric Bloom, circa 1971, as drawn by Dan Brereton.
For more info about this sketch, see this post.

Pop Art: From my personal stash

Don't Fear the Reaper, by Dan Brereton. The year I got this I was getting sketches of musicians, among them Eric Bloom of Blue Oyster Cult. I left my sketch book with Dan and, when I got it back, he tossed in this extra drawing for free. Turns out Dan was also a BOC fan.

I'll post the Eric Bloom sketch at a later date. It's pretty terrific.
Meanwhile, enjoy this video from Blue Oyster Cult.