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<\/p>\nBlue \u00d6yster Cult is best-known for its smash hit, 1976\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Fear the Reaper.\u201d A winning combination of catchy riffage, hard rock arrangement and borderline-progressive rock composition style, the standout track from B\u00d6C\u2019s Agents of Fortune<\/i> quickly became a rock classic, and established the band as part of the era\u2019s front line of bands.<\/p>\n
But the Long Island-based group had been perfecting its brand of rock \u2014 a deft balance of metal, malevolence and humor \u2014for many years before scoring a hit. First coming together in the late \u201860s as Soft White Underbelly and then as the Stalk-Forrest Group, the group cut an album for Elektra Records in 1968; it wasn\u2019t released until 2001, and then only in a limited edition.<\/p>\n
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Blue \u00d6yster Cult built its fan base the old-fashioned way, through incessant touring. B\u00d6C earned new fans by putting on dynamic, incendiary shows opening for many of the era\u2019s top rock acts including John McLaughlin\u2019s Mahavishnu Orchestra and Alice Cooper. The band released its self-titled debut album in 1972, further refining and sharpening its sound with each successive release.<\/p>\n
Leveraging its thrilling live presence, B\u00d6C released its first live album, On Your Feet or On Your Knees<\/i> in 1975. The LP earned a gold record, expanding the group\u2019s reach into the hearts and minds of America\u2019s rock fans. That set was quickly followed up by the watershed Agents of Fortune<\/i>, B\u00d6C\u2019s first massive success.<\/p>\n
Now a major musical force, the band delivered another stone classic in the 1977 single \u201cGodzilla.\u201d A second live set, the Platinum-selling Some Enchanted Evening<\/i>, underscored the point that however solid the group\u2019s studio work might be, B\u00d6C was best experienced live.<\/p>\n
Though the group featured several top-notch songwriters, and recorded songs written in collaboration with superb lyricist including Patti Smith and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, B\u00d6C often included cover tunes in its sets. Those songs were hard rocking tunes by like-minded artists: MC5\u2019s \u201cKick Out the Jams,\u201d Steppenwolf\u2019s \u2018Born to Be Wild\u201d and the Doors\u2019 \u201cRoadhouse Blues\u201d were typical examples.<\/p>\n
As the era of MTV ushered in greater emphasis on audiovisuals in popular music, B\u00d6C capitalized on the trend with the smash album Fire of Unknown Origin<\/i>. With the Top 40 single \u201cBurnin\u2019 for You\u201d and deep album cuts like the delightfully macabre \u201cJoan Crawford,\u201d the group began the task of winning over a newer generation of fans. Yet another live album, 1982\u2019s Extraterrestrial Live<\/i> \u2014 was released to build upon the band\u2019s recent critical and commercial success; still two more live releases would follow in future years.<\/p>\n
The remainder of the 1980s and beyond saw personnel changes and found the band failing to sustain its early momentum. But a resurgence of interest in classic hard rock \u2014 coupled with a thoughtful series of reissues of B\u00d6C\u2019s prime-era material \u2014 helped breathe new life into the band. Newly reinvigorated, the group \u2014 still featuring original members Buck Dharma (lead guitar) and Eric Bloom (vocals) recently announced plans to record and release an album later this year, its first collection of new music since 2001\u2019s Curse of the Hidden Mirror<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blue \u00d6yster Cult is best-known for its smash hit, 1976\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Fear the Reaper.\u201d A winning combination of catchy riffage, hard rock arrangement and borderline-progressive rock composition style, the standout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,62],"tags":[349],"class_list":["post-16614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-rawk","tag-blue-oyster-cult","cat-27-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16614"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17120,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16614\/revisions\/17120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}