For curiosity seekers interested in a sampling of the Cult's recording career with CBS, this new "Best Of" is serviceable, but not as thorough as the 2-disc "Workshop of the Telescopes" put out a few years back. The songs on this new disc were compiled based on fan votes for the Oyster Boys' best material, so some of the inclusions are questionable (for example, why "Marshall Plan" but not "Monsters"? or "Goin Through the Motions" but not "Golden Age of Leather"?), but overall the track listing does an admirable job of offering the listener a window on the world of one of the most bizarre, talented, and underrated American rock bands ever.
Though seen as a commercial disappointment following 'Agents of Fortune,' 'Spectres' still managed to sell more than half a million copies while giving the world the classic ode to giant monster "Godzilla." The band became a bit more polished on 'Spectres' but without shunning their identity. "I Love the Night" remains one of their most haunting songs, while the less-celebrated "Goin' Through the Motions" may be their most pop-tastic moment.
Agents Of Fortune (1976). 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…
Blue Öyster Cult marks time with a second live album on which they turn out good, if redundant, concert versions of recent favorites like "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Godzilla" and add to their repertoire of live covers such oldies as the MC5's "Kick out the Jams" and the Animals' "We Gotta Get out of This Place." A perfectly acceptable, completely unnecessary souvenir record from a hard-touring band of the '70s. (It should perhaps be noted that the mid- to late '70s was a period when more live albums than usual were being released, especially in the wake of Peter Frampton's massively successful 1976 album Frampton Comes Alive!.)
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.