Thursday, July 9, 2009

That is one wicked triangle!



Golden Earring - Moontan (listen) Or don't; you will most likely hear "Radar Love" somewhere today in the course of regular business anyway. On the classic rock station they play at the pool, the breakdown is roughly 1/3 Steve Miller Band, 1/3 songs I at one time thought were Steve Miller Band songs, like Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years," and the remaining is car dealer commercials and those two Golden Earring songs you know. By the way, there is a reason you only know those two Golden Earring songs.


Blue Öyster Cult - Tyranny and Mutation (listen) My first favorite band was Blue Öyster Cult, mostly because it was the favorite of my best friend in 5th grade. My first album* was the double LP Extraterrestrial Live (listen) which unfortunately, doesn't really hold up as well as their crypto-progressive-blues studio albums. Glam aficionados should have this 1973 juicy number in their arsenal


Now, not being a fifth grader riveted by umlauts and sci-fi, I see Blue Öyster Cult as a rock critic's platonic ideal/sarcastic parody of a biker band, which is pretty much exactly what they were, but this AMG review puts them in more rarefied territory:
Here was the crossroads: the middle of rock's Bermuda triangle where BÖC marked the black cross of the intersection between New York's other reigning kings of mystery theater and absurd excess: the Velvet Underground and Kiss -- two years before their first album -- and the " 'it's all F#$&%* so who gives a rat's ass" attitude that embodied the City's punk chic half-a-decade later.
Kiss, Velvet Underground and Blue Öyster Cult - That is one wicked triangle!

Try to wrap you brain around the artful excesses of "7 Screaming Diz-Busters"


Grand Funk Railroad - E Pluribus Funk (listen) I posted this album mostly because it fit the circle theme I have going. This is one my stepbrother passed on down to me around that time. I thought the round cover fashioned like a quarter was the coolest thing ever even if the music contained therein isn't. Its not terrible; as Mark Farner (Ed: typo, sorry) himself says, it's alright.



* Critical distinctions - Extraterrestrial Live was first vinyl album that was specifically mine. I acquired Nazareth Hair of the Dog (listen) on 8-track sometime around then. Purple Rain was the first album I ever bought with my own money.

2 comments:

  1. Heh, heh...It's Mark Farner, no longer Farmer Farner!

    Alright, I'd like to invite you to listen to "Upsetter" and "I Come Tumblin'?"

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  2. Uh, it's news to me that Twilight Zone was by Golden Earring. But I was quite busy in the early 80s...

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