Customer Reviews

St Cecelia: The Elektra Recordings

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Way back in the dim distant past....Creem was a good rock mag,and one of the things that reviewers in that magazine and era used to do was flaunt that they had heard certain "holy grail" LPs.This was one of 'em!

"St. Cecilia" is named after the right track,it's the best of the songs here(it's written about the Saint of music herself),other than "Arthur Comics".

This is the early ,literary ,1950's "Beat"-like version of what Blue Oyster Cult might have been if they never evolved into the cryptic-cult-biker-mavens they became. It's not much like what BOC fans are used to. But just to hear this long rumored set of recordings is like opening that "grail", to the true BOC fanatic!

Buck Dharma's guitar shines through on St.Cecilia(the title track),and there are lots of lyrics here that are cryptic,but unlike later BOC they do get a bit goofy at times.

This is one for the real "Cult O-Phile". No beginners should delve in at this point,or you just might drown in this swirling pool of weird lyrics and 1960's avant-garde rock.

A godsend to completest fans,confusion to "newby's".

Ahem. I feel compelled to preface my comments by addressing the reviewer below who claimed the lyrics and titles on "St. Cecelia" were inane when compared to BOC's later work. Six words, dude: "She's As Beautiful As A Foot."

Having gotten that out of the way, I will trumpet the solidity of this record. I've had it for a couple years and listen to it quite a bit. On "St. Cecelia," no lame "Stairway to the Stars"-type boogie and no "Subhuman"-esque repetitive non-riffing are to be found: overall, the record has *much* less filler than any of the BOC records from the 1970s. On the other hand, there's no "Last Days of May" or "Cities On Flame" here either: all the songs are well-written and enjoyable rather than brilliant (or awful).

Also, "St. Cecelia" was recorded in 1969, I believe, and has a strong flavor of "American Beauty"-era Grateful Dead. Which is fine (even great) with me, but if you are more a fan of BOC's heavier songs you might want to go to Rhino's website and check out the sample tracks from "St. Cecelia" before spending your money.

This disc is a collection of recordings made for Electra Records in the late sixties,only to be shelved until Rhino Records obtained the rights to it.
I had always heard of the "Electra recordings" but I found mention of it on a BOC site.The songs,are mostly unreleased save for two or three on the reissued discs.
What can I say? The music is definately dated but the styles were emerging from Buck as well as Allan Lanier.Hearing familiar riffs from entirely different songs is cool. Warning: there are some songs that are duplicated in different tempos,etc.
Im not much of a reviewer but ALL BOC fans need this. The disc is numbered with a limited run of 5,000. Im at 4856 and
paid 30 bucks for mine

I certainly didn't get the feeling this music was substandard BOC fare as many of the reviews for this album imply. The music is first-class and will be a wonderful surprise to anyone who's ever banged their head even a little bit to a BOC tune. Led by
Buck Dharma's guitar, this music will move across your soundscape consciousness like an urgent horse, ie. his solo for the second track, `Ragamuffin'. Sure, there are a couple of filler tracks, such as "Curse of the Hidden Mirrors" which don't seem to go anywhere, but there are way more strengths to be enjoyed. Starting with the frisky opener, "Gil Blanco County", other stand-out tracks include the gorgeous title track, which begs the question, why was this song never done by BOC in any of their concerts? "Arthur Comics" features a great riff that would not have been out of place on any of BOC's earlier albums. "I'm On The Lamb, But I Ain't No Sheep", which would finally gel into "The Red and The Black" on the cult's second album, has a more spacey feel as it sports a pretty long guitar-keyboard workout in the middle of the song. As for the obscure lyrics....big deal. I personally prefer songs that leave the meaning open for interpretation anyhow. As any true heavy metal fan will say, it's all about the riff. Although I didn't buy the Rhino handmade version and can't vouch for the bonus tracks, I was quite satisfied with the Radioactive Label's version, which I think cost half of what Rhino was asking for theirs. Regardless of which label you choose to purchase, St. Cecelia will come as a happy revelation to any first-time listener.

This is the psychedelic work of the Blue Öyster Cult long before they reinvented themselves as the metalic Blue Öyster Cult. As such, you'll have to overlook the smudgy fingerprints of a novice band. But in exchange, you'll receive the pure, unadultured brilliance of a group of hungry musicians uncontaminated by the toxic, always lethal Success Rock Syndrome.

The key compositions on this album are St. Cecilia (Buck Dharma at his very best ever), Arthur Comics (another Buck masterpiece), and Gil Blanco County (an awesome display of the raw talent of Eric Bloom).

This work has all the essential underpinnings of the then innovative mid 1960s psychedelic era. The Öyster Boys were indeed a Merry Group of Pranksters and it shows in their music.

Good Stuff! Buy it, you won't be sorry!

PS, if you like this, you'll *love* the virtuoso work of guitarists Anita and Kevin Robinson of Viva Voce fame. Lot's of modern treatment of psychedelic reminiscing, but without the usual cliches.

www.vivavoce.com

This limited edition cd features the great blue oyster cult at their start. They thankfully changed their name to boc and updated their music into melodic metal and hard rock /pop rock even. But at this point they were a mix of psych rock and proto metal to just rock. I like this one but it's for boc fans who want to get the complete recordings mainly. As this isn't what a casual listener might want unless they like late 60's psych rock ( I like it though) . I did enjoy this as much as a boc cd though because I am a huge fan of their work. Some songs are rather ecclectic( sneakers) but you get several versions of some songs here. I loved the last few releases from boc and I hope they put out another one soon but at least you can see where these guys came from. Personally I think they should have released this as early boc so that fans could find this easier. Or at least Preboc! The sound on these recordings is excellent and it's in stereo too. This one is better than the other version as it has many more songs. Casual fans of boc probably won't care about this one but any true fan of this group needs this one.

If you're a long time fan of BOC you will most likely like this. The most surprising discovery is that it "sounds" like BOC only just not quite.

More like BOC through a distortion lens with slightly different focus and color. We find the same classic song structure for the most part - they occasionally meandering away into unknown territory - there's a hint of vocal harmonies we would rarely find later and everything is set to shimmering Buck Dharma guitar work. No surprise since they are all here minus Joe Bouchard (bass is played by Andy Winters to good effect). Think BOC minus distortion and weaker lyrical content all set to weird pop songs. What we get is purely brilliant drumming from Albert Bouchard - all Albert fans like me need not fear - and solid efforts from all the others; Dharma, Bloom and Lanier with Winters playing like the other Bouchard brother. Lanier even has a long piano interlude ala John Paul Jones in "A Fact About Sneakers". One of the longer on the album.

What's wrong with it then? Well, firstly it sounds like a BOC album played through a radio. Production is airy with plate reverb echo, not that they wouldn't sound like that later, it's just that there's a little more of it here than we are used to. Rhythm guitars are clear and undistorted giving little thrust during riffing. Moreover, and secondly, there just aren't enough good lyrics. Which is kind of surprising since all the usual suspects are present. We have Pearlman, Meltzer and Bouchard all contributing. All the really good songs are penned in collaboration with Richard Meltzer and Albert Bouchard. Most are sort of tongue-in-cheek spacey semi-psychedelic experiments. One could say that the seeds are sown - but not yet flowering. Whats missing is the nihilistic larger than life lyrical themes and bombastic production we would get used to later.

And I can understand why it was never released. Songs like "I'm on the Lamb" which would resurface as "The Red and the Black" sounds menacing and out of place while other songs come across as style experiments. One gets the impression that an executive came up and said; "Listen guys, all your stuff hints at talent but I think your attitude should be more ominous. You figure it out and come back".

To summarize, one gets the feeling that these songs should have been re-recorded with the early setting of BOC to get the best out of them. A little bit of polishing and re-working of parts of the lyrics and this would be part of standard BOC play lists.

Think of it as BOC doing a faux psychedelic rock record circa 1974 and you get the picture. However, a surprising number of tracks will find their way to your BOC play list and stay there. "Arthur Comics", "St. Cecilia" and my favorite "What is Quicksand?" will blend in just fine. Sprinkle with "Curse of the Hidden Mirror" - especially the last minute of the song or so - and add one or two more and light up.

I bought this CD because I've long been a fan of Blue Oyster Cult and the music on this CD does not let you down. The major problem that I have with the songs here is the idiotic, stream of consciousness lyrics. The lyrics are so bad that they distracted from the overall enjoyment of this recording. If a competent lyricist had been a contributor to this recording, we could talk about the Stalk-Forrest Group with the same reverence that BOC is discussed. In fact if the lyrics had been better they might not have evolved in to the Blue Oyster Cult.

I've been a fan of Blue Oyster Cult since about 1976 and their charted single, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". It was a definitely different sound from the pop music of the time with edgy lyrics and amazing guitar work. While I don't have every "best of" compilation album that's been put out to capitalize on the BOC fan base, I do have all the original albums plus a promotional EP of "Burning for You".

I bought a copy of the Stalk Forrest Group "St. Cecilia" album late last year, and it has become a source of some of my current favorite traveling music. While the recordings do not have the polish and the technical excellence that the BOC albums from "Agents of Fortune" and onward displayed, there are definite gems here. My favorite tracks from this currently would have to be the curiously catchy "Arthur Comics" and the almost hypnotic "St. Cecilia". I played "Arthur Comics" via my Olympus voice recorder at a New Year's Eve party, and amazingly enough several teenagers there set about dancing to it. Dancing was not generally the sort of activity that most of the BOC repertoire suggests, but at least a couple of the "St. Cecilia" recordings might set feet to moving. As always, one gets the genius of Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser on lead guitar. Eric Bloom does a creditable job on vocals here, and is actually easier to understand most of the time than on the BOC eponymous debut album. Allen Lanier does not stand out on this album as his piano and keyboard turns do later in the BOC discography. But Albert Bouchard's drum work here is just about perfect, and anyone interested in the BOC sound needs to have a listen just for that if nothing else. That said, this is definitely not a BOC album. It falls easily into the category of progressive rock. If it had been released on schedule around 1970, it would have been counted as something on the fringes of rock performance then. The presence of "I'm on the Lamb, but I Ain't No Sheep" is the sole link from SFG to the BOC repertoire, and it is played with a folksy twang here that BOC soon dispensed with. For those of you who have the BOC debut album, you could think of this one as material more in line with the "Redeemed" track than with the rest of the cuts on the original BOC album.

While I don't always play the extra versions of songs provided on this CD-ROM, I really appreciate having them available. So I'd recommend looking for one of the Rhino Handmade Records versions of "St. Cecilia", though the prices have been steadily climbing since the limited release.

Elektra founder Jac Holzman decided not to release this batch of songs when the LP was first recorded, and saner decisions have rarely been taken by a record executive. Don't get me wrong: I LOVE Blue Oyster Cult (well--the first 3 or 4 studio LPs, at least), and it's fascinating finally to hear the Soft White Underbelly a.k.a. Stalk-Forrest Group, a.k.a. Oaxaca material herein, especially if one has been waiting over 30 years to do so.

That Blue Oyster Cult was "not quite there" as a recording act when they cut these songs goes without saying. Particularly heinous here: the ususually great R. Melzer & future producer Sandy Pearlman's lyrics. True, BOC had, even at its best, the most obtuse lyrics this side of Yes, but many of the stanzas here are beyond obtuse: "godawful" is the word which springs to mind (example: the whole song "Gil Blanco County," particularly the opening two couplets: 'Bad oats in town/The word went out/So my horse and me/We left town').

To change the topic for just a second, a CAVEAT for those in Readerland who wonder, as I did, about the contents of a pricey package called "Rhino Handmade"--wonderfully evocative name, that; surely, then, something about this product would live up to it? Well...not so much. A decent-enough booklet (though not any better than one from many other CDs) and naught else to justify the added cost, nothing to separate this from one's common ol' everyday CD, nothing to proclaim this limited/5,000 disc as anything special. (I guess the designation "Rhino Same Old-Same Old" does sound prohibitive.)

So, all things considered, why did I give this 3 stars? For starters, two versions--one quite nice, the other with (argh!) electric piano tinkling inappropriately at the top of the mix--of the BOC corker "I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep." I know nostalgia ain't hip, but 1 point for nostalgia. And I love every word of those obtuse lyrics. Secondly: "St. Cecilia," if one can get by the almost barbershop-quartet-like vocal mix on the first version. The song has something of the faux naive-and-the-better-for-it, lovely lyrical sweep of early BOC. Even the recommendations I'm making mostly include caveats.

But "Arthur Comics" is terrific, both versions. Here, one can truly hear a so-so band caught in the process of becoming a wonderful unit. To sum up: money well spent if you're a hardcore Blue Oyster Cult fan. If not: a must to avoid. Rhino is my all-time favorite record company, BOC is my favorite c. 1972-'75-era band. But later BOC releases remind me of these cuts, actually: haphazardly written and therefore insipid--though with better production.

<<>> UPDATE: just sold my copy on eBay--which, by the way, is a horrible venue; if you have books/records/CDs to sell, list 'em on Amazon and avoid the inevitable hassles--but I digress. <<>>