Tag Archives: Blue Oyster Cult

Music

Re Imaginos (2020) a (Almost Right On Time!) Review

As I noted a while back (you can read it here) I was very interested in two “new” music releases on November 6th, David Bowie’s Metrobolist (I reviewed it here) and Albert Bouchard’s Re Imaginos.

I’ve already gone into the history of this later album, but I’ll nonetheless offer this brief recap: In the early 1980’s, the band Blue Oyster Cult, perhaps most famous nowadays for the song Don’t Fear the Reaper and its “cowbell”, were on the verge of breaking up.

Albert Bouchard, the band’s drummer (and the man responsible for the actual cowbell in Don’t Fear the Reaper!) at that time in the early-mid 1980’s took many songs throughout BOC’s history and created a demo for a concept album he called Imaginos.

Here’s that demo:

The album was shopped around to various companies but no one was interested in releasing it. A few years later, however, the album was reworked with the other members of the band -minus Albert Bouchard himself- as well as several session musicians and the album Imaginos, credited to BOC and not Albert Bouchard, was released in 1988…

imaginos LP - Amazon.com Music

Though I have no inside information on how the album came about, the fact that Albert Bouchard was not involved in a project he demoed suggested that maybe there was some bad feelings between the band and the drummer.

Many, many years passed and, this year, BOC released a new album and, lo and behold, in their first music video, who should pop up in it -and jokingly hitting a cowbell!- but Albert Bouchard?! (He first appears at the 1:07 mark)

Shortly afterwards, I heard that Albert Bouchard was releasing Re Imaginos, his version of the demo featured above…

Albert Bouchard - Re Imaginos CD – Merchbucket.com

My best guess is that whatever problems/anger they had between each other was resolved and, while Albert Bouchard hasn’t re-joined the band, his album was released.

So, what did I think about it?

I like the album but my main gripe remains: Albert Bouchard, to my ears, isn’t as good a singer as BOC’s Eric Bloom and Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser. His voice isn’t bad, mind you, and in several songs the elderly/weary singing works very well, but in others it doesn’t do quite as well.

Just as an example, we now have three versions of what I consider the very best song BOC made, Astronomy. The original version was sung by Eric Bloom and is found on the 1974 BOC album Secret Treaties…

Then there’s this version of the song, from 1988’s Imaginos, and sung by Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser…

Finally, this is Albert Bouchard’s version of the song from Re Imaginos (you can fast forward to the original demo version of the song above).

There are things I love in all three versions of the song but, if I’m being totally honest, I feel like the lesser version is Albert Bouchard’s from Re Imaginos. To be clear: I’m not saying its a terrible version of the song, but that the other versions for me are better.

That’s not to say, however, that all Bouchard’s versions of the songs are less than those which were released before!

This does bring me to the following: Nowadays, with so many music services available out there, you can cobble together a playlist of the various songs on Imaginos/Re Imaginos, making alternate “albums” which can feature classic BOC versions exclusively or a mix and match versions which features the original songs, songs from Imaginos, and songs from Re Imaginos.

If you’re interested in doing so!

As is, though, I recommend Re Imaginos to those who like the original demo and were curious to hear what Albert Bouchard originally intended with the Imaginos demo.

Interesting stuff!

POSTSCRIPT:

For the heck of it, here’s Metallica’s cover of Astronomy. It includes the lyrics!

Music

Friday New Releases…

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Finally, a chance to move away from politics!

Today is a pretty big day, at least for me, with two “new” musical releases I’ve been anticipating:

David Bowie’s Metrobolist and Albert Bouchard’s Re Imaginos. (You can read my original post regarding these then upcoming releases here)

David Bowie’s Metrobolist is, in actuality, a Tony Visconti (longtime Bowie producer) remastered version of what I consider David Bowie’s first “real” David Bowie album, The Man Who Sold The World.

David Bowie - Metrobolist (aka The Man Who Sold The World) - Amazon.com Music

I was very interested in hearing this new version of the album because, of Bowie’s major works, this one didn’t have the greatest mastering, I felt.

However, in 2015 the album was remastered and, I felt, it sounded pretty good. Still, I was curious to hear what Tony Visconti would do with the album. He’s a damn good producer, in my humble opinion, and I loved his last year remastering of Bowie’s first big hit, the song Space Oddity, and felt his remastering of the album Lodger was also quite good.

So I just listened to the album for the first time and…

I think there are some improvements here, but I’ve got to give the full album a couple of more listens to see if it’s as good as the 2015 version. In one place, though, I think Mr. Visconti came short: His remastering of the song The Man Who Sold The World is ok, but I like the original version without the reverb more.

The rest of the album passed ok upon the first listen. I didn’t detect much of a difference in the 2015 versus 2020 Visconti version of Width of a Circle though there was plenty of interesting new stuff in Running Gun Blues, from the sound of the gunfire/bombs to Bowie singing some additional stuff (hope my memory of this is right, only one listen!) at the tail end of the song.

Interesting stuff, for sure, but at least after one listen I can’t say this version has wowed me to the point where I feel this is now THE definitive version of the album.

It’s nice, but its not that different and/or incredibly superior to the 2015 version.

The second release is ex-Blue Oyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard’s release of Re Imaginos. Again, you can get the full story of what transpired with this album in my original post linked to above (and here!) but, basically, ex-Blue Oyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard created a concept album using several Blue Oyster Cult songs from their earlier albums in the early 1980’s when it seemed the band was for all intents and purposes broken up and produced an intriguing demo he called Imaginos.

The album was shopped around but the studios didn’t take it. By the mid-80’s they got the other members of the band together -without Albert Bouchard- and reworked the album and released that version of Imaginos in 1988.

imaginos LP - Amazon.com Music

My understanding is that this didn’t sit terribly well with Mr. Bouchard but the album was nonetheless, IMHO, a very strong one.

Still, it seemed Mr. Bouchard wanted to do his version of the album and, after all these years, perhaps he and the remaining members of Blue Oyster Cult settled their differences and Albert Bouchard today released Re Imaginos, his version of that album…

Albert Bouchard - Re Imaginos CD – Merchbucket.com

I’m currently listening to it and generally enjoying what I’m hearing but I have to say one thing… Mr. Bouchard’s singing voice is simply not as strong as that of BOC regular vocalists Eric Bloom and Donald Brian Roeser aka Buck Dharma.

Still, its pretty interesting/good so far. I’m liking it.

More to come when I listen to both more thoroughly.

General

Angry about Keurig…

Big time politics here, so look away if you’re not interested in reading my opinion of these issues…

The other day Sean Hannity, right wing apologist and another of the too many right wing machine over at Fox “News”, had controversial Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore on his show.

For those who don’t know, Roy Moore is controversial for a number of things, from going against Supreme Court rulings to  -this is the latest controversy- having sex with teenage women/girls as young as 14 years of age when he was in his (gulp) thirties.

He’s being accused by women who are willing to put their name to the accusations of engaging in pedophilia.

So of course, when Mr. Moore shows up on Sean Hannity’s show, the questions are softballs and the purpose of the episode is to give Mr. Moore a platform to prove he’s a good guy and the accusations aren’t true.

He didn’t quite do that…  From vox.com, Jen Kirby writes about that interview, and the one startling thing he had to say when asked if he dated teenagers at that time:

Roy Moore on whether he dated teenage girls: “Not generally, no”.

Way to issue a strong denial there, Mr. Moore!

As a result of that interview, and the way it was performed by Mr. Hannity, people started flooded some of his sponsors with letters/tweets/etc. asking them how they can continue to sponsor a show where its host seeks to show someone like Mr. Moore in a positive light.

Among the companies that were contacted was Keurig, coffee machine makers.  In a tweet regarding whether they would continue to support Mr. Hannity’s show after that interview, Keurig stated:

Thank you for your concern and for bringing this to our attention. We worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show.

As with any action, there is a reaction, and one of the big reactions from fans of Hannity’s show is to slam Keurig and, idiotically, decide to destroy their Keurig coffee making machines.  Tom McKay over at gizmodo.com writes about this:

Angry Sean Hannity fans are smashing Keurigs on Twitter because 2017 is dumb as heck

But you know what?  Dumb as it is to decide to protest Keurig (and liberals, I suppose) by destroying your Keurig machine is just another iteration of dumb protesting.

Way, way back in 1976 and when Blue Oyster Cult first released their song “Don’t Fear The Reaper” (you know, the cowbell song!)…

…there was a great deal of controversy amongst the very religious/right wingers out there about it.

Why?

Because the song’s lyrics refer to death in many incarnations and states “don’t fear the reaper” when referring to, among others, “Romeo and Juliet.”  To many, the implication was clear: The song promoted death and suicide and, therefore, it was a sinful song. (Didn’t help that Blue Oyster Cult cultivated a dark image)

So controversial amongst the religious/right wingers was the song and album in which it came on that one day this group has a big BOC bonfire, wherein people brought the vinyl albums and burned them.

To which one of the members of BOC (I forget which) was quoted as saying something along the lines of: “I don’t care what they do to our albums… as long as they buy them first!”

I suspect Keurig is feeling the same.