The original name was Soft White Underbelly(67-69 and also Stalk Forrest GRoup(1970).
Been meaning to order this one for over 2 years now.
1. What is Quicksand?
00:00:002. I'm on the lamb
00:03:223. Gil Blanco County
00:06:264. Donovan's Monkey
00:10:065. Ragamuffin Dumplin
00:13:536. Curse of the Hidden Mirrors
00:19:097. Arthur Comics
00:22:298. A Fact About Sneakers
00:25:449. St. Cecilia
00:33:4010. Ragamuffin Dumplin (Alternate Mix)
00:40:3111. I'm on the Lamb (Alternate Take)
00:45:5312. Curse of the Hidden Mirrors (Alternate Mix)
00:48:5113. Bonomo's Turkish Taffy (deleted from the final album)
00:52:1114. Gil Blanco County (Alternate Mix)
00:54:2915. St. Cecilia (Alternate Mix)
00:58:1016. A Fact About Sneakers (Alternate Take)
01:05:0017. What is Quicksand? (Mono Single Mix)
01:08:1318. Arthur Comics (Mono Single Mix)
01:11:37
Sandy Pearlman (rock critic) was their manager, got them gigs, and even named them and wrote some lyrics including 'Astronomy'. Richard Meltzer another rock critic and writer helped write many BOC songs over the years. They both helped to create the occult image and Meltzer claimed to come up with the umlaut over the O thing in their name. The principal lyricists in the early days were manager
Sandy Pearlman and fellow rock critic
Richard Meltzer. Key members of the New York punk scene
Patti Smith,
Helen "Wheels" Robbins and
Jim Carroll - all friends of the band - contributed from the mid-1970s. Later in the decade frontman Eric Bloom, a science fiction fan, recruited English author
Michael Moorcock to write for the band, and later did the same with
Eric Van Lustbader and
John Shirley. In order to add to their mystique the band would often use out-of-context fragments of Pearlman's unpublished sci-fi poetry cycle
The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos as lyrics, rendering their meaning obscure. Additionally, they kept a folder of Pearlman's and Meltzer's word associations to insert into their songs.
The hook-and-cross logo was designed by fellow Stony Brook student Bill Gawlik for his master's thesis in January 1972, and appears on all of the band's albums. In Greek mythology, "... the hook-and-cross symbol is that of
Kronos (Cronus), the king of the Titans and father of Zeus ... and is the
alchemical symbol for
lead (a
heavy metal), one of the heaviest of metals.
Blue Öyster Cult have been influential to the realm of hard rock and heavy metal, leading them to being referred to as "the thinking man's heavy metal band" due to their often cryptic lyrics, literate songwriting, and links to famous authors. The band's influence has extended beyond the musical sphere. The lyrics of "Astronomy" have been named by author Shawn St. Jean as inspirational to the later chapters of his fantasy novel
Clotho's Loom, wherein Sandy Pearlman's "Four Winds Bar" provides the setting for a portion of the action. Titles and lines from the band's songs provided structure and narrative for the third book in Robert Galbraith's (a pseudonym for
J. K. Rowling), series of Cormoran Strike novels,
Career of Evil.
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