Friday, April 14, 2006  

BOC Day!

It's absurd how excited I am.

I've been hoarding cash for weeks, saving my sweaty rumpled bills like a high school kid, waiting for the moment I can hit the merch table and buy a sweet t-shirt. Or two. And a beer coozy, if they've got 'em.

Because tonight, I roll with Blue Oyster Cult, the band that once I actually skipped a college final to go see in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it was a fine, fine thing.

I want to be very clear: this is not some ironic gag, nor am I trying to piggyback on that goddamn cowbell meme. I love this band, and I have for years. I know I'm not supposed to. It's okay to have liked them when I was kid, right? Didn't know any better. Hell, I grew up in Colorado Springs - I had very few options. But now...now I'm supposed to be embarrassed, like people get embarrassed when they see their 8th grade picture and they're rocking a narrow silk piano key necktie (before you ask, yes, yes I did). But fuck that, and here's why.

Everyone has that band that got them through that period in life - that horrible period where all you're doing is wishing you were dead, trying acne treatments, and masturbating - and BOC was that band for me. When the girl I liked kept dating all my friends except me, when my mom bought me yet ANOTHER pair of highwater jeans, when Damien Via sucker punched me in the back of my head for no good reason, it was BOC that kept me going. Between the kickass guitar riffs (no, thank YOU, Mr. Buck Dharma), the freaky space/monster/occult lyrics, and the coolest goddamn album covers ever (Cultosaurus Erectus? You're fuckin' A right!), they were My Band. The band that saved my life. Everyone has one, and they were mine.

I'll admit freely that I only got into them because Erik Olson did, and he was the coolest guy I knew. I don't know if they were His Band or not (because as near as I can tell, his only trouble in high school was the occasional over-enthusiastic blowjob), but once I found them, they were mine soon enough.

So I'm supposed to repay that by being embarrassed now, pretending it's all an ironic goof? Ha ha, weren't we all stupid and all that?

Screw that. Thank you, Blue Oyster Cult.

And please, re-release Imaginos, okay? Because otherwise I'm going to buy it from some sketchy Russian website.

Say it with me:

ON YOUR FEET OR ON YOUR KNEES, FROM NEW YORK CITY - BLUE! OYSTER! CULT!