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Friendly Fire From Blue Oyster Cult

Posted Apr 13, 2007 by Clarisa Gerlach

Updated Apr 13, 2007 at 10:17 AM

Blue Oyster Cult was one of the hardest touring bands of the ‘70s, taking their white-hot live show into every nook and cranny of the U.S. No surprise then, that its second best selling album is a live one, 1978’s “Some Enchanted Evening.” It was their second in-concert release, with only two studio albums between it and 1975’s “On Your Feet or On Your Knees.”

“Our motivation at time was we didn’t have time to start writing and recording” new material, lead singer Eric Bloom says by telephone from his Long Island home. “I remember a discussion with (producer-lyricist) Sandy Perlman at the time because I didn’t think it was the right time to make another live album. He proved me wrong.”

The album, and the 1977 studio album which preceded it, “Spectres,” were reissued in remastered editions February. “Spectres” features four bonus tracks including a remake of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.”

“Some Enchanted Evening” gets the deluxe treatment, expanded from seven tracks to 14 and packaged with a DVD featuring amateur footage of a 1978 show. It’s the only visual document of the band’s now legendary laser show.

The band had to bring a professional on tour to operate the lights. “You can’t got out with lasers without a professional laserist,” says Bloom.

More intrusive were the officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration who tagged along for a later tour.

“We had these guys in lab coats walking around trying to protect the youth of America,” Bloom says with a sigh. After holding hearings on laser usage at concerts - your tax dollars at work! - BOC was forced to retire the system.

Lucky me, though. I saw the laser show on its initial outing in the summer of 1976.

The fact that I’d never heard a note of Blue Oyster Cult’s music, nor that of opening act Rush, mattered not. If you were a rock-crazed 15-year-old growing up in Enterprise, Ala., you went to see any band booked into the Dothan Civic Center, 30 miles away.

The show was, of course, a mind-blower. Rush had just released “2112,” and BOC was touring behind the brand new “Agents of Fortune,” soon to spawn their first Top 40 hit, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”

And somewhere in a drawer in my parents house is a ticket stub signed by Bloom and BOC lead guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, who proved to be genial, unaffected guys willing to hang out and talk guitars with geeky teenagers.

“Me and Buck can count many life-long friends we’ve met on tour, close friends who were fans first,” Bloom says.