Blue Oyster Cult: On Your Feet or on Your Knees

Blue Oyster Cult: On Your Feet or on Your Knees

1975

Columbia Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Subhuman  2. Harvester of Eyes  3. Hot Rails to Hell  4. The Red and the Black  5. 7 Screaming Diz-Busters  8. Buck's Boogie  9. (Then Came The) Last Days of May  10. Cities on Flame  11.ME 262  12. Before the Kiss (A Redcap)  13.Maserati GT (I Ain't Got You)  14. Born to Be Wild

The obligatory 70's double-live album...God, I love these things...Yea, yea, yea, they're usually just crass cash-ins...Whatever...They still feel like an event to me...

I love pulling the big, weighty album off the shelves, blowing the dust off it, and tossing on Side One (of Four) and gazing at the big-ass gatefold cover...

Oh yea, the inside gatefold to this one is one of the most memorable ever, check it out...

 ALL FIVE BAND MEMBERS (EVEN THE DRUMMER) PLAYING GUITAR!!! AND ONE OF THEM IS WEARING GOLD LAMÉ HOTPANTS!!! (If that doesn't warrant "Caps Lock" I don't know what does...)

(Take the time to drink in the awesome sight of Gold Lamé Hotpants...Is there anything that is more Roller Disco!??!  Does the image of a Man wearing Gold Lamé Hotpants burn a hole in your soul?!?! No! You mustn't answer these questions! An answer would only serve to cheapen the spectacle!)


Anyway, this is Blue Oyster Cult's first live record and it marks the end of the Black and White era...I mean, look at the cover...It's totally in color...The sell-outs...

One of the coolest things about the record is the label...It has the neat photo from the back cover of the leather-gloved hands holding a bible...It looks so damn cool...

The set list covers the first three records and tosses in a couple of cover songs for good measure...To be honest, this is kind of my least favorite of the three BOC live records I own.. It's perfectly raw and exciting, but a lot of the songs are reeeeaaalllly extended for jamming purposes...Which ends up highlighting just how tight their songwriting really was...

70's rock is often remembered as a period of excess, especially when it came to live shows...10 minute drum solos...Extended guitar showcases...But Blue Oyster Cult never did that....If one of their songs had a long running length, that usually meant that it was structurally ambitious...

But they really stretch out here...And that's not a bad thing by any means...They're all really talented players, and Buck Dharma cements his place in Guitar History here...Listen to his endless bag of tricks on "7 Screaming Diz-Busters"...It's a how-to manual for guitar dynamics...And the instrumental "Buck's Boogie" is a real jive boogie indeedy...

And all the jamming doesn't get to me until about side 4, where I usually find myself looking at my watch while a nine minute version "I Ain't Got You" plays in the background...

But it's cool, man...I can dig it...It's the only time they do this...But if you have a problem with lengthy 70's guitar jams, you might want to skip this one and go with "Some Enchanted Evening" or "Extraterrestrial Live" instead...But if guitar solos are your cup o' tea, then drink deep...

Let's sit back and enjoy the one and only Blue Oyster Cult cut loose on "Seven Screaming Diz-Busters"...