By Jim Rowland
In September of last year, the legendary Blue Öyster Cult celebrated their 50th Anniversary with a very special set of three sold-out shows at Sony Hall in their home city of NYC. For this historic career milestone, each show featured the band playing in its entirety one of their first three albums, followed by a set of deep cuts and classics from their other albums, with founding member Albert Bouchard guesting on all three nights. ‘50th Anniversary Live – First Night’ documents the first night of those three performances.
This first night performance sees the band tackling their classic self-titled first album in its entirety and in sequence. ‘Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll’ and ‘Then Came the Last Days Of May’ are of course bona fide BÖC classics that have probably remained staples of their live set for their whole career, whilst ‘Transmaniacon MC’ and ‘Before The Kiss, A Redcap’ have featured regularly in the set in recent years.
Here you get the added bonus of renditions of other great tracks from this album that don’t get a regular airing like the great ‘Stairway To the Stars’, ‘Workshop of the Telescopes’ and ‘Redeemed’. As with the other early albums, this is quirky hard rock with a strange and original twist that made Blue Öyster Cult quite unique. The performance here is spot on, with plenty of energy, and the versions faithful to the originals, albeit the voices may have deepened a little over the 50 years.
The first album material fills the first CD of this set, with the second disc dedicated to a career-spanning set of big hitters and deep cuts. Four tracks feature from 2020’s rather fine ‘comeback’ album ‘The Symbol Remains’, with a further three from 1979’s ‘Mirrors’ and a healthy helping of timeless BÖC classics like ‘Burnin’ For You’, ‘Hot Rails To Hell’, ‘Godzilla’ and of course ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’. ‘Dancin’ In the Ruins’ and ‘Harvest Moon’ are good choices for slightly deeper cuts too.
The set comes in two CD/DVD, Blu-ray and triple vinyl editions, with the entire show shot for the DVD/Blu-ray. Blue Öyster Cult have already released a great CD/DVD combo of the first album in its entirety when the London show at the Indigo2 was released for the 45th anniversary, but that was a shorter set without the added bonus of Albert Bouchard guesting.
This release will certainly whet the appetite of all BÖC fans for the second and third nights of this series. As a long term huge fan of the band myself, the prospect of both ‘Tyranny and Mutation’ and then the sublime ‘Secret Treaties’ performed in their entirety is mouth-watering. Bring ‘em on.
- ‘50th Anniversary Live – First Night’ is released on Friday (8 December).
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