BLUE OYSTER CULT "SECRET TREATIES" 1974 EX/EX OOP +INNER SLEEVE CLASSIC ROCK L

$

20

THREE YEARS AGO I LOST ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS TO CANCER, HE WAS A COOL MUSICIAN A DRUMMER BY TRADE, ORIGINALLY FROM SEATTLE, BUT RELOCATED TO L.A. IN 1985, HE AMASSED A VERY LARGE MUSIC COLLECTION, AND HAD KILLER TASTE FOR ROCK & ROLL, SADLY I AM SELLING OFF A LOT OF HIS COLLECTION ON BEHALF OF HIS WIDOW TO HELP PAY OFF DEBTS INCLUDING BILLS, TAXES AND STORAGE UNIT FEES. I AM NOT TAKING ANYTHING FOR THIS SERVICE, DOING IT FOR MY FRIEND (MISS YOU DAVE!). THIS ITEM IS FROM HIS COLLECTION.

THE PHOTO'S MAY BE A LITTLE BLURRY, HAVE A LITTLE GLARE, SOME REFLECTIONS OR IN SOME CASES YOU MAY SEE SPECKS OF DUST. BUT THE PHOTO'S ARE OF THE ACTUAL ITEM YOU ARE BIDDING ON. I DO COMBINE SHIPPING. BUT I DO NOT ACCEPT “BEST OFFERS”, THE MONIES GO TO MY FRIENDS WIDOW.

THESE ARE VISUALLY & PLAY GRADED. LET ME REITERATE I DO NOT TAKE “BEST OFFERS”.

ARTISTS: BLUE OYSTER CULT

TITLE: “SECRET TREATIES”

TRACK LISTING (SEE PHOTOS & BELOW):

A1

Career Of Evil

3:54

A2

Subhuman

4:37

A3

Dominance And Submission

5:22

A4

ME 262

4:45

B1

Cagey Cretins

3:15

B2

Harvester Of Eyes

4:40

B3

Flaming Telepaths

5:18

B4

Astronomy

6:23

Companies, etc.

• Phonographic Copyright (p) – CBS Inc.

• Copyright (c) – CBS Inc.

• Published By – B. O'Cult Songs Inc.

• Pressed By – Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Pitman

Credits

• Artwork [Cover Art] – Ron Lesser

• Bass, Vocals – Joe Bouchard

• Design – John Berg

• Drums, Vocals – Albert Bouchard

• Engineer – Tim Geelan

• Engineer [Second] – Jerry Smith

• Keyboards, Rhythm Guitar, Synthesizer – Allen Lanier

• Lead Guitar, Vocals – Donald (Buck Dharma) Roeser*

• Lead Vocals, Keyboards, Guitar [Stun] – Eric Bloom

• Producer – Murray Krugman, Sandy Pearlman

• Recorded By [Recordists] – Lehman Yates, Lou Schlossberg

• Technician [Sound Consultant] – Clack, Inc.*

Barcode and Other Identifiers

• Rights Society: ASCAP

• Matrix / Runout (Side A label): AL 32858

• Matrix / Runout (Side B label): BL 32858

• Matrix / Runout (Side A variant 1): P P AL 32858-1B D

• Matrix / Runout (Side B variant 1): P P BL 32858-1C ND

• Matrix / Runout (Side A stamped variant 2): P P AL 32858-1B

• Matrix / Runout (Side B stamped variant 2): P P BL 32858-1C

• Matrix / Runout (Side A stamped, [S] etched, variant 3): P P AL 32858-1B S

• Matrix / Runout (Side B stamped, [S] etched, variant 3): P BL 32858-1C P S 2
  

LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS

CAT. #: KC 32858

YEAR: 1974

RECORD CONDITION: THE RECORD IS IN EX/EX- CONDITION. NO VISIBLE WEAR, SCRATCHES, LINES, BLEMS ETC. BOTH LABELS ARE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION. NICE SHINEY BLACK LUSTER TO THE VINYL.THERE IS VERY LIGHT BACKGROUND AUDIO ON THE LEAD IN GROOVES, A COUPLE OF LIGHT POPS/CLICKS,THE SONGS PLAY SUPER CLEAN.

SLEEVE CONDITION: THE JACKET IS IN NM/NM- CONDITION THERE'S NO WRITING ON THE JACKET. STRAIGHT EDGES, NO WRITING, TEARS, WRINKLES OR SEAM SPLITS, ETC.ETC.

MORE INFO: THIS RECORD IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT. COMES WITH ORIGINAL INNER SLEEVE. NOT THE "TEXTURED" COVER .

MORE ON THE ARTIST & RELEASE:

Blue Öyster Cult (often abbreviated BÖC or BOC) is an American rock band formed in Stony Brook, New York in 1967, perhaps best known for the singles "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", "Burnin' for You", "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll", and "Godzilla." Blue Öyster Cult has sold more than 24 million records worldwide, including 7 million in the United States alone.The band's music videos, especially "Burnin' for You," received heavy rotation on MTV when the music television network premiered in 1981, cementing the band's contribution to the development and success of the music video in modern popular culture.

Blue Öyster Cult's longest-lasting and most commercially successful lineup included Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser (lead guitar, vocals), Eric Bloom (lead vocals, "stun guitar", keyboards, synthesizers), Allen Lanier (keyboards, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Joe Bouchard (bass, vocals), Albert Bouchard (drums, percussion, cowbell, vocals). The band's current lineup includes Roeser and Bloom, as well as Danny Miranda (bass, backing vocals), Jules Radino (drums, percussion) and Richie Castellano (keyboard, rhythm guitar, lead and backing vocals).

History

Early years as Soft White Underbelly (1967–1971)

The band originated as a group called Soft White Underbelly (a name the band would occasionally revive in the 1970s and 1980s to play small club gigs around the United States and UK) in 1967 in the vicinity of Stony Brook University on Long Island, at the prompting of critic and manager Sandy Pearlman. The group consisted of guitarist Buck Dharma, drummer Albert Bouchard, keyboardist Allen Lanier, singers Jeff Kagel (aka Krishna Das) and Les Braunstein and bassist Andrew Winters. Pearlman wanted the group to be the American answer to Black Sabbath. Pearlman was important to the band – he was able to get them gigs and recording contracts with Elektra and Columbia, and he provided them with his poetry for use as lyrics for many of their songs, including "Astronomy". Writer Richard Meltzer also provided the band with lyrics from their early days up through their most recent studio album. Pearlman also gave stage names to each of the band members (Jesse Python for Eric Bloom, Andy Panda for Andy Winters, Prince Omega for Albert Bouchard, La Verne for Allen Lanier) but only Buck Dharma kept his.The band recorded an album's worth of material for Elektra Records in 1968. When Braunstein departed in early 1969, Elektra shelved the album. In 1968, the band moved in together at their first house in the Thomaston area of Great Neck, New York.

Eric Bloom was hired by the band as their acoustic engineer and eventually became lead singer, replacing Braunstein, through a series of three unlikely coincidences, one in which Lanier decided to join Bloom on a drive to an upstate gig where he spent the night with Bloom's old college bandmates and got to hear old tapes of Bloom's talent as lead vocalist. Because of this, Bloom was offered the job of lead singer for Soft White Underbelly. However, a bad review of a 1969 Fillmore East show caused Pearlman to change the name of the band – first to Oaxaca, then to the Stalk-Forrest Group. The band recorded yet another album's worth of material for Elektra, but only one single ("What Is Quicksand?" b/w "Arthur Comics") was released (and only in a promo edition of 300 copies) on Elektra Records (this album was eventually released, with additional outtakes, by Rhino Handmade Records as St. Cecilia: The Elektra Recordings in 2001). The album featured Bloom as their main lead singer, but Roeser also sang lead on a few songs, a pattern of sharing lead vocals that has continued throughout the band's career.

After a few more temporary band names, including the Santos Sisters, the band settled on Blue Öyster Cult in 1971 (see below for its origin).

New York City producer/composer and jingle writer David Lucas saw the band perform and took them into his Warehouse Recording Studio and produced four demos, with which Pearlman was able to get the renamed band another audition with Columbia Records. Clive Davis liked what he heard, and signed the band to the label. The first album was subsequently produced and recorded by Lucas on eight track at Lucas' studio. Winters would leave the band and be replaced by Bouchard's brother, Joe Bouchard.

Black-and-white years (1971–1975)

Their debut album Blue Öyster Cult was released in January 1972, with a black-and-white cover designed by artist Bill Gawlik. The album featured the songs "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll", "Stairway to the Stars" and "Then Came the Last Days of May". By this time, the band's sound had become more oriented toward hard rock, but songs like "She's As Beautiful As a Foot" and "Redeemed" also showed a strong element of the band's psychedelic roots. All of the band members except for Allen Lanier sang lead, a pattern that would continue on many subsequent albums, although lead singer Eric Bloom sang the majority of the songs. The album sold well, and Blue Öyster Cult toured with artists such as the Byrds, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Alice Cooper.During the touring process, the band's sound became heavier and more direct.

Their next album Tyranny and Mutation, released in 1973, was written while the band was on tour for their first LP. It contained songs such as "The Red and the Black" (an ode to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a rewrite of "I'm On the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" from the debut album, and also a reference to the novel by Stendhal of the same name), "Hot Rails to Hell" and "Baby Ice Dog", the first of the band's many collaborations with Patti Smith. It featured a harder-rocking approach than before, though the band's songs were also growing more complex. The album outsold its predecessor, a trend that would continue with their next few albums.

The band's third album, Secret Treaties (1974) received positive reviews, featuring songs such as "Career of Evil" (co-written by Patti Smith), "Dominance and Submission" and "Astronomy". As a result of constant touring, the band was now capable of headlining arenas. The album continued the trend of growing sales, and would eventually go gold.

As the three albums during this formative period all had black-and-white covers, the period of their career has been dubbed the 'black and white years' by fans and critics.

Commercial success (1975–1981)

The band's first live album On Your Feet or on Your Knees (1975) achieved greater success and went gold. Its success gave the band more time to work on a follow-up. The band members were able to purchase home recording units to record demos for their next album.

Their next studio album, Agents of Fortune (1976), was their first to go platinum and was again produced by David Lucas. It contained the hit single "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", which reached number 12 on the Billboard charts and has become a classic of the hard rock genre. Other major songs on the album were "(This Ain't) The Summer of Love", "E.T.I. (Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)" and "The Revenge of Vera Gemini". Having recorded demos of the songs at home before recording the album, the band's songwriting process had become more individual, with none of the songs featuring the collaborative writing between the band members that had been common on their earlier albums. Although the album still featured their trademark hard rock with sinister lyrics, the songs had become more conventional in structure, and the production was more polished. For the first and only time, the album featured lead vocals from all five band members, with Allen Lanier singing lead on the song True Confessions. With Albert Bouchard singing lead on three songs and Joe Bouchard and Donald Roeser singing lead on one each, Eric Bloom ended up taking the lead on only four of the album's ten songs.

For the tour, the band added lasers to their light show, for which they became known. They were among the first acts to use lasers in performance.

Their next album, Spectres (1977), had the FM radio hit "Godzilla", and would become the one of the band's better-selling albums, with other well-known songs like "I Love The Night" and "Goin' Through The Motions." However, its sales were not as strong as those for the previous album, going gold but not platinum, becoming their first album to sell less than its predecessor. It featured even more polished production, and continued the trend of the lead vocals extensively shared between members, although Allen Lanier did not sing lead. As with the previous album, Eric Bloom sang lead on fewer than half the songs.

The band then released another live album, Some Enchanted Evening (1978). Though it was intended as another double-live album in the vein of On Your Feet or on Your Knees, Columbia insisted that it be edited down to single-album length. It was a resounding commercial success, becoming Blue Öyster Cult's most popular album and eventually selling over 2 million copies. It also revealed that while the band's studio work was becoming increasingly well-produced, they were still very much a hard rock band on stage.

It was followed by the studio album Mirrors (1979). For Mirrors, instead of working with previous producers Sandy Pearlman (who instead went on to manage Black Sabbath) and Murray Krugman, Blue Öyster Cult chose Tom Werman, who had worked with acts such as Cheap Trick and Ted Nugent. It featured the band's glossiest production to date. It also gave Roeser, the lead vocalist on the band's biggest hits, bigger prominence as a vocalist, singing lead on four of the nine songs. However, the resulting album sales were disappointing.

Pearlman's association with Black Sabbath led to Sabbath's Heaven and Hell producer Martin Birch being hired for the next Blue Öyster Cult record. The album found the band returning to their hard rock roots, and although both of the Bouchard brothers and guitarist Roeser all got lead vocal turns, Bloom would sing the majority of the tracks. The result was positive, with Cultösaurus Erectus (1980) receiving good reviews. The album went to number 12 in the United Kingdom, but did not do as well in the United States. The song "Black Blade", which was written by Bloom with lyrics by science fiction and fantasy author Michael Moorcock, is a kind of retelling of Moorcock's epic Elric of Melniboné saga. The band also did a co-headlining tour with Black Sabbath in support of the album, calling the tour "Black and Blue".

Birch produced the band's next album as well, Fire of Unknown Origin (1981). The biggest hit on this album was the Top 40 hit "Burnin' for You", a song Roeser had written with a Richard Meltzer lyric. He had intended to use it on his solo album, Flat Out (1982), but he was convinced to use it on the Blue Öyster Cult album instead. The revival of the band's heavier sound continued, albeit with fairly heavy use of synthesizers and some noticeable New Wave influence on a few tracks. It contained other fan favorites such as "Joan Crawford" (inspired by the book and film Mommie Dearest) and "Veteran of the Psychic Wars", another song co-written by Moorcock. Several of the songs had been written for the animated film Heavy Metal, but only "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (which had not been written for Heavy Metal) was actually used in the movie. The album marked a strong commercial resurgence for the band and achieved gold status, their first studio album since Spectres to do so.

During the tour for Fire of Unknown Origin, Albert Bouchard had a falling out with the others and left the band, and Rick Downey (formerly the band's lighting designer) replaced him on drums. This marked the end of the band's original and best-known lineup.

Secret Treaties is the third studio album by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released in April 1974 by Columbia.

The album spent 14 weeks in the US album charts, peaking at No. 53. It was certified gold by the RIAA in 1992.

In 1975, a poll of critics of the British magazine Melody Maker voted Secret Treaties the "Top Rock Album of All Time".In 2010, Rhapsody called it one of the all-time best "proto-metal" albums.

All of the songs from the album found their way into BÖC playlists over the following years, except for "Cagey Cretins".It's the only BÖC album that does not feature a track with lead vocals sung by guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser. The band also did not write any of the lyrics to the album, handing that duty to producer Sandy Pearlman, rock critic Richard Meltzer and Patti Smith.

Cover art

The cover, with art by Ron Lesser, depicts the band standing beside and sitting on a German Me-262 fighter aircraft; this scene is inspired by the song of the same name

Songs

Lyrics to the lead-off track "Career of Evil" were written by future punk poet Patti Smith, a longtime contributor to the band (and, at the time, girlfriend of BÖC keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Allen Lanier).

A few changes were made to "Career of Evil" on the single version. The vocals are different: only Eric Bloom is heard for most of the song, instead of Bloom and Albert Bouchard singing together. Also, one verse was removed ("Pay me..." to "...kneeling in the rain"). Part of the bridge was changed also, presumably to make the song more acceptable to radio: "do it to your daughter" became "do it like you ought to." The line "I want your wife to be my baby tonight" was changed to "I want your life to be mine, maybe tonight".

The transition between the tracks "Harvester of Eyes" and "Flaming Telepaths" is marked by a piece of classical music played on a music box. Members of the band recall that it was something the sound engineer had found on an unlabeled recording, but they could not identify it. The piece and its composer were uncredited on the album. It has since been identified as an excerpt from a waltz by Ion Ivanovici called Waves of the Danube (Donauwellen). The source of the original recording remains a mystery.

"Career of Evil" was the inspiration for the title of the 2015 novel of the same name written by J.K. Rowling under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

The compilation Don't Fear the Reaper: The Best of Blue Öyster Cult contains a version of "Flaming Telepaths" without the music box intro. The original version with the complete sound effects is found on the compilation Workshop of the Telescopes.

The psychedelic folk group Espers covers "Flaming Telepaths" on their CD The Weed Tree in 2005.

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