On Your Feet Or On Your Knees
Blue Oyster Cult
Columbia PG 33371
1975
When I was in the 8th grade in Alameda, my friend and I came across a curious bit of graffiti at school. It was a cross made out of an upside down question mark and underneath it was written "Blue Oyster Cult." This was before BOC's ascension into AOR stardom with the release of "Agents of Fortune," I'd never heard of them. My friend and I looked at each other in bewilderment and even a little bit of alarm. We thought it was a real cult. What kind of lunatics worship oysters? It was not as far-fetched as you might think, the Bay Area was a hot bed of cult activity in the 1970s, I regularly passed Hare Krishnas on my way home from school. So the Oysters became a running joke for us for the rest of the school year. A year or so later I bought the Woffinden/Logan "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock" and started reading it cover to cover and in the Bs I came across a picture of this album and learned all about the Blue Oyster Cult. I was never much of a fan, but I bought this in the used bin out of curiousity. As a rule, double live albums suck, they are one of the 1970s worst contributions to rock culture. This is better than most, there isn't too much arena grandstanding and wanking off. Side one kicks off with a pair of songs from "Secret Treaties": "The Subhuman" and "Harvester of Eyes." To me "The Subhuman" sounds like the Allman Brothers playing prog rock. The lyrics are about as weird as any you will ever hear in mainstream pop music and I'm not even going to try to interpret them. I enjoy "Harvester of Eyes" which is surprisingly light and rollicking considering its dark subject matter. The side ends with "Hot Rails To Hell" from "Tyranny and Mutation" which is full throttle, kick-ass rock and roll. The same album yields a smoking version of "The Red & The Black", BOC's ode to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and "Seven Screaming Dizbusters" to kick off side two. "The Red & The Black" is one of the best songs on the album with some dazzling guitar work. "Dizbusters" has some nice riffing but its instrumental break bores me with its heavy metal cliches and self-indulgent soloing, although it is pretty funny when Eric Bloom says he knows Lucifer so well that he calls him by his first name, "Hey Lou." Satanic references are practically de rigueur in heavy metal, but at least these guys have fun with it. Side two concludes with Buck Dharma's guitar showcase "Buck's Boogie." It is twice as long as Jeff Beck's boogie and about half as exciting. Air guitarists should get a kick out of it, but I find it only sporadically compelling although it is fun to listen for the various references to other songs scattered throughout Dharma's playing. Side three revisits BOC's debut album with "Last Days of May" and "Cities on Flame." The former, a cautionary tale of a drug deal gone bad is mildly interesting and not at all metallic, it reminds me of Bad Company. "Cities on Flame" on the other hand is pure metal with its monster heavy riffing. The side finishes with "ME 262" from "Secret Treaties" which is told from the point of view of a Nazi pilot flying a jet against the British. For a heavy metal band these guys do find interesting things to write about. The guitar break in the middle of the song is lifted from the Yardbirds" "Lost Women." It goes on a bit too long but the song really rocks. The Yardbirds pop up again on side four with a raucous workout on their version of "I Ain't Got You." Again it goes on too long but it has some powerful moments. Side four also features a hard driving performance of the riff-happy "Before The Kiss, A Redcap" from their debut album. The album finishes with a thunderous cover of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" that follows the original pretty closely at first and then jumps into some noisy metal cacophony. It is a thrilling performance and ends the album with a bang. Sounds like it was a really exciting show. In the canon of hard rock live double albums I'd rank this a bit below "Kiss Alive" but well above Aerosmith's "Live Bootleg" or Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same." At least there are no drum solos. As an introduction to Blue Oyster Cult you could do worse. I'd say it is worth buying just for side four alone. Recommended for Led Zeppelin fans who wish their heroes had a better sense of humor.
Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin
Atlantic SD 19129
1971
I've opted for the conventional moniker of "Led Zeppelin IV" for this album, which as you probably know has no official title aside from 4 symbols representing the band members which leads many people to call it "The Runes Album." I rarely play it, but last month I attended a pops concert by the high school orchestra that my kid plays in. One of the songs they tackled was "Stairway to Heaven" which I found amazing since that would never have happened when I was in high school. In my high school Led Zeppelin was actually considered kind of dangerous. It was common knowledge that Jimmy Page was a Satanist and the band's bad behavior on the road was well-documented. This sounds ludicrous nowadays, but my school was in a conservative suburb and fundamentalist Christians outnumbered the stoners by a ratio of at least two to one. The first time I heard this album in its entirety was at a high school party. That also seems kind of ludicrous since this is a terrible party record. It is loud and gloomy, has no groove and you can't dance to it. It is mostly suitable for standing around drinking beer and acting like you are older than you really are, so I guess it wasn't a bad choice for the kind of stupid parties I used to go to. The kid who played it was a total dork, but he gained credibility in my mind for spinning it at his party which just goes to show how naive I was. I didn't even realize that the record was already more than five years old at the time, it sounded cutting edge to me. Given that none of us were aware of punk/New Wave yet, maybe it still was edgy. It is not like Blue Oyster Cult or Aerosmith were any better. I've never been a big fan of the group although I have all of their original studio albums. I always resented that they were so much more successful than the Yardbirds from which they emerged and I hated the rock star bombast associated with them. When I want to hear some heavy hard rock I'm more likely to reach for Nirvana or Sleater Kinney. I have to admit though that this album is impressive and truly deserves its classic status. My favorite track is "The Battle of Evermore" in which Robert Plant duets with the immortal Sandy Denny. It is a folk-flavored tune with Tolkienesque lyrics, it sounds like a cross between Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band. English folk rock is also the basis for the most famous song on the record, "Stairway to Heaven." I loved this song back in the 1970s. I played it over and over when I bought this album. Unfortunately it has been the object of so much parody that it is hard to take it seriously and I've heard it so many times that I don't really hear it anymore when I listen to it. I still think it is a brilliant song though, a true folk rock synthesis with some dazzling guitar work. Folk-rock is also prevalent in "Going To California" which has some of my favorite Led Zeppelin lyrics. My other favorite track on the album is Memphis Minnie's "When The Levee Breaks" which I think is the band's best blues song and perhaps the most underrated song in the Led Zeppelin canon. It boasts a great Plant vocal and thunderously powerful music - I love Page's wailing guitar. Of course the band did not abandon their heavy metal roots completely. "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll" are lumpen-rockers driven by John Bonham's ferocious ham-fisted drumming and killer riffs that will appeal to any fan of "Led Zeppelin II." Arguably they were the most dynamic and exciting songs of 1971 but they have been playing incessantly on classic rock radio since I was a teenager and I'm truly sick of them. Nonetheless I freely admit they are among the band's greatest songs and genuine heavy metal landmarks. However when it comes to rockers on this record I prefer "Four Sticks." I don't know why that song is not more popular, it sure beats "Misty Mountain Hop" which I find tedious. I even dig Bonzo's drumming on it. To me this record seems as much a hippie relic as "Sgt. Pepper" but people still seem to love it. I don't, but I respect it enormously and if I'm in the right mood I will easily succumb to its power and verve. Recommended to Fairport Convention fans who prefer "Tam Lin" to "Who Knows Where The Time Goes."
Live Yardbirds
The Yardbirds
Epic E30615
1971
I bought this record sealed for $25 in the early 1980s at my favorite record store ever, Rather Ripped Records in Berkeley. It seems like a bargain now, it was actually a bargain then too, but for me, a starving student at the time, it was a princely sum. I had to skip a few meals to pay for it. It was worth it though. The Yardbirds, or more specifically Jimmy Page, had this album withdrawn supposedly because he didn't approve of the dubbed crowd noises or more likely the attempt to cash in on the fame of Led Zeppelin. There was no reason to be embarrassed by this album though, if anything Page ought to be embarrassed by Led Zeppelin's live album "The Song Remains the Same" which is a far worse record. Yes the crowd noise is a little irritating, but the performance is awesome and the recording quality is pretty decent for a 1960s era live recording. The group's performance of "Over, Under, Sideways, Down" is the best I've heard and they also deliver blistering takes of "Mr. You're a Better Man than I," "Heart Full of Soul," "Train Kept A-Rollin'" and "Drinking Muddy Water." If you are a Yardbirds fan you are probably familiar with the extended psychedelic version of "I'm a Man" that the group developed with Page which has been featured on various archival reissues. I admire the effort to breathe new life into the song, but I greatly prefer the version the group recorded with Jeff Beck or even the earlier live version with Eric Clapton. The group also offers up an epic version of Jake Holmes' "Dazed and Confused" (here entitled "I'm Confused") which Led Zeppelin essentially copied for the version they put out on their debut album, which might be another reason why Mr. Page has been so reluctant to allow this record to be released. Much of this record is like a blueprint for the early Led Zeppelin sound. Like any good live record, this performance is a little rough, a little sloppy perhaps, but full of energy and excitement. Tracking down a reasonably priced vinyl original may be difficult at this stage, but it has been widely bootlegged and was also issued on CD a few years back. If you have any interest in the Yardbirds you definitely should check it out. Recommended for people who think Led Zeppelin invented heavy metal.
