Blue+öyster+cult

This is useful, and confounding. This is truly a Blue Öyster Cult singles comp, but not in the usual sense. Over 20 tracks, it rounds up BÖC singles released all over the world, which keeps it from being just another best-of. For instance, take the final cut: "Astronomy." This is not the original released on Secret Treaties but the redone version issued on Imaginos issued in 1988 and a single distributed only in the U.K. and Holland. And so it goes with this thing. Many of these cuts were issued as singles in the United Kingdom, or in Japan ("Moon Crazy," "Flaming Telepaths") or Europe, marked by the inclusion of tracks like the live read of "We Gotta Get Outta This Place," released in Germany as a single, or "Fallen Angel," released in Spain.

In 1999, Mobile Fidelity reissued Blue Oyster Cult's first two albums, Blue Oyster Cult (1972) and Tyranny and Mutation (1973) on a single 24-karat gold CD that was aimed at audiophiles. Hearing the albums back to back on the same disc, one is reminded how much crisper, tougher and sharper Murry Krugman and Sandy Pearlman's production was on Tyranny and Mutation – it's a production that's more suitable for a heavy metal/hard rock band…

If ever there were a manifesto for 1970s rock, one that prefigured both the decadence of the decade's burgeoning heavy metal and prog rock excesses and the rage of punk rock, "This Ain't the Summer of Love," the opening track from Agents of Fortune, Blue Öyster Cult's fourth album, was it. The irony was that while the cut itself came down firmly on the hard rock side of the fence, most of the rest of the album didn't. Agents of Fortune was co-produced by longtime Cult record boss Sandy Pearlman, Murray Krugman, and newcomer David Lucas, and in addition, the band's lyric writing was being done internally with help from poet-cum-rocker Patti Smith (who also sings on "The Revenge of Vera Gemini"). Pearlman, a major contributor to the band's songwriting output, received a solitary credit while critic Richard Meltzer, whose words were prevalent on the Cult's previous outings, was absent…

The 2012 box set Original Album Classics rounds up the five albums BOC released between 1975 and 1983: On Your Feet or on Your Knees, Some Enchanted Evening, Cultosaurus Erectus, Fire of Unknown Origin, and Revölution by Night. Every one of these CDs is packaged as a mini-LP in a paper sleeve, making this a handsome, affordable way to get the prime of Blue Öyster Cult in one fell swoop.

Recorded at London's O2 Indigo during the Stone Free Music Festival in 2017, this new release includes a full performance of Blue Öyster Cult's debut album, as well as 5 other tunes from the later catalog…