Speaking of Sirius…<\/p>\n
I’ve got the world’s noisiest car.\u00c2\u00a0 When originally introduced, it came sans radio, to SAVE WEIGHT!\u00c2\u00a0 You see you didn’t want anything to impede performance.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, they left the sound insulation out.\u00c2\u00a0 The stereo installer told me he could line the floor, where most of the noise was coming in, but then…you had the pesky weight problem.\u00c2\u00a0 So I stopped with Acoustimat in the doors.<\/p>\n
Around town, I’ve got a pleasure dome.\u00c2\u00a0 Top of the line components and enough watts to overpower ambient noise with the sunroof open.\u00c2\u00a0 But get me on the freeway…\u00c2\u00a0 I can barely hear a thing.<\/p>\n
And since Sirius plays a bit louder than XM, I’ve been experimenting with it on the highway.\u00c2\u00a0 But oftentimes, there’s a familiar song playing and I don’t even recognize it until I hit the off-ramp.\u00c2\u00a0 Like today.<\/p>\n
I was offended when I accelerated from the 405 to the 101, when the deejay on the Vault used some radioese to tell me they had the largest playlist in the known world.\u00c2\u00a0 Wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, XM’s Deep Tracks is MUCH deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 But the stations are different.<\/p>\n
You see there aren’t that many deejays on satellite.\u00c2\u00a0 And their biases come through.\u00c2\u00a0 That New York sound, with the harder edge, I don’t hear that often on XM.\u00c2\u00a0 But those records I grew up with that I haven’t heard in ages, that were localized to the east coast, they’re always surprising me on Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 Like today, when I heard "She’s A Beautiful As A Foot".<\/p>\n
If you ask me, it was downhill after the very first Blue Oyster Cult album.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I bought them all, through the hit "Don’t Fear The Reaper" and after.\u00c2\u00a0 I only stopped with the one with "Godzilla".\u00c2\u00a0 It was as if I looked myself in the mirror and finally accepted they were never going to make another great record.<\/p>\n
But that very first…<\/p>\n
I was living in Vermont.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no FM stations, even if you had a receiver.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for the college station.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I wouldn’t listen to on a dare.\u00c2\u00a0 Even before the upperclassmen who put me on as the boy king graduated and my peers marginalized me to the point where I quit.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the deejays had no taste.\u00c2\u00a0 It was endless Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead.\u00c2\u00a0 And my tastes were wider.<\/p>\n
My left field discovery freshman year was "Gasoline Alley", and its predecessor.\u00c2\u00a0 Even after Rod Stewart had his hit, his mug on my wall went unrecognized by almost everyone.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d purchased those records based on reviews, in "Rolling Stone".\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why I bought the very first Blue Oyster Cult album.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t that they said it was great, it was where the writer was coming from.\u00c2\u00a0 Like he wasn’t in the pages of "Rolling Stone", but was a guy living in the house next door.\u00c2\u00a0 Who had gone weird in high school.\u00c2\u00a0 Who was just a bit further out there.<\/p>\n
Now I know I was right.\u00c2\u00a0 The masterminds of Blue Oyster Cult were Sandy Pearlman and Richard Meltzer (who was Lester Bangs before Lester).\u00c2\u00a0 I can relate to these guys in real life, but only so much.\u00c2\u00a0 The Island is not that different from Connecticut.\u00c2\u00a0 But they weren’t playing it straight, they weren’t getting good grades to get into a good college, they were coasting along in the mainstream and EXPERIMENTING in the netherworld.<\/p>\n
I got the Blue Oyster Cult debut this same time of year.\u00c2\u00a0 Just before spring finals.\u00c2\u00a0 You remember finals.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s study week, and then tests.\u00c2\u00a0 The schedule is completely different, you’re in limbo, time is your own, but there’s a heightened sense of anxiety, because what’s happening now COUNTS!<\/p>\n
And it’s just about this time of year that it gets warm in northern Vermont.\u00c2\u00a0 You start to feel exuberant, but you’ve got this little academic problem, preventing you from being free.<\/p>\n
Blue Oyster Cult’s debut was my soundtrack to this time.<\/p>\n
The killer on the first album is "Cities On Flame With Rock & Roll".\u00c2\u00a0 Every bit as good as the anthems of the era, but without the success.\u00c2\u00a0 The blistering fretwork, the treated vocals and the catchy chorus, it was an instant classic.\u00c2\u00a0 In my mind anyway.<\/p>\n
But the weirdest, the creepiest number, preceded it, "She’s As Beautiful As A Foot".<\/p>\n
So it’s late afternoon in Voter Hall, where I’m living with my roommate Lyndon.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a science building, but it had just been converted to a coed dorm.\u00c2\u00a0 One with pods of domiciles around a central lounge.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that we wanted to live there, the rooms were small, but we both had shitty numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m making my way around Lyndon’s water bed to my rack of LPs, and I hear this line…<\/p>\n
She’s as beautiful as a foot<\/em><\/p>\n That had to be wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 God, it made no sense.\u00c2\u00a0 I had a great turntable, but the quality of the rest of my components…<\/p>\n I started concentrating…<\/p>\n She’s as beautiful as a foot Well, how beautiful IS a foot?\u00c2\u00a0 All these years later, I’m thinking maybe someone had a fetish.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean feet aren’t beautiful, right?\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not like the narrator is saying it to himself, he OVERHEARD IT!\u00c2\u00a0 Where the fuck WAS HE?<\/p>\n Didn’t believe it when he bit into her face These lines I needed the printout to confirm.<\/p>\n Not every album came with a lyric sheet.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, oftentimes it COST too much.\u00c2\u00a0 And if the lyrics were dumb, nobody included them.\u00c2\u00a0 But on the cover of this Blue Oyster Cult album it said you could SEND AWAY for the lyrics.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I did.\u00c2\u00a0 And they came back on COMPUTER PAPER, green and white striped, with perforations on the edges.\u00c2\u00a0 This was back before THERE WAS SUCH THING AS A PERSONAL COMPUTER!<\/p>\n Why the hell would he bite into her face?<\/p>\n And "She’s As Beautiful As A Foot" did not sound like Slipknot, or the rest of today’s excessive metal.\u00c2\u00a0 It was quiet and dreamy, a trip down a silent river in the dark.<\/p>\n But the bit about the fallen arch, that was just plain FUNNY!\u00c2\u00a0 There was humor in music back in the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s gone now.\u00c2\u00a0 Intellectual irreverence has been supplanted by the posing of Paris Hilton and her troupe.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s cool to be dumb.\u00c2\u00a0 Blue Oyster Cult, or Richard Meltzer, who appeared to have written these lyrics, was SMART!<\/p>\n Don’t put your tongue on the bloody tooth mark place This was pre-AIDS.\u00c2\u00a0 You weren’t worried about blood.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this a vampire reference?\u00c2\u00a0 Or had someone marked his territory and you best stay away?\u00c2\u00a0 And the change into a cow, a GUERNSEY no less, was this a Picasso reference, to Demoiselles D’Avignon, which I’d just been mesmerized by in Art 102?<\/p>\n And then it was over.<\/p>\n Funny, "She’s As Beautiful As A Foot" works WITHOUT the lyrics.\u00c2\u00a0 The music is riveting enough, especially the break in the middle, where the track accelerates and intensifies, before slowing right back down to the speed it once was.\u00c2\u00a0 "She’s As Beautiful As A Foot" is an enigma.<\/p>\n I saw Blue Oyster Cult open that spring for Alice Cooper at Boston’s Music Hall.\u00c2\u00a0 What a double bill!\u00c2\u00a0 Alice killed.\u00c2\u00a0 But the audience…it wasn’t familiar with the boys from Long Island.\u00c2\u00a0 The guitarist was wearing a white suit.\u00c2\u00a0 Live, they were sans charisma, and the vocals were less than perfect, far from dominant.\u00c2\u00a0 But that first record, I’ve never gotten over it.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Speaking of Sirius… I’ve got the world’s noisiest car.\u00c2\u00a0 When originally introduced, it came sans radio, to SAVE WEIGHT!\u00c2\u00a0 You see you didn’t want anything to impede performance.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, they left the sound insulation out.\u00c2\u00a0 The stereo installer told me he could line the floor, where most of the noise was coming in, 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She’s as beautiful as a foot
She heard somebody say, the other day<\/em><\/p>\n
Didn’t believe it when he bit into her face
It tasted just like a fallen arch<\/em><\/p>\n
Don’t put your tongue on the bloody tooth mark place
Her face changing now, a Guernsey cow<\/em><\/p>\n