CD Review: Blue Öyster Cult - A Long Day's Night

Blue Öyster Cult are one of many 70s bands living in 'reduced circumstances', playing small clubs in cities where they once played enormodomes. While fads and fashions have passed on to newer and younger bands, these acts still can still rock the house.

With only three hit singles, but a very strong back catalogue of albums, BÖC aren't one of those bands that have played the same set for the past 20 years, with many different songs rotating in and out of the set from the set from tour to tour. This live set, recorded in Chicago in June 2002, spans the band's entire 30 year career, from two numbers from their eponymous 1971 debut, to "Dance on Stilts" from their last studio opus, "Curse of the Hidden Mirror".

The album opens with a slightly messy version of "Stairway to the Stars", spoiled by some rather over-busy drumming from Bobby Rondinelli, but subsequent numbers are much better as the band get into their stride. High spots are "Quicklime Girl", an oldie recently brought into the set, "Harvest Moon", the standout song from their 1998 comeback album "Heaven Forbid", "Perfect Water", much heaver than the studio version on "Club Ninja", and an excellent version of the band's best song, "Astronomy", with an extended solo from Buck Dharma. The album ends, of course, with the compulsory and overexposed hits "Godzilla" and "Don't Fear the Reaper", the former broken up with unnecessary solos (bass solos? Gaaak! Buck's guitar solos are worth listening to because he's one of rock's great guitarists, but I can't listen to drum solos unless they're by someone in Neil Peart's or Carl Palmer's league. And the bass guitar is not a solo instrument, period)

Overall, this isn't quite a classic live album in the class of 1977's "Some Enchanted Evening". But it's a good record of a hardworking band who still rock out and outperform many people half their age. I've already got tickets for their British tour next month!