Blue Oyster Cult: Mirrors

Blue Oyster Cult: Mirrors

1979

Columbia Records

Format I own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Dr. Music  2. The Great Sun Jester  3. In Thee  4. Mirrors  5. Moon Crazy  6. The Vigil  7. I Am the Storm  8. You're Not the One (I Was Looking for)  9. Lonely Teardrops


People crying "sell out" at "Spectres" must have flipped their purist whigs when this one came out...They ditch longtime producer/songwriter/manager Sandy Pearlman, and brought in slickster producer Tom Werman for a whole album of radio-ready rock...Problem is, radio didn't play it and the fans turned their back on it...

I personally don't think it's a bad album at all...It's not "Secret Treaties" or anything, but a few songs on here on my short list for mt favorite BOC tracks...

I always felt that if they switched Side One and Side Two, this album would have been better received...Because as it stands, it takes about 4 tracks to hear a song that sounds like Blue Oyster Cult...The album starts with the sucky "Dr. Music" which is a cheap KISS knock-off that features incredibly irritating backing vocals from Night Court's Ellen Foley...

 Ugh...Maybe they should have gotten Bull Shannon to do the vocals instead...

That song makes me want to shut off the album as soon as it starts...The next song "The Great Sun Jester" isn't one of my favorites either, but it's definitely not a bad song at all...It's the band's first collabo with elfy, swordy fantasy author Michael Moorcock...



...The third track is where the album really hits its stride...I love "In Thee" so much...It's not hard rock at all, it's a beautifully harmonized folk-pop/soft rock song...I swear, if it wasn't by a band called Blue Oyster Cult, it probably would have been all over AM radio...I'm also a big fan of the infectious title track...A nice, solid pop-rocker that features the always great Buck Dharma's humorous take on vanity...One of their best, and most unjustly forgotten singles...

 But as soon as you flip the record over (after the catchy, Doors-ish "Moon Crazy) and hear that glorious wind-swept riff, you know "The Vigil" should have opened the album...The song is just pure Blue Oyster Cult and that part when they drop out all the other instruments and Buck plays those horror-film arpeggios is just the coolest shit ever...

I also love "You're Not the One (I Was Looking for)" so much that my band just recorded a cover of it recently...It still needs a bit of mixing, but as soon as we're done with it, I'll post it here...The song is just so awesome and sounds so uncharacteristic of the band, especially being sequenced after the heavy metal maelstrom of "I am the Storm." But you've got to check this song out if you haven't heard it..It's Blue Oyster Cult doing a spot-on imitation of...gasp...The Cars... And if that's not enough the album closes with "Lonely Teardrops" which comes off as cross between Stevie Wonder and Led Zeppelin...

So in the end, what we have is an incredibly diverse album that never found the wide-audience it deserved...They try out wildly different styles on every track and master just about all of them...It plays like some alternate realty FM radio playlist from 1979...It shows these guys at their most restless and it's a shame the album has been lost to time...Don't let that happen...Run down to your local record store and pick up a used vinyl copy of "Mirrors", but make sure you skip "Dr. Music"...Actually, do what I said earlier, and just toss on Side Two first...

In the meantime, let's check out "You're Not the One (I Was Looking for)" by Blue Oyster Cult...