Blue Oyster Cat

Wholly crap! Mr. Helpful recently reminded me about a band that was huge in my childhood: Blue Oyster Cult. They were from Long Island, and they played frequently in my hometown. The big story was that they used to perform at a local club as "Soft White Underbelly", without any hype, as they prepared for a tour. I'm not sure if that was true, because I was too young to verify it.

Well, let me tell you, as many good songs as they had - and you know them: Godzilla, Don't Fear the Reaper, Burning For You, and many more - they had a whole mess of shitty songs, too. In an era of album oriented rock, I can't believe they actually made it. Most of their albums had a hit, one or two other good rocking songs, and a whole lot of odd mess.

I had the Agents of Fortune album, but that was ruined along with all the rest of my records when one of our cats decided to pee all over them. I chucked them all in the dumpster when we moved to this house.

You wouldn't believe how many great albums that cat ruined. The whole Kiss collection (through Dynasty - that's as far as you need to go), the complete Led Zeppelin collection (except for III, which, oddly, is the only one I now have on CD), several Crosby Stills and Nash records, Fleetwood Mac, some Tangerine Dream, The Smiths, The Cure, The Cocteau Twins, a bunch of Yes and Genesis. Even the Grease and Saturday Night Fever soundtracks. The biggest loss was Aerosmith Rocks, which I think is the best rock album of all time. That and Get Your Wings are the only Aerosmith albums you need. They started to suck about 1977. I'm not sure why they've made it as far as they have.

That cat trashed hundreds of records, and he peed on the lower levels of my CD collection, too. I didn't toss them out. I did the best I could to clean them up, but those in the R's and S's are somewhat compromised. The discs are OK, but the cover art is all pale and crisp. Those hardest hit were the Rolling Stones, REM, and Sade.

Damn cat.