Cass King & the Cassettes: At Least 75% Queer

Cass King & the Next Right Thing was a great band name. It had a pleasant rhyme to it, and an appealing logic, that maybe you don’t need to know what the ultimate destination is, as long as you keep doing the next right thing.

Alas, King and her bandmates – including her partner, guitarist John Woods, who is also King’s counterpoint in the sex-themed comedic musical duo the Wet Spots  – felt that, though they also loved the old name, they had to change it.

“People kept getting it wrong, in bad ways,” King explains, as part of an email exchange earlier this week. “Like, ‘The Next Best Thing’. Not the kind of thing you want to see on a marquee!”

Indeed! All hail, then, the new band name, arrived at with some consultation on social media: Cass King & the Cassettes – which, namewise, is pretty much just as fun, and who, musically, offer the same mix of inspired, sometimes even punky covers and soulful originals.

In case you haven't caught her band before, to give you some idea what to expect from seeing her live, King – who also sings in four -woman acapella soul group called 'What It Is!" – lists Mavis Staples, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and Prince as big influences; you can catch her doing a sultry rendition of Nina Simone’s “Do I Move You” on Youtube. 

And you’ve really missed something if you haven’t seen Cass King belting out Joe Jackson’s assault on consumerism, “I’m the Man.” (That's a link to Jackson doing it live, not King). It’s a fantastic song, and her band, also including Brendan Mooney on bass and Adrian Buckley on drums, rip through it with ferocity. Best of all, it involves a pleasant incongruity, seeing a woman singing a song from such a determinedly male point of view, where the chorus, again and again, is “I’m the man.”

“‘I'm the Man’ is still one of our favourite songs to play,” King enthuses. “Joe Jackson is such a beast of a songwriter, he has a way of capturing a character in just a few words.”

She illustrates with a snippet from “Is She Really Going Out With Him,” off Jackson’s 1979 debut Look Sharp!: "’Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street / From my window I'm staring as my coffee goes cold’...John and I have such admiration for him. He's like a little punk who went to music school; he makes such interesting musical choices but maintains that critical edge. We're kinda like that, except none of us went to music school.”

“I’m the Man” also relates to one of the Cassettes’ new originals, which you can preview a snippet of on the band’s website: “Nice Guy.” This one amps up the Motown elements of King’s vocal delivery, and musically, is a bit more typical of the Cassettes’ style than the ferocious punkiness of the Joe Jackson tune. But as King notes, it has some things in common with the Jackson song; lyrically, “they are both character songs, where the singer is taking on a character not necessarily their own.”

You only get a tease of it from the sample, but it’s about “a phenomenon that the internet has dubbed the ‘Nice Guy’ (see r/niceguys). A ‘Nice Guy’ is a guy whose interest in being a nice guy ends when he is denied the attentions of a woman to whom he feels entitled.”

“Nice Guys” shows you how much intelligence is at work behind King’s music. As she puts it, “It’s one of those songs that seems simple but doesn't really follow the form you think it's going to follow.” On the other hand, “it's got those ‘gimme a hey / gimme a ho’ good old 70's call and response vibes.” You can dance and think at the same time, without having to cringe at lyrics that hint at awful, creepy attitudes.

“So many of the songs that we love just don't stand up lyrically in the 21st century,” King observes. “For example, the song I just referenced, Joe Jackson's 'Is She Really Going Out With Him’, epitomizes a kind of surly male entitlement that's unsettling, if not downright creepy… We wrote a song that calls that phenomenon out by representing it in a bratty, sinister way.”

Cass King and the Next Right Thing by Sharon Steele

All of which brings us round to a discussion of gender politics and feminism. King is honoured to have recently performed at the 16^th Annual Dyke March and Festival, and often posts on Facebook in support of the LGBTQ2S+ community. “I love the politics of the Dyke march,” she says. “Our band appears pretty hetero, but we are at least 75% queer.”

So what does she make of the small but vehement portion of society – lately focused, in Vancouver, on SOGI 1 2 3 – which seems hell bent on denying queer and trans people an equal place in society?

“Okay, bear with me on this one,” she replies. “Gender is part of the big package labeled 'Identity' to which we cling. When we allow ourselves to transcend rigid ideas around such an important aspect of our 'personality', we come face to face with the great unknowability of all things. We are not our 'identity', our 'personalities' change, the whole shebang can change in an instant and we have to come to terms with the essential groundlessness of all things. People by and large hate this. We want to believe in our stories. The enfranchisement and visibility of trans folks just absolutely shakes some people to the core. These folks just can't hang with trans rights because it makes them question their own reality, and they hate that. And that's fine as long as they don't infringe on trans rights to exist. And frankly they are used to doing that as a matter of course, so asserting trans rights will feel like an aggression. It's like taking the stick away from the three year old who shouldn't have been hitting his sister with it in the first place.” 

King is anything but preachy in concert, but she does touch on these topics in her songwriting. “I think the job of an artist is to connect,” she offers. “If that singer is connecting with their audience, all the power to them. Our lyrics are overtly feminist but we tend towards a character representation instead of calling the behaviour out overtly. For example, we have a song written from the point of view of the 'Thing in the Room' that nobody wants to talk about, and one in the works about queer kids who are rejected by their families and have to find a home somewhere else, with people who love them.”

Cass King by Bob Hanham

As a regular performer at Vancouver Bowie Balls, King was around when feminists of a different stripe tried on social media to shut down the burlesque portion of one show; but that’s not really where she’s coming from, she writes: “I love burlesque. It's very proletariat, inclusive, and body positive.  My feminism includes sex workers and trans folks!” (King’s other projects include occasionally serving as a guest singer with the Kitty Nights Hot & Heavy band, sometimes accompanying burlesque performances; we’re not sure if she’s involved in this clip,  but it gives you a pretty good idea just how fun burlesque can be.) “I think if the artist says that they feel empowered by the art, who are we to impose our moral reservations? In burlesque especially, we can't even loftily propose that they are trapped by all the money they are making. This is community theatre, man. Let's not forget that the female body has a female mind and a female will attached to it, and as such is entitled to female freedom of agency.”

So what songs has she done at the Bowie Balls? “I wheedled my way in to the first one as part of Orchard Pinkish's band, thanks to the wonderful Tony Lee,” where King, with an all-star band, led rousing versions of “Fame” and “Heroes,” if memory serves. She describes that first show – which she notes took place only a few weeks after Bowie had died – as being like “a collective howl of grief from our musical community and the audience. That year, Space Junk performed ‘Blackstar,’ which was so fresh for all of us. We were united in our love and our pain, in tribute to a great artist. I think that show retains its magic because it's not just a tribute night, it's something deeper.”

Since then, King and her band have covered “Changes,” “I’m Afraid of Americans,” “Wild is the Wind,” “Rebel Rebel,” and many others at each Bowie Ball that’s taken place. She recently posted the Cassettes’ reading of “Under Pressure” on Youtube, featuring a host of local guests. 

For King - besides the above other "real standout Bowie Ball moments were Preston and Fletcher singing 'Life on Mars.' accompanying themselves on a single piano, and Rebel Priest singing 'Under Pressure' with Bloody Betty Bathory."

Returning to the band’s own original songs, how are they written?

“If you ask John, he will say that he writes a great track and then I come in and shit all over it, and then we write the hook. We both love harmony. John has a real rock and pop groove, coupled with a love of clever lyrics. I have a funk and R&B groove, with a sense for hooks, rhythm, and raw emotion. So there's some tension there, always, but we trust each other.”

King is particularly proud, she tells me, "of our song 'Beautiful Today'. It's a song about being in a relationship that's perpetually ending, and how beautiful it can be in the moment. It was one of those songs that just floated up out of the piano. (I don't play the piano, so you know this one really wanted to be born!) At this point we didn't even really have a band. But I brought it to John and to our friend Scott Fletcher, and it made both those monster songwriters kinda verklempt, so I knew I had to pursue it.:

That song, presumably, will be on their new album coming out in October, called Naked on the Dance Floor – a title apparently based on a true story! Meantime, people who haven’t caught her can see her at the Fairview, August 10th, where the Cassettes share a bill with B52s cover band Rawk Lobster.

Any other final observations about her music?

“It's very liberating to start a rock band in your forties,” King answers. “I recommend it.”


Cass King and the Cassettes play the Fairview with Rawk Lobster on Saturday, August 10th. Event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/640860099746765/

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood - a spoiler-free review (sort of), with apologies to Robert Dayton

Well, THAT was interesting.

Before I talk about Quentin Tarantino's new movie, I should get a few things out of the way:

1. If it is a film you are inclined to see, it is a film worth seeing without spoilers, so as not to take away from the ending, so I will endeavor to write this in a spoiler-free way. But this is hard to do, because:

2. Some of you - the ones who are like me, who have seen a billion movies and thought about them more than is considered normal - will, when you are warned by everyone under the sun that you should see a film without spoilers, so as not to ruin the ending, have a habit of almost reflexively guessing, as soon as you receive that warning, what the ending is. So in a way, the very word "spoiler" is a spoiler, just like being told a film has a twist ending; if you went into The Sixth Sense, for example, knowing there would be a twist, there's only one twist that makes sense; the only way to truly be surprised by the film would be to see it without knowing anything at all.

But for those of you who are like me, who think you have already guessed what happens at the end of Tarantino's new film, well - (spoiler alert?) you may be right,* but you should still see the film without knowing the exact details. Don't read the Variety article about the ending of the film, for example. You may want to avoid discussions, too, about the morality of the film's ultimate message, like the one I'm going to engage in after point 4, below. But you should, regardless of whatever I say, if you ever liked or still want to like the cinema of Quentin Tarantino - if you're not, like the Soska sisters, kind of in boycott mode because of his associations with Harvey Weinstein or his endangerment of Uma Thurman - see the film; I think I can promise you that, if you have liked what he does in the past, you will find a LOT of pleasure in what he does here.

3. ...and I say that as someone who has not taken unforced pleasure in a film by Quentin Tarantino in some time. I have tried to make myself like various of his films, have watched several of them more than once, and have even under some pressure (some internal, since I want to like stuff, you know?) convinced myself that yes, Inglourious Basterds and Death Proof and Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight have merits; but even if I can enjoy bits of all of these films, I have loved nothing he has done since Jackie Brown - still my favourite of his films, which I saw about half a dozen times theatrically first run and have watched a couple dozen times since. I haven't even really liked anything he's done since the Kill Bill movies - his most trivial entertainment, in many ways, but definitely films I was entertained by. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is by far his most pleasurable, fully-realized, fun-to-watch movie since those days, and a film I think people of a like mind will enjoy as much as I did. It is filled with love for the popular culture of yore; it is beautifully shot; and it has a very entertaining storyline, with an unhurried, confident pace that I appreciated. If I were to name my top three Tarantino films, in terms just of the pleasure I derived from watching it, I think it would be #2 after Jackie Brown. I really enjoyed seeing it tonight, and will probably see it again.

4. That said, enjoying something is not enough to proclaim its merits.

There's a passage in Robin Wood's Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan, and Beyond where he talks about the "issue" of pleasure. It occurs on page 146 of the revised edition. The book is a critique of the trends Wood saw emerging in cinema in the 1980's, which served, instead of digging into social problems as American cinema of the 1970's had done, to "paper over the cracks," to turn cinema into a mechanism for reassurance and entertainment. He has plenty of criticism of the cinema of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and their importance in creating a cinema of reactionary spectacle, reducing its viewers to a sort of childishness. It's very relevant to contemporary cinema, since what you get at the multiplex on any given day these days is exactly what he is railing against, but made even louder, emptier, and more obnoxious. But even though he does not respect or support the project of filmmakers like Lucas and Spielberg, he makes a very interesting confession: he still enjoys their films, and notes that it is "particularly hard to discuss them seriously":

The films themselves set up a deliberate resistance: they are so insistently not serious, so knowing about their own escapist fantasy/ pure entertainment nature, and they consistently invite the audience's complicity in this. To raise serious objections to them is to run the risk of looking a fool (they're "just entertainment," after all) or worse, a spoilsport (they're "such fun"). I had better confess at once that I enjoy the Star Wars films well enough: I get moderately excited, laugh a bit, even brush back a tear at the happy endings, all right on cue: they work, they are extremely efficient. But just what do we mean when we say, "they work"? They work because their workings correspond to the workings of our own social construction. I claim no exemption from this. I enjoy being reconstructed as a child, surrendering to the reactivation of a set of values and structures my adult self has long since repudiated, I am not immune to the blandishments of reassurance. Pleasure itself, in fact, is patently ideological. We may be born with the desire for pleasure, but the actual gratifications of the desire are of necessity culturally determined, a product of our social conditioning. Pleasure, then, can never be taken for granted while we wish to remain adult; it isn't sacrosanct, purely natural and spontaneous, beyond analysis which spoils it (on many levels, it is imperative our pleasure be spoiled). The pleasure offered by the Star Wars films corresponds very closely to our basic conditioning; it is extremely reactionary, as all mindless and automatic pleasure tends to be. The finer pleasures are those we have to work for. 

Wood's criticism is pretty essential, even if you at times disagree with it (I once wrote an essay tackling his criticisms of David Cronenberg, where I disagreed with almost everything he said about Cronenberg's cinema; but in writing that essay, and in carefully reading his criticisms, I learned more about Cronenberg and his cinema than I ever got from reading the writing of any of Cronenberg's supporters). And of course, I am quoting this is because it is very, very relevant to the pleasure I just took at watching Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood.

If a film can be ruined for you by reactionary subtexts - if, for example, you had a problem with the fundamental racist subtexts of King Kong (so amplified in the Peter Jackson version, apparently unintentionally!) - or if you were (like Wood) disturbed by the apparent misogyny of The Brood - something I wish I could have gotten deeper into with Cronenberg, when I spoke to him - you might have some problems with Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. I've been enjoying reading Robert Dayton's comments on Facebook about the film, and how pissed off he was, ultimately, by what he took away as the message of the film, and I've got to acknowledge his points - that the film (ultimately, when you step back, having seen all of it) is "a 'guy' movie with cliched female characters and violence as a resolution." He also suggests (correctly I think) that a lot of Tarantino's decisions in the film are made in "response to his critics" - which is also my thought. There is a scene early on - as Dayton notes - where a woman's death is basically played for laughs. He has no problems making a hero of the man who kills her, and it's hard not to think of Uma Thurman, Harvey Weinstein, and such during these moments: "Sure, he/ I might have done some bad things, BUT..." He has another scene where a diatribe against the evils of Hollywood is put into the mouths of one of the murderous Manson girls. The film is a celebration of Hollywood, sure, but also a celebration of the most conservative side of Hollywood, with the Manson family being basically the only version of the counterculture given time on screen (there are no "good hippies" anywhere to be seen, and no one allowed to criticize our heroes or their values who isn't, transparently, a bitch or psychopath). In fact, there's no attempt at anything mature or considered; the more you think about the film, the more I suspect you will find it kind of contemptible, or at least deeply problematic.

But holy shit, it's entertaining to watch. That pleasure that Wood speaks of pours from every image. I think I have to still ultimately say no to the film, morally, politically, critically... but I have to admit, I loved the experience of watching it. I haven't had this much fun with a film whose politics I found fundamentally abhorrent I think since the last time I watched  a Charles Bronson film. This is, seriously, the best film that Quentin Tarantino has made since Jackie Brown, and even if you, too, can't ultimately get behind it, there's a very good chance you'll have fun watching it. (Even Robert Dayton admits to enjoying the first 40 minutes or so...).

I will now issue a single fatal spoiler, referring to the asterisk above. I will put a big picture of Robin Wood's book beforehand. It's a great book. If you want to protect yourself from the real spoiler in this article, do not read what is below the picture.

Ready?

Here goes (spoiler alert!):

*It's basically just Inglourious Basterds, with the Manson family as the Nazis; if that's what you immediately assumed would be the obvious surprise ending, yes, you are absolutely right. The film, just like the earlier one, rewrites history to provide us a happy ending, and it doesn't seem to do this with much in the way of irony or self-reflexivity; I don't think it's inviting us to, for example, ask about the way Hollywood lies to us about history, to reassure and comfort us; it is just lying to us about history, in a singularly shameless way, to reassure and comfort us, so we can be happy that Sharon Tate gets to have her baby and the bad guys get punished, without having even committed much in the way of a crime. The film is much more engagingly constructed than Inglourious Basterds, but it hinges on the same conceit. It would be particularly unfortunate if people saw the film without realizing what actually happened on Cielo Drive that night, since what you get in the film is complete and utter fiction, but... that's another topic. Presumably no one saw Inglorious Basterds who didn't realize Hitler was not machine-gunned by American Jews in a movie theatre, but I suspect a lot of people will enter this movie knowing very little about Charles Manson; they will leave knowing even less.

Note: the apology to Robert Dayton was simply because I used some of his words on Facebook without checking with him first, but if he minds, I'll write him out of this. I just wanted to tip my hat to him, and I agree with much of what he said.

(Edited to add: Mr. Dayton has said it's okay, and that he didn't just like the first 40 minutes, he loved them. His reactions are complicated, as are mine...)

(Also: jeez, you wonder what Roman Polanski will make of all this).

CBC Nooners: Cousin Harley

 Paul Pigat, by Allan MacInnis

So the CBC building at 700 Hamilton has been having these free noon-hour concerts. Yesterday, it was Cousin Harley, and apparently, if you catch the news spot about the event, I am prominently visible sitting in the crowd in my yellow Hawaiian shirt, in proximity to Bob Hanham, Mark Bandcouver Bignell, Erik Iversen, and other notables. I had ducked out on my lunch break to catch at least part of the set. Amusingly, my wife, visiting her parents last night, was most amused when suddenly the CBC was running a spot on the event: she was telling her parents we often go to see Cousin Harley, and that she thought I was going to attend, and then - the camera pans to the audience, and there I am, front and centre, in my loud yellow Hawaiian shirt (Bob Hanham and Erik Iversen were both also in Hawaiians but not quite as bright as mine). I can't find the clip online, but there's a video I shot of one of the songs, here, and I do briefly include myself (or at least my large bald head) when I pan the audience.

If you haven't caught Paul Pigat/ Cousin Harley before, and you like what you hear - and who amongst us does NOT like red hot rockabilly? - you're in luck; the Rickshaw will be hosting his 50th birthday event in September. Great live show; I've interviewed Pigat in the past, here, if you're curious. Seems like a great guy. BTW, for those (like Rob Matharu of he SLIP~ons) wondering what Paul's guitar is, he explained on Facebook that it's his "one of a kind Gretsch Synchroclub Which I designed with their master builder. I guess it’s kind of the prototype of my signature model that will probably never go into production." Pretty damn cool!

Cousin Harley, LtoR: Paul Pigat, Jesse Cahill, Keith Picot, by Allan MacInnis

Matters Manson

I have not yet seen Quentin Tarantino's new film. My fandom has had a rocky ride with him of late. I loved Reservoir Dogs, grew to love Pulp Fiction, and still think his best film is Jackie Brown, but (despite multiple attempts in most cases) have not fully enjoyed any of his movies since then; some have been amusing enough, like the Kill Bill films, but others (The Hateful Eight, which I wrote about here) have been a painful, if sometimes interesting, slog at best. Still, I am protecting myself from knowing too much about Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood; I am anticipating that it will in some way acknowledge aspects of the Me Too movement, the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a predator, and that whole thing about endangering Uma Thurman during the Kill Bill shoot - since all of these things connect with Hollywood and its excesses, in ways very relevant to QT's career. I am not (like some) planning to boycott the film, or to use it to trash Tarantino; I'll see it, and see where it goes.

In the run-up, however, I have been poking my nose into two things, a book that revisits the Manson murders and explores angles not included in Vincent Bugliosi's "official narrative." It's called Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, by Tom O'Neill and Dan Piepenbring (Guardian review here). I am only 100 pages in, and it's very interesting, well-written, and provocative. I never really bought Bugliosi's explanation for the murders - the idea that Manson wanted the Family to start a race war, then hide in the desert until whitey was decimated - since it sounds too much like wildly speculative, entertaining trash talk by acidheads, as interpreted by someone who had never even smoked grass. Turns out there are a lot of reasons to question that narrative, and the Bugliosi himself was livid about some of what O'Neill dug up in his research (the preface of the book involves Bugliosi threatening O'Neill with lawsuits or worse if certain things see the light of day). The more I read, the more I want to keep reading; it's a fairly gripping story, though I gather O'Neill does not emerge at the end with any one singular counter-narrative as to what actually happened.

Secondly, I encountered, last night, a very charming movie made with the involvement of Jay and Mark Duplass, called Manson Family Vacation. It queries the reasons why a certain type of misfit and weirdo gravitates towards Manson, and it's on Netflix now (here in Canada, anyhow; can't speak to elsewhere). It's a few years old, and made while Manson was still alive (featuring some footage of him talking, note). It is at times very funny, at times surprisingly touching, and throughout is low key and earnest and an embodiment of all the best values of mumblecore, the "movement" that the Duplass brothers emerged from.

Anyhow, for people who have not yet had a chance to see the Tarantino film, or who have seen it and are looking for related matters to entertain themselves with, O'Neill's book and the Manson Family Vacation movie are pretty entertaining.

That's all I wanted to say...

BOOK REVIEW: on track... Blue Öyster Cult every album every song, by Jacob Holm Lupo

[Note: written quickly and amply distracted, without adequate proofreading! Forgive me my imperfections, okay?]

I noticed the above book mentioned on the Blue Öyster Cult homepage, got excited, and eventually ordered it. It's going to take me awhile to really get around to reviewing it, below, but let me give you a hint where it's going: now that I have the book in front of me, and have read a few sections, I'm less excited by it than I was when I ordered it, and kinda bummed that this is the case.

Let me say, the desire to read it in the first place relates to the thought that I might someday write about the Blue Öyster Cult. This may not happen, because of several contingencies, from limited freetime to a sense of journalistic responsibility, which makes the project seem somewhat daunting. Part of the trouble is that the Blue Öyster Cult have already been written about a-plenty. For blogpieces like this, it is less of a big deal, but if I were going to actually talk to the band, I feel like I should at least read Martin Popoff's book about them (I have not, as yet, tho' am currently expecting it in my mailbox). I want to ask them questions that either a) they aren't sick of ("who is Susie?" Actually, I might ask that regardless) or b) the answers to which are not so widely known ("how was "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" recorded, for example, is one I would give a pass on asking, great as that song is, because there's plenty of information out there, even the original demo). It's all a lot of work, prepping for a "real" interview, y'know - even if there's a whole lot I don't really care to talk to the band about; what I'm interested in mostly is specific details about specific songs that I've wondered about since I was a kid, which just might be the sort of thing that they haven't been over-asked about, anyhow.

For example, take the Albert Bouchard composition "Monsters," maybe the hardest rocking, most entertaining track on Cultosaurus Erectus, with unexpectedly jazzy inserts and some of their hookiest-ever guitar riffs. As strong as the music is, for me, for this song, it's the lyrics that are the main draw: the story, as I read it, involves a group of bad guys and one bad girl who take off from earth in a rocketship. One of them, Joe, falls in love with the girl - but this doesn't play out so well, since the rest of the guys, maybe jealous of him, decide to "have her" - whether or not she consents is unclear, but there seems at least the possibility that this is a gang rape. As this is going on, Joe bursts into the room (having awoken "from a stupor," perhaps having been doped by his friends) and kills, not the other guys, but the girl, presumably because he blames her more than his friends.

There's a dozen things I'd like to know about this song. It relates to songs like "Transmaniacon MC," sung from the point of view of an imaginary evil biker gang, who represent the evil energies that emerged out of the Altamont concert, in that it is told from the point of view of the bad guys - and the very worst of the bad guys, the (presumed) rapists in the song. So where does the band's romanticization of criminals come from? Was there an actual story that this song was inspired by? Is it a rape, or an orgy, that Joe interrupts? Is there any non-coincidental aspect to the brother of the author of the song being also named Joe? If that makes the band the bad guys, who is - or was - Pasha? Is the band taking the point of view of the bad guys to criticize them - the song does describe the characters as "monsters," or at the very least as having monsters in their minds - but what about the band's apparent attraction to these characters?

It's all over "This Ain't the Summer of Love," too, which suggests a strong antipathy to the more naive or utopian elements of hippie culture, even if there's an interesting contradiction between that and the band's origins, with the Soft White Underbelly and the Stalk-Forrest Group, both of which are more heavily tinged to acid rock and psych-folk, with the latter even getting compared by some people to early Grateful Dead. Of course, that fits with the whole trajectory of what emerged from the 1960's culture, with music getting darker and heavier, but does the science fiction/ futuristic element of "Monsters" suggest that the band thinks that these things cannot ever be improved? Do they have a fairly dark vision of humanity's future - a world of overcrowding, pollution and starvation, with humanity, having learned nothing, only (like the characters in this song) setting off to new worlds to spread their evil further afield?

Now, that's all stuff I might ask Albert Bouchard, if I had his ear, except he's only one of the band's songwriters (and isn't even a regular member of the band anymore, to my understanding, though I gather he's continued to appear with them now and then over the years). So already we're talking about doing two, not one, interviews, which increases my workload and makes my deciding to make the time to do this less likely. And the questions I have for other members, like Buck Dharma, say, are equally involved. For example, in "The Last Days of May," I want to know exactly who the different characters are in the song. There's actually a helpful quote on Wikipedia that describes the story that inspired the song, about two of the songwriter's schoolmates, who were killed in a drug deal gone bad, with Buck taking the details from a newspaper account:

Three Stony Brook students went to Tuscon, Arizona, to buy some bulk marijuana for resale. I don’t know how they got whatever contact they had, but it was two brothers – scions from one of the better-to-do families in Tuscon. They never intended to sell them any pot. They just wanted to rip 'em off and shoot 'em, which they did. They took them out to the desert and shot them. It was three guys, and one managed to survive and get back to the highway... [taken, I believe, from this article]. 

There is some confusion among interpreters of this song out there (even I had things wrong about it, it seems). I've read people say that the song is about betrayal - that one of the three boys kills his friends and takes the money. Even without knowing Buck's explanation for the tune, above, people who read the song this way are failing to do the math. There are "three good buddies" going to make the deal. When the murder in the song takes place, it is "three boys' blood" that is spilled (no mention is made in describing the act that one of the boys apparently lived, which complicates things a little, but it doesn't take a math degree to sort this out). It is therefore someone else in the car who commits the crime. It makes sense there would be two guys in the front seat, as Buck's story confirms, since the killer has to "turn" to kill the three boys, presumably in the back seat. If one of the boys had been in the front seat, no turning would happen. So clearly, these people are connected to the drug deal, telling the boys they'll take them to the sellers but instead killing them and pocketing the drug money for themselves.

So who is the singer of the song, exactly? Is it one of the killers, or could it be the survivor, or could it be Buck himself, reading the story and having feelings about it, as he switches to a first person narration of someone who is about to leave town, inviting another to come along - since "they say the west is nice this time of year." There's some really evocative possibilities in these images, if you pay attention to them and let your mind go with it a bit. At one point, having learned in an English Lit class that "the west" - where the sun sets - is sometimes a symbol in literature of death - I wondered if the singer was inviting the listener to die with him [which I kind of take as being the subtle, creepy subtext of "(Don't Fear) the Reaper]," but that seems less than likely now; it seems more likely there's just a desire on the part of a criminal, either the killer of the boys or his accomplice, to leave town, maybe (like in "Pancho and Lefty" by Townes van Zandt) with the money he's gotten from his bad deed ("where he got the bread to go, there ain't nobody knows"). It would be interesting to note if Buck sees this as a metaphor for colonialism, for the settlement of the west - if he feels that, maybe, we could expand the narrative outwards a bit to connect it to how the west was "won" by hustlers and murderers and criminals fleeing justice, kind of Deadwood-like.

That reading depends on one particular version of the song, mind you, where the singer is the killer; I don't think it's possible to know that, since the last verse is so ambiguous, but that's part of the beauty of the song: by being a bit fuzzy on this detail, we are forced to contemplate all the possibilities. And so once again, we have to contemplate a pretty dark vision of humanity here, a song that could possibly be sung by a murderer, about a crime he profited from, but who is less filled with remorse or anguish over what he's done, so much as he is filled with a desire to get away, forget it, put it behind him, and have a nice life somewhere else. (I guess the guitar solos are kind of mournful, but maybe they're more about mourning that life goes on, regardless and indifferent, rather than that this crime has taken place...?).

Meanwhile, if the point of view is that of the survivor of the crime, the idea of suicide could emerge as a manifestation of survivor's guilt... "the others are already there" seems to take in the dead....

I could go on. There's five or ten other Blue Öyster Cult songs whose lyrics I'd love to try to go into such detail with with their authors, to find out where the inspirations come from, to clarify exactly who does what, in these stories, and why, and to see what sort of worldview emerges. It's consistently one, I suspect, where death and crime and horror lurk all the time, only semi-acknowledged, at the fringes of life, where people do awful things, but we're left to our own devices to imagine exactly WHAT these awful things were; where people may have a bad conscience about their actions, may even consider themselves "monsters," but carry on no less. All of that - the psychology and philosophy behind these stories - is in fact even more interesting than the whole Imaginos mythos that I explored a few posts back, though obviously there are points of intersection (like, obviously, the fact that this rather dark worldview isn't all that dissimilar from Lovecraft's - or, in terms of identifying with the bad guys, that "ME 262" identifies with a WWII Luftwaffe fighter pilot, flying as a mission over England to drop bombs. That song improbably is one of the most celebratory and boogie-ing of BÖC tunes, practically revelling in its tale in what should be understood as an act of carefree transgression. I can barely begin to fit in my head how the song works as a commentary on rock'n'roll itself; plus it is even more complicated by singer Eric Bloom being Jewish...)

Anyhow, with all these questions and not much likelihood that I'm going to write about the band outside a few pieces like this, I was excited to see, mentioned on the official Blue Öyster Cult page, that there was a book, on track... Blue Öyster Cult every album, every song, by Jacob Holm Lupo (the capitalization is a bit odd there but I'm following the cover of the book). Maybe Lupo would have done his homework and get into such questions for me? The book purports to be a blow-by-blow of the circumstances under which the recordings were made, what happens musically, and what the lyrics are about...

Now, I have not read the entire book, and I've enjoyed some of what I've read. The author gives an interesting introduction, gives information I did not know about the album's backstories, and peppers the book with quotes, often from rock magazines but sometimes from his own interviews, about the albums. There is stuff I still look forward to reading in the book, especially what I gather will be a fairly lengthy treatment of Imaginos; Holm-Lupo does know the Cult's backstory quite well, so realizes just how important Pearlman's Soft Doctrines are (which I myself didn't until fairly recently, I confess). Some of what I've already shown myself to be interested in may in fact be treated in passages I have not read. But - who can blame me? My pattern of reading so far has seen me flipping from song to song, in pursuits of the answers to the questions I have asked, rather than working from cover to cover.

... And that's why I can't really give the book the enthusiastic review I'd hoped to give. Understand: this isn't a review copy I was sent. I didn't sleaze my way into a copy, since I didn't know for sure what would come of it; I just bought the book, because it sounded interesting and a nice consolation prize for not interviewing the band. (It's also a fun way to whet my appetite for seeing them live again, come August 18th at Ambleside). I paid about $30 Cdn to get it mailed to me. I was not objective; I was invested, and thus really wanted to enjoy it.

This frees me to be honest and say, sadly, I don't think the book is going to be very useful to me. It does do, it seems, a good job of giving a backstory to the recording sessions; it also does a fine job describing the music. But lyrically - I've read the stories behind ten or so songs now, hoping that some of the sorts of interests I mention above would be addressed, and every single time I am disappointed. "Monsters" is maybe the worst cop-out yet: after a stellar description of the musicianship, Holm-Lupo writes of the story that "it's not exactly clear what the narrative is, but space travel is a definite element" (p.77).

As for "The Last Days of May," he only notes the idea that one person kills two others, without really delving into any of the theories above, and again apparently failing to do the math.

I mean, I could go on. I know nothing more about "ETI" or "ME 262" than I did before I read his sections on them, for example. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" gets a bit into the romanticism of the song - the belief that love can transcend death, which is pleasant to contemplate, and backed by a quote from Buck - but doesn't touch on that creepy undercurrent at all, of who is singing this song to whom, and why? (I believe Stephen King has written about the possibility the song deals with a man seducing a woman into a suicide pact, which is always where I've gone with it; no mention of that concept occurs in the section on that song, though).

There is probably still a lot of good to be had from reading the book, if you're more interested in backstory and music than lyrics. Holm-Lupo (himself a musician, I gather, his own band being Norwegian prog act White Willow) excels at describing the composition, recording, structure and style of the songs, and does so at a  level I would find very difficult or impossible to approach. But that's just not what I bought the book for; I can hear the music myself, and am not as interested in having it described for me, even though I'm impressed at the facility which he does this. I'm just personally more interested in songs as acts of meaning-making, storytelling, and so forth - still have inside me the 13 year old kid who was reading Milton by day in high school and rock lyric sheets at home at night, who still has questions burning in him.

All of which means, I guess, that how much you'll value the book depends more on where you're coming at it from. If you want to read about Donald Roeser's guitar solos, there's some nice language here. There's also an extended consideration of albums either deemed failures (Club Ninja, Imaginos) and a welcome, respectful, and at times very enthusiastic treatment of the band's two previous studio albums, which badly need to be reissued and heard again, Heaven Forbid and Curse of the Hidden Mirror.  I think he undervalues a couple songs, but whatever. I do believe Holm-Lupo has been, as the blurb says, "Norway's no. 1 Blue Öyster Cult fan." I just would encourage him to maybe dig a bit deeper into his treatment of the lyrics in the future...?

Anyhow, it will keep me busy til the Popoff arrives, and I'm going to be glad to have not one but TWO books by this band on my shelf...

Split Image revisited: cults, cult deprogramming, and mind control

Kind of crazy that Split Image isn't available on Blu-Ray. It's one of Ted Kotcheff's most interesting accomplishments, up there with Wake in Fright and First Blood, and it's one of the reasons I am impressed, so far, with the films offered by Amazon Prime, since it's a film I never expected to find there. I'm still not so big a fan of streaming that I wouldn't rather have a physical copy of the film, but it was only ever released on home media, as far as I know, on VHS tape; there is a DVD of it sold on eBay but I suspect it's a bootleg of some sort - probably a VHS rip, since the art is identical to one of the past VHS releases of the film. That's not the case with the Amazon Prime version, which is a high-def widescreen presentation (which is not the case with all their films, note; I was briefly excited to see they had Night Creature, a British horror film with Donald Pleasence as a hunter battling a big cat, because the public domain DVD is unwatchable, only to discover that the version on Prime is just another version of that same crappy-quality vid. On the other hand, their Creature from Black Lake appears to be a big improvement on the public domain versions of that film, so you kinda gotta go case-by-case with them).

Anyhow... the thing that's most interesting about Split Image is that it sheds a light on a phenomenon that has gone, somewhat, out of vogue: cult deprogramming, which itself is based on a premise that is equally out of vogue, the idea of mind control/ brainwashing. (These are Wikipedia links, folks, but have some interesting information and external links for further research if you want; they seem fairly well-written and informative pages, actually). The film purports to show a young man (played by Michael O'Keefe, a terrific actor who is still around, but who I don't recall having had many roles to equal this one) being manipulated, somewhat less-than-believably, into joining a cult. Kotcheff presents some elements of the process in a way that seem quite plausible - how he gets sucked in by a pretty girl, for example - likeably and believably played by Karen Allen, of Raiders of the Lost Ark fame - and sets out for what he thinks is a harmless weekend trip, from which he ends up not returning (until he is kidnapped by deprogrammers, that is). He's always portrayed as a critically-minded, irreverant, perceptive young man, so the latter phases of the transformation, where he appears to eventually just let go of his cfaculties and become a robotic, wide-eyed flower-seller, get a bit harder to buy into; I wonder if Ticket to Heaven - the other great "cult indoctrination" film of the 1980's - is equally hard to swallow, now? (By the by, that's a Youtube link to the full film).

... but returning to Split Image: James Woods - who I'm guessing is inspired by Ted Patrick, though he's the wrong colour - plays the deprogrammer in the film, with all the sleazy, sweaty vitality of Woods at his peak; its maybe my favourite role of his. He's hired by the kid's parents (played by Brian Dennehy and Elizabeth Ashley) to "break" the grip that the cult leader (Peter Fonda!) has on their son. Some of the film is really interesting - like the rather confrontational, somewhat unexpected critique Woods offers of the spiritual bankruptcy of the average American family, which is what, he says, let the boy fall victim to the religious movement in the film; there's a lot of angry finger-pointing in the film, and some of it is at the kid's parents... But some of it has aged poorly, albeit in interesting ways. The film really, really works the idea, for example, that there is some sort of almost unnatural hold of Fonda's character on the cult members, but that it can be broken with the right sort of techniques. These are the same ideas that eventually, in the real world, led to actual deprogrammers like Patrick getting arrested and sued, and which led to the movement of deprogramming kind of fading away (which may help explain why films as interesting as Split Image and Ticket to Heaven have all but disappeared from public view; they're based in concepts now considered discredited).

The thing is, if the idea of cult deprogramming is based in a too-simple, 1980's view of "mind control," that doesn't mean that more malign religious movements out there don't have a creepy, weird hold on their members. (I won't bother pointing fingers, but examples are easy enough to come by). It just probably isn't as simple as the picture painted by films like Split Image, and probably does involve a lot more complicity on the part of those who have been "brainwashed." My understanding of the whole idea of "brainwashing" is that it arose in part as an excuse/ defense for confessing US troops captured by Communists - to say nothing of Patty Hearst; they weren't responsible for what they were doing, because someone else was in control of their minds; I don't think real life cult members will find themselves so easy to absolve, which probably makes real life "exit counselling" a far more complex and challenging thing than what we see Woods doing in this film. This, oddly, is where the film is most interesting, in what it reveals about how we thought of these issues back then; the thing that has aged most poorly about the movie is the thing that kinda makes it worth seeing now.

(Though James Woods is pretty damn fun in this, too).

I'm working full-time these days, so I may not be writing as much as I had been for awhile there (you will not likely see a review of Creature from Black Lake, for example, a silly bigfoot film that remains a true guilty-pleasure of my childhood that I am keen to revisit ASAP in a nice transfer. I will even spare my wife this film). But incidentally, while I have the attention of maybe a dozen people (!), two of the best under-the-radar local punk bands, storc and Invasives, are opening a just-announced show at CBDB's on Friday (it had been announced at short notice for the Rickshaw but has been changed). If you haven't seen Invasives, they're kind of the unofficial heirs of Nomeansno (while sounding little like them). 

And also: Under the Silver Lake (with a brief shill for Amazon Prime streaming service)

I signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime earlier this month, thinking I would try it. I blame John Sayles: I was told by someone in his company, Anarchist's Convention, in response to an inquiry, that his rather terrific film City of Hope was available via Amazon Prime (it is, but only in the USA). Having signed up - only to discover the film I wanted to see was not available through Amazon Canada - I set out to seeing which other hard-to-find films (besides obvious exclusive series like Bosch and The Man in the High Castle) they had.

My list, so far (none of which I have yet watched): Split Image, Ted Kotcheff's no-longer-relevant but I suspect still very entertaining 1982 cult deprogramming movie, which features my favourite ever role from James Woods; David Mamet's Things Change, which seems to be out of print on DVD, which I've wanted to revisit for some time, to show Erika a real Joe Mantegna role (she only knows Criminal Minds); The Royal Hunt of the Sun, which I know little about, save that it is about the encounter between Spanish explorers and Incas, that it came out at a time when such films tended to be interesting (1969), and that it is based on a play by the person who wrote Equus and (less importantly to me) Amadeus. Also, it stars Robert Shaw and Christopher Plummer. Plummer I don't care about much - he's fine, and I intend him no disrespect (and I really enjoyed him in Egoyan's Remember, which is the best Egoyan I've seen in a long time) but, you know, when he was in the running for an Oscar against Max von Sydow, I was cheering for Max; and between Jaws and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 - the original film, that is - I'll watch Robert Shaw in anything. There's also an Amicus anthology horror film I've never seen, The House That Dripped Blood, the art for which disturbed me mightily as a child when glimpsed in Warren Magazine ads (or did it make a cover of Famous Monsters?). I believe it's out there on Blu-Ray these days, but Blu-Rays tend to cost $40 or so, for anything but the most commercial titles, so I'd much rather see it for free (ditto some of the Argentos on Prime, or DOA: A Rite of Passage, about the Sex Pistols' US tour).

However, first things first: Under the Silver Lake, the new film by the director of It Follows,  David Robert Mitchell. I knew little of the film save that it has a small role for David Yow, and I'm still fascinated by Yow (and working on writing about him), so it had to be seen. Turns out it's kinda great. A leisurely, longish mindfuck with knowing winks at everything from Like a Velvet Glove Cast In Iron - in the form of a certain REM song - to the mystique of the number 23 to hidden messages in pop songs (including an attempt to find backmasking, which resembles nothing we ever actually did back in the 1980's) to voyeurism and surveillance to Alfred Hitchcock, whose tombstone briefly appears, the film reminds you of other surreal Hollywood meta-cinema like Mulholland Drive, but it has a smirk and a wink and a fairly goofy sense of fun, once you settle in. It took awhile to win my trust, but as absurdities ratcheted up, and the film took on a dreamlike quality, I found myself laughing aloud at times (though it's not exactly a comedy). Andrew Garfield reminded me of Anthony Perkins throughout, and David Yow got to yell a question to the effect of, "Why are you carrying dog biscuits?" which is a fun thing to have him yell. Overall I recommend it - and think it would make a fun double bill with Refn's The Neon Demon, though the two films have little in common save a metacinematic look at Hollywood - but see it with an open or altered mind, and don't strive too hard to figure out what it all means; think of it as a sort of dream, and let it flow through you. That's what I'd do.

Oh, and there's a skunk in it. Erika and I like skunks a lot (though I suspect this skunk is basically just a set up for a patchouli joke, later in the movie).

There's probably other stuff I care about on Amazon Prime (which, by the way, is presently the only way to see Under the Silver Lake, as far as I know). But the best thing about it is that it is now Chromecast friendly (it wasn't when I first signed up, so I'm pleased: you don't have to watch everything on your computer or phone or what-have-you, as long as you're using Chromecast, which is a handy gadget indeed for putting Vimeo and Youtube vids and other stuff on your screen from your phone).

So there's plenty to see on Amazon Prime - probably more than you can fit in to the one month free trial, but for any of you with ambivalences about doing biz with Amazon - you surely don't object to getting FREE STUFF from them, do you? So, like, check it out. (Hell, I may stay subscribed for a bit, at least until there's nothing more I really care about that I want to see).

Note meta-joke, below: it's Andrew Garfield in Under the Silver Lake, holding up a Spider Man comic!

Another yes vote: Crawl

I like Alexandre Aja, generally. From the intelligent absurdity of High Tension to his very entertaining, big-budget ghost story Mirrors; from the misanthropic dark humour of his remake of Piranha to the straight-up horror of his remake of The Hills Have Eyes - which is the best damned big-budget remake of the original film imaginable - he's approached his craft with devotion to straightforward, image-based storytelling and a fairly knowing understanding of what horror fans find satisfying. I haven't loved all his films equally - Horns didn't do much for me, say - but I consider him a filmmaker to watch. He's not my favourite contemporary horror filmmaker - I'm not even sure I have a favourite contemporary horror filmmaker at present - but he takes his job seriously, and understands what it is, so I'll basically watch anything he does.

...And, you know, I like movies where people have to fight off marauding animals. There's a real primal satisfaction to it, which was hinted at in my interview with Dr. Carin Bondar a few weeks ago; there's also an oddly sadomasochistic pleasure in watching people getting eaten in horror movies - especially by animals. (I'm not a huge follower of cannibal cinema but I can both take sadistic pleasure in seeing someone get eaten by an animal and masochistic pleasure in the fact that I identify with the species being eaten; maybe there's some sort of tit-for-tat sense of justice that I experience as a failed vegetarian?).

So: Crawl. Crawl is great. Crawl attempts to do absolutely nothing with its story beside tell it; there's no attempt to politicize it, to moralize, to attain a deeper understanding of anything. It does what all the best survival horror movies do: it sets up its premise and plays it out, with plenty of scares and a fair bit of chewing of people, and otherwise stays out of its own way. It's alligators are, probably, all CGI - the film was shot in Serbia, and I don't think they have a lot of 'gators there - but they look good and behave quite a bit like real alligators. The story is simplicity itself: a woman, worried about her father, drives to his home in the midst of a hurricane in Florida to try to locate him. He's stuck under the house with an injury. There are, it develops, alligators coming in on the floodwaters. The two must find a way to fend off the 'gators and rescue themselves from the flood.

That's basically it. There's a little bit of character development, involving her ambitions as a swimmer and her father's past role as her coach, but no more than is needed for an effective genre film. You don't come away discussing subtext; you just enjoy seeing the story play out. It is not quite on the same level with Greg McLean's terrific Australian killer croc film Rogue, but it's damn near close. About the only caveat I'd offer is that there is a LOT of water in this film; since it's also fairly scary and stressful, you would be well advised not to drink liquid for an hour before it begins, and visit the bathroom before you go into the theatre, because otherwise your bladder will be fit to burst by the end.

That's it, that's all I have to say. If you like survival horror/ animal attack movies, or if you happen to be a big Barry Pepper fan, see it (I didn't know the female lead, Kaya Scodelario, though I gather she acted in that recent Berlinger Ted Bundy film, as well. I think that role required a bit more of her, in terms of conveying emotions other than, say, different flavours of terror). Both Midsommar and Crawl have made this a pretty good summer for horror movies, so far...

Two yes votes: Midsommar and Lords of Chaos

Midsommar is one of an increasingly large number of movies that attempt to take stock of Paganism and neo-Paganism, showing that the idealised, sanitized contemporary version of the lives of Pagans, such as that represented by a lot of the airier "New Age bookstore" versions of Wicca, covers up (or leaves out) some fairly dark and disturbing practices. Telling a story of young Americans visiting a European "commune" that practices the old ways, it joins The Wicker Man, Apostle, Left Bank, and a fair number of movies and TV series about Vikings as a compelling, gritty take on ancient European customs (one of which is the ingestion of magic mushrooms, so it's also fairly trippy at times); but even though it is a horror movie with connection to these films and some identifiable genre elements, it doesn't necessarily end as you might expect. In fact, it may have something else going on under the surface that is suspect and misogynist- there is a little bit of a "devouring vagina" theme that lurks, especially if you count, say, the shape carved into a particular animal carcass of import to the film's climax.  I liked Misommar better than Hereditary, which also has compelling and interesting elements, but belongs to a horror genre that I have little interest in, involving the desire of the Devil for progeny; I wasn't sure that Hereditary amounted to anything on first viewing, gripping as it was, and I haven't looked at it since.  Both films are directed by Ari Aster, who is emerging as a real name to watch...

Lords of Chaos is also very interesting. I've read the expanded/ revised version of the book from which it takes the title, which also tells the tale of murderous, church-burning, and evil goings on as part of the early Norwegian Black Metal scene. I enjoyed the film. I gather that Varg Vikernes has disputed its content, and complained that the actor cast to play him is Jewish. I can't speak to "what actually happened," but this is a well-made, provocative film, which makes fairly unlikable people understandable and interesting (none moreso than Euronymous, who gets to narrate, despite what happens to him). Like Midsommar - maybe even moreso - it has some upsetting violence in it (to be specific, the most vicious stabbing murders I've seen onscreen since I watched van Bebber's Manson movie). People worried that the film trivializes and/or sensationalizes its subject matter need not be. Even Erika, my wife, found it interesting, and she doesn't care at all about black metal (she did have to cover her eyes during some of the murders, though).

All I have time to write, but see these movies!

Bands not included in lists about bands not included in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame: more on the Blue Oyster Cult

I couldn't give a damn about the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. I have seen no indication ever that their votes are anything but a popularity contest, run by people without very interesting tastes in, or historical knowledge of, rock music. So the commenter on the previous post who noted the Blue Oyster Cult's "criminal lack of inclusion" in that institution doesn't really move me much. It's kinda like griping that John Cassavetes never won an Oscar: it presumes Oscars do or should mean something, that Cassavetes somehow needs their validation to be as great as he is. But the best rock music doesn't get played on the radio, ever, either. So what?

That said, here are some lists by people who are, apparently, real music lovers, griping about bands not included in the rock'n'roll hall of fame, who have some other, ideal version of that institution in mind. To my surprise, the Blue Oyster Cult is not on every list!

The first I found has some good mentions - it starts strong. The New York Dolls, the MC5, and Motorhead all deserve inclusion in this better-than-the-real-one Hall of Fame (somewhere below the Blue Oyster Cult, though - and apologies, folks; I'm not bothering to include the umlaut this time out, not for the BOC, not for Motorhead). Probably Iron Maiden and/or Judas Priest deserve mention. Sammy Hagar and the Doobie Brothers sort of call the author's taste into question, however, and, I mean, Soundgarden? They're fun - I like Soundgarden, at least up to and including Badmotorfinger - but if we're talking about a list of bands who have made truly enormous contributions to the world of rock... I mean, I dunno. I'm a TAD man, myself - and my Eight Way Santa can beat up your Louder Than Love with it's eyes closed (and ears ringing) - but I'm not going to lobby for TAD, so I'm hardly gonna go to bat for Soundgarden (no offense, folks).

Anyhow, whoever wrote that list should be spanked for not mentioning the BOC. So should Consequence of Sound, who fail to notice the Blue Oyster Cult on Jeff Ament's shirt of bands not in the Hall (he wore it onstage during Pearl Jam's induction, and by the way, if I have my doubts about Soundgarden...). The Blue Oyster Cult's name is right there, on the middle right of the shirt, pictured above the article! It's not on CoS's (augmented) transcription, however. There are some good mentions on that list, as well - X, Thin Lizzy, King Crimson... but there are also some awful bands represented. I mean, I guess Def Leppard has fans, but I never could stand them (except for one time when I was much younger and watching Basic Instinct in a movie theatre, totally stoned: this fascinating music came on, and I was really getting into it until the vocals kicked in and I realized what it was. Still, that's more about the drugs than Def Leppard, who manifest all the most boring tendencies of arena rock in one band, and then crank it up a bit).

It's interesting to note that Consequence of Sound's 2019 article on the 20 worst Hall of Fame snubs - which weirdly includes John Coltrane on the list - also doesn't mention the BOC. Is it a conspiracy to ignore the band, or an honest oversight? It starts to seem like the former.

Similarly, cleveland.com's article on the 100 biggest omissions also omits the BOC.

It's not all bad. The website Not in Hall of Fame does finally include the Blue Oyster Cult, but in 74th place on their list. Sadly, the caption, while saying that the band deserves to be remembered for more than a Saturday Night Live skit, doesn't actually mention anything else about them besides that skit! (By the way, I've never seen the SNL thing. Means nothing to me, tho' I flinch at the thought that when they play "Don't Fear the Reaper," there will be cries from the audience of "More Cowbell!"). Loudwire does better, though they're obviously focusing on metal-related music (and also mention Slayer, who deserve it for influence and longevity).

Mostly what you see, perusing these lists, tho', is people lobbying for their pet favourites. Occasionally a consensus artist emerges, people everyone agrees on needing an obvious induction (Brian Eno, for example) if the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame is to have any validity whatsoever. Personally, for me, the Blue Oyster Cult is one such obvious choice, but (obviously) others disagree.

If you do agree, may I point out that there's a Facebook group, Blue Oyster Cult Needs to Be in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, that you can join? I am all for the Rock'n'Roll Hall of fame inducting the BOC. Given that they have a new album coming up, maybe 2020 would be a good year to do it?

Strange Dream of David M.

David M. entered my dreams for the first time last night.

I don't fully remember why, but there had been discussion of my love of Indian food, and there may have been a holiday coming up. Or I might have been going to prison? In any event, he gave me a garbage bag full of something as a gift, and when I opened it, it turned out to be hundreds of freshly made naan, packaged in bundles of five: vastly more naan than I can fit in my freezer, but (apparently) home-cooked by M.

M. does not make naan, but that was my dream. I was showing the naan to Erika when I woke up. 

A Blue Öyster Cult Rabbithole: one fan's journey through Imaginos and beyond

Blue Öyster Cult by bev davies, taken at the Pacific Coliseum, August 22nd, 1982; not to be reused without permission

I never liked the Blue Öyster Cult's 1988 album, Imaginos, back in the day.

I had been, since I was a teenager, a fan of the Blue Öyster Cult, and saw them in 1982 at the Pacific Coliseum at a gig that I would later learn was attended by both bev davies and Cal Thompson from the Little Guitar Army, who has described it as a seminal moment in his rock fandom. I think it was an important gig for a few people, and it was one of my very first gigs I went to unaccompanied; I would have been age 14.

Their first three studio albums – from their 1972 self-titled debut through to Secret Treaties – were familiar to me at that point, I think, and remain to this day one of my favourite three-album runs in the history of hard rock.

It’s an even more impressive streak of brilliance if you include their prior incarnations, the Stalk-Forrest Group or Soft White Underbelly. The former, the immediate precursor to the BÖC, has been the subject of official reissues in recent years, while demos from the Soft White Underbelly – an acid-rock band with two different singers, pre-Eric Bloom, and a different bassist – have surfaced and circulated online, begging for a remastering and official release. (As a side-note: in the process of getting Bev to dig up that 1982 photo of Allen Lanier and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, I discovered she actually had seen the Soft White Underbelly, billed with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and Country Joe and the Fish, on February 2nd, 1968, about a month before I was born... Alas, she did not take photos of that gig!).

There are moments of brilliance through the rest of their 1970’s catalogue, too, including, obviously “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Godzilla.” But their 1980’s output –after their excellent 1980 album Cultosaurus Erectus - took some work to come to terms with.

There was plenty of able popcraft on 1981’s Fire of Unknown Origin – maybe their most successful attempt to present a “commercial” rock record, with their last hit single (“Burnin’ for You”), and one creepy science fiction dirge (“Veteranof the Psychic Wars,” with lyrics by Michael Moorcock).

But there were also songs, even there, that I struggled with. For one thing, the title track sounds like it’s designed for the disco. And while I personally enjoyed the divisive “Joan Crawford” – especially live, where, as I recall, keyboardist Allen Lanier tricked it up with a lengthy Gothic organ solo – it’s a pretty trivial confection, coming from a band who had written a song as magnificently rockin’ as “ME 262”.

It got harder, too, to stay with the band through the 1980’s. The Revolution By Night was even more uneven, despite a strong lead single, “Take Me Away” – which is a little heavy on the Aldo Nova influence, but how can you not like a rock anthem about wishing extraterrestrials would abduct you?

1985’s Club Ninja was more challenging still. I quite like “White Flags,” the opening cut, but for the most part, the album sounds like an untried 80’s hard rock band, making something quite generic; some of the songs aren’t even written by the band! It sounds better now than it did at the time, but I still remember my horror and disappointment when I popped the cassette into my Walkman. Albert Bouchard and Allen Lanier had both jumped ship by that point, and I didn’t blame them.

With Club Ninja, it seemed to me like the Blue Öyster Cult I had known and loved was gone, never to return. (I read now that the internal turmoil in the band was so severe that they actually broke up, briefly, in 1986).

I remember that I was positively thrilled, in 1988, when I learned that they were releasing an album designed to hearken back to their roots – a concept album based around the writings of Sandy Pearlman, and revisiting classic songs like “Subhuman” – re-recorded as “Blue Öyster Cult” and “Astronomy” (with a Stephen King introduction for the singleversion!) It seemed like the band knew they had lost direction with Club Ninja, and were righting the course. I rushed out to buy Imaginos as soon as I could – initially, again, on cassette.

And I just didn’t get it. It doesn’t sound very much like the Blue Öyster Cult, for one thing... which makes sense when you read about it; it was actually a side-project from Pearlman and drummer Albert Bouchard, who initially sang the lead vocals. His demo version of it is online, and may actually make more sense than the eventual BÖC release, since a) you won't be weirded out by it not sounding like a band that it isn't; and b) the songs are in the correct sequence, so you can better follow the narrative. 

You can read about the whole troubled production of the album on its unusually informative and interesting Wikipedia page.

Best of all on that page, you get a glimpse into the conspiracy theories behind the album, based in unpublished writings by Pearlman, The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos, which serve as a sort of decoder ring for much of the underlying mythology of the BÖC, including their name (personally I always thought their name was a punning injunction to “be occult,” though other theories are out there).

That mythology stretches back even as far as Soft White Underbelly songs; delving into it, you discover that things you had previously figured it wasn’t worth trying to make sense of, in Blue Öyster Cult lyrics, actually do have a coherent (if weird) explanation.

Pearlman, apparently – the band’s manager and a key lyricist during their early years - had toyed with the idea that much of 20th century history, including the two world wars, were the result of the manipulations of secret, occult societies, versed in alchemy, and led by a group of seven “invisibles” – possibly of extraterrestrial origin, and the basis of the song, “Les Invisibles.” If you get over the cavernous, generic-hard-rock sound, that's actually a really interesting bit of songwriting. I'm finding myself glad (in the absence of a new album) to have material by the band to revisit, and I must say, I find going back to Imaginos ultimately more rewarding and enjoyable than some of their canonical albums, like Spectres. (I have long since reclaimed and fallen in love with Heaven Forbid and Curse of the Hidden Mirror, of course).

It 1988, it was,however, just too much work for me to try to make sense of it all – to say nothing of the presence of Baron von Frankenstein - just so I could appreciate an album that, at the time, I didn’t much like the sound of. It wasn't that I disliked it - it seemed ambitious and interesting; I was just into other things at the moment and not prepared to make the investment; if it had sounded like Tyranny and Mutation, maybe, but...

And it’s not like the band made it easy to get at the underlying narrative, either. As I suggest above, the storyline of the album - not the demos, but the official 1988 band release - is presented non-sequentially, so unless you read the extensive liner notes, you don’t really have much hope of making sense of things.

If you’re also struggling to do just that, there is plenty of helpful material to chew on online about Imaginos, including articles (discovered and pointed out to me by Adrian Mack) on the VISUP blog that attempt to do justice to The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos and the more esoteric ideas of Sandy Pearlman.

This is the must-read, the real rabbithole, the font of "things to think about" that will get any fan excited to go back to Imaginos. Part one of the series – “The Soft Doctrines of Memphis Sam” - is online here; part two here the third here; the fourth here; and the fifth and final chapter here. It's a bit of work, but Blue Öyster Cult fans who, like me, have not come to terms, previously, with Imaginos, or who know nothing of these “soft doctrines,” will find themselves plunged into a very deep rabbithole that will shed light on all sorts of things BÖC-related (no doubt also including some out-there conspiracy theories and sheer speculation; I mean, what story that links alchemy and occultism with extraterrestrials and Nazis is not going to have those elements?)

Sadly, back in the 80’s, I’m not the only one who didn’t “get it.” Imaginos was a commercial failure, and led to the Blue Öyster Cult being dropped by Columbia.

That’s a very sad thing, because the BÖC has made two excellent, rich albums since, 1998’s Heaven Forbid (check out, say, “Real World” ) and 2001’s Curse of the Hidden Mirror (the high point of which is probably the Lovecraftian epic “The Old Gods Return,” with lyrics from science fiction writer John Shirley). Both are out of print, and without Columbia’s muscle behind them, went unheard by all but diehard fans - a real shame, since Eric Bloom has indicated that the commercial failure of those two albums led the band to sort of decide there was no point in recording anything new.

However, the story goes - almost 20 years since their last studio LP - that the Blue Öyster Cult has a new album coming out (perhaps in 2020?), along with several slated reissues. They certainly have a local show upcoming (at Ambleside on August 18th). If you’re diligent, you might just be able to read the whole story of Imaginos by that time. None of that album appears on the band’s recent setlists, but if you delve into the backstory, you’ll have a whole new appreciation of one of the most interesting hard rock bands of all time. See their official site for more.

Live clips I've watched on Youtube suggest the band is in fantastic form these days; check out "The Last Days of May," live in 2011, if you haven't already seen it.

I am so excited to see this band live again - 37 years and four days since the last time I saw them! It's kind of hard to believe...