Beware, beware, young prog voyager. Proceed yet not further into this thread lest the horrors contain within drive you down upon such depths of despair and darkness as to make ye roll out the "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" meme.

 

 

One at a time.

 

#1 Imaginos by Blue Oyster Cult, 1988

 

The general consensus with Blue Oyster Cult is that after 1981's Fire Of Unknown Origin they lost their sh*t and never made another good album. This is not entirely correct as Imaginos is actually probably the only musically decent album they made after their hayday. But it is not entirely wrong as Imaginos is certainly the product of people who have lost their sh*t as in gone crazy.

You knew something was wrong when it was based on some poems Sandy Pearlman had written in the 1960s which were worked up in to a record by a band member (Alan Bouchard) who had been fired seven years before the record was put out AND that much of the record was done by session musicians with BOC barely involved at all. You knew something was REALLY wrong when you learned that the story of the record is that there's these guys called the Invisible Ones, seven mystic beings who live in Haiti and Mexico and they're related to the Lovecraft mythology. They secretly control human history. In 1804 a child called Imaginos is born in New Hampshire. Because he is born under the star of Sirius, which is the source of the power of the Invisible Ones, they mark him as a child of destiny and grant him super powers. (I swear I'm not making this up.) He can shapeshift and see the future. He visits Texas and ends up in New Orleans in 1929 where a vision tells him to go to Mexico to find an artefact.

Travelling to Mexico he nearly dies in a shipwreck and is washed in to a bed of blue oysters where the blue oyster cult (yes this is real) who worship the invisible ones find him and reveal his power to him. He becomes a new powerful being called Desdinova. He enters European politics (YES REALLY) to establish control of the world. He meets and kills Dr Frankenstein and takes up residence in his castle.

In 1892 he is living in Cornwall when he learns of a magic mirror that the mathematician John Dee found in Mexico and used to ensure England's victory over Spain in the great wars of the 16th century.

I can barely go on.

Anyway Desdinova decides to return to Mexico. He explores a Mayan temple and finds a twin to Dee's mirror. He returns to England in 1893 and gives it to his grand daughter as a 10th birthday present. She puts it in her attic where it sits for 21 years, sending out bad vibes into the minds of Europe's leaders, causing WWI.

Knowing that this was originally planned as the first in a TRILOGY OF DOUBLE ALBUMS keeps me awake at night, shuddering. It's actually not that bad as music- it's some good accessible pop-metal, and has the heavy sound that they'd always stopped just short of making on earlier albums. But the story is batsh*t and distracting. (The first sentence of this paragraph may lead you to believe this was a double album- it was recorded/intended to be one but Columbia had severe doubts about BOC at this point and reduced it to one disc. Their fears were well-founded as the album sold so poorly and was viewed as such a f**k-up that Columbia successfully sued BOC to reimburse the label for the cost of producing the album.) Christ knows what would have transpired on five more platters of this. It's worse than Battlefield Earth.

The album ended up being so poorly received that it temporarily put an end to their career and it would be ten years before they put out new product. However with years and distance its critical stature has grown. But it's still completely mental.

 

Will post later with my next "unessacary even by prog standards" concept album. There's plenty more where Imaginos came from.

It basically grew out of an idea for a demonstration record for their new guitar gadget they invented, which I gather is a precursor of the e-Bow?  Anyway, it eventually grew into a Three Record Box Set, with the first record being almost completely instrumental, and intending to depict Mother Nature's Revenge on mankind.  Might have been okay if they'd stopped there, but then there's two more records consisting mostly of barely audible (and barely funny) dialogue between three or four characters acting out an obscure play, with occasional songs in between (like Townshend's "Psychoderelict", but with even more dialogue).  It takes place in a lawyer's office, with a lawyer, a husband and wife filing for divorce, and a strange man in the attic who plays the piano.  All this takes place supposedly in the aftermath of the Revenge undertaken on the first record, but only passing reference is made to it.  I've listened to it a bunch of times and it scarcely makes any sense.

Interesting as an avant-garde curio, and if you're generous, as a piece of Dada theater.  But kind of a poorly executed concept in any case.  I'm glad they did it, I guess, just so I'd have something to talk about right now.

 

I was thinking that they could have cut this to a single album ... but by the time that Peter Cook enters the scene, this album is really tough to listen to and appreciate ... and I don't blame people for not "getting it" ... and I certainly did not though I bought it ... but that one piece with the drip about Woodstock is really cool ... but I'm not sure that many of us will like what it really says and stands for!

 

... Interesting as an avant-garde curio, and if you're generous, as a piece of Dada theater.  But kind of a poorly executed concept in any case.  I'm glad they did it, I guess, just so I'd have something to talk about right now. ...

 

I agree here. And yes, it does make for a really good concersation piece, if it does indeed mean something.

 

But it's a bit strange and weird to all of a sudden think that two guys that had written so much music and hits and gone as far back as Neil Sedaka, would all of a sudden take acid and write something different ... which, of course is possible ... but not likely to get any reaction or understanding by anyone, and of course ... that would be a waste of vinyl in terms of sales!

 

The hard part of "dada" or "surrealism" is that it works best visually, although an album like this  actually follows in the traditions of the BBC radio in the 50's with its well known comedy and sounds ... for which you already know that the BBC LP's of sound effects were the defacto standard that everyone used ... you can even hear the same seagull in the Goons that you hear with the Kinks, Beatles and many others!

 

I've thought that the experimentation in sounds and effects is what is creating an imaginary "dada" as you say ... which is a nice idea, but ... might flunk the test, because the "sound effect" is not enough to define the moment ... and make it "dada" ... and I wonder if Peter Cook knew that and was looking at these guys ... and going .. they are calling the merde, dada? Remember PC's educational background when you think about this.

 

Sarah Vaughn was interesting too!