With a legacy spanning over five decades, Blue Öyster Cult is a unique force in the hard rock firmament. Their 2024 studio release, Ghost Stories, proves this uniqueness, as much as in the songs we hear, as where they come from. Collected on this album are reimagined and newly completed tunes, all save one originally recorded between 1978 and 1983.
George Geranios, the band’s original audio engineer, as well as an integral part of the band’s heyday, co-produced the original recordings with BÖC, on reel-to-reel analog tape. Modern technology applied all these years later, the songs were transferred to digital audio with the vintage multi-track recordings de-mixed, re-mixed, and produced by Steve Schenck and more recent BÖC member, multi-instrumentalist and producer Richie Castellano. With remaining original BÖC members, Eric Bloom and Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, on board as well as old BÖC mates — Albert Bouchard and Rick Downey appearing on some drums, along with original bassist Joe Bouchard and the late Allen Lanier on guitar and keyboards — we get BÖC past and present as we have never heard.
Opening with a roiling bass leading the chunking “Late Night Street Fight,” through the 50s send-up of “Cherry,” into the first real stand-out track early on “So Supernatural,” and the pure rockin’ “Money Machine,” Ghost Stories flashes the classic BÖC sound, with the touch of some new magic studio sweetness. By the time we are into the barrelhouse piano and spoken vocal opening of noir story-song “Shot in the Dark,” we have run through a solid bunch of tunes, thankfully salvaged from way back when.
“The Only Thing” presents a nice change up with organ and synth up front in a slow love groove, and we also get the only known studio recording of BÖC’s concert classic cover of the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams.” As with their cover of the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place,” also included here, this a hard rockin’ tome, though it doesn’t really add anything really to the classic. Ghost Stories ends with a tender take at the Beatles’ “If I Fell.” Recorded in 2016, the song is notable for some smooth harmonies with stalwart Kasim Sulton lending his vocal talents and Jules Radino’s percussion.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
