A quick diversion to talk about a cursed band and a cursed record

 Growing up, I was not a huge Blue Oyster Cult fan, but I liked a few of their songs.  Naturally I heard Godzilla, Don't Fear the Reaper and Burning for You regularly on the radio.  While in high school, I got a cassette tape of their live album Some Enchanted Evening and liked it ... mostly.  I liked most of the songs but some were just kind of ... bleah.   That mostly summed up my attitude towards BOC.  I liked the cover though.

(I would point out here that this is about the only album cover of theirs that I liked, I thought most of theirs were cheap looking, but I was spoiled by Yes and Rush).

However, while I was in college I happened to be listening to a music show on the radio that talked about a new BOC record coming out.  What I mean is, there used to be shows on the radio stations, usually on Sunday nights, where they'd talk about the goings-on in the music world.  Which bands were getting a new drummer, going out on tour, the current top 20 and so on.  Sometimes they'd have a whole segment focusing on a noteworthy new album coming out and interview the band and maybe play the first single or something.  It's not such a big deal now, but Sirius-XM still does stuff like that.  I heard a special last year about Styx's new album Crash of the Crown.

Anyway, the new Blue Oyster Cult album was Imaginos, and it was the first new BOC album in some number of years so it was kind of a big deal that it was coming out. And it told a bold, sweeping story so that was kind of a big deal as well.  And I was curious so I ended up buying a tape.  And then buying another one after I wore the first one out.  Then buying another one, and then I quit cold turkey.

There are two stories behind Imaginos: the story of how the album was made and the story that the album told.  Blue Oyster Cult was kind of unique in that one of their main creative forces wasn't even on stage.  Their producer Sandy Pearlman wrote or co-wrote a lot of their songs, defined their sound and even came up with the name.  But before BOC, Pearlman had envisioned the story of Imaginos, and had written it down as an epic poem in a notebook.  During the BOC years, he would pull songs out of the notebook and get them in BOC records: particularly one of my favorites Astronomy.  During that time, he and BOC drummer Albert Bouchard continued to work on the Imaginos project and conceived of a musical project spanning three albums.  As you can imagine, it was a hard sell to the rest of the band and the record company.  Eventually, Pearlman and Bouchard both left the band.  However, Pearlman left his Imaginos notebook behind and the band liberally borrowed from it when they needed to fill out an album.  So the music of Imaginos kind of permeates all of BOC's albums, even if unintentionally.  Eventually, BOC fell on hard times and, needing a record to fulfill their contract, Pearlman came back and dusted off enough songs to release as Imaginos.  It was such a flop that the record label cut the band and BOC broke up for a few years.

(for a full blow by blow see the Wikipedia page)

As to the story that Imaginos tells, it's rather complex.  Often compared to HP Lovecraft, it concerns the presence of 7 invisible beings (Les Invisibles) worshipped as gods in Mexico and Haiti.  These are described as extraterrestrials who live outside of time and can manipulate human history for their own pleasure.  They are described in the liner notes as essentially evil.  They have a human agent who does their bidding (Imaginos) and the mechanism by which they manipulate history is an obsidian mirror called the Magna of Illusion.  It is essentially an artifact that draws people to it, but in turn poisons their minds and destroys them. It's effect can be seen in the fall of the Mayan Empire, (possibly) the fall of the Aztecs, the destruction of the Spanish Armada by the English and the outbreak of WW1.  All of which seem to be episodes of unaccountable madness or at least of sudden and unexpected downfall.

And that's where the story ends!  Rather than the three albums, Imaginos was released as a single record with 9 songs, out of order.  (As I recall from the liner notes, the fact that the songs told a story out of chronological order was an artifact of Imaginos' ability to move through time at will.  "Without a sequence of events, there is a rush of events.  The rush of events is a horror", as the liner notes say).  

So who's to say what other mischief Les Invisibles and Imaginos would have gotten up to?  WWII? The Cuban Missile Crisis?  The collapse of a seemingly unstoppable Japanese economy?  Coronavirus?

Since I bought several copies of the album (and only really stopped because since the album was no longer available in any form in record stores due to the poor sales), it would make sense that I enjoyed it.  But it would be closer to the truth to say that I was mesmerized by it.  In fact, there were only a few songs that I liked ("Astronomy", "I Am The One You Warned Me Of", "Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria").  (As an aside, "Astronomy" is a staple BOC song, but it's from Pearlman's Imaginos notebook and the Imaginos version is clearly superior to the earlier version on Secret Treaties.)  But many of the songs were simply awful ("Blue Oyster Cult" and "Imaginos", particularly).  And it wasn't mixed very well.  I can understand why it wasn't that popular.  

But it was creative.  The songs were different.  Magna of Illusion is basically free-verse, and just an interesting song.  I wouldn't want to hear it in concert, but it was something different.  Kind of hip, I guess.  And the songs that I liked, I really liked.  As in: "this-is-my-favorite-song-ever-don't-interrupt-me" like.  And I guess I kind of got hooked on it.  In fact, in later years I came to wonder if the album was cursed and I had temporarily fallen under it's spell.  It was typically dreary Midwest autumn and winter when I first listened to it and so whenever we have a string of cold and cloudy days in a row, I think about driving around town with it on the car stereo.  Not much joy in that memory!  Driving through the slushy streets, trying to dodge potholes, car so coated with grime and salt that I'd have to pull over and wipe off the headlights, listening to a "bedtime for the damned" as the liner notes refer to it.

But back to real life.  As I mentioned, the album Imaginos was an epic commercial flop.  BOC was done after Imaginos and they now reside on the nostalgia circut playing places like the WildFlower Festival in Richardson TX (where we actually saw them until we got bored and walked out).  Yet, Albert Bouchard who had written most of the songs and was not in the band at the time, ended up suing the record label because he wasn't included in the production of the album.  He basically sued for the rights to something that was worthless.  Indeed, a few years ago, he released his OWN version of the album for free.  It seems that Mr Bouchard can't get the album out of his system either.

So, we have an album that people are drawn to, which poisons their minds and leads to their destruction.  Hmm, what does that sound like?  It seems like the album Imaginos is actually kind of like the Magna of Illusion that it dramatizes.  Or maybe ended up being the Magna of Illusion.

It's still kind of creepy to me.  I started listening to Bouchard's version and, it's interesting, but again doomed to failure.  It's a labor of love (love of what, I'm not sure) and so there's a power behind it, but there's a reason he's not charging money for it.  Anyway, I had a hard time going through more than a few songs.  It just kind of weirds me out.

I kind of wish I never heard the album.  But I'm kind of glad I did.