secret treaties

Blue Öyster Cult took their cagey career to new heights with the diabolical dominance and subhuman submission of this flaming jet powered harvest.  'Secret Treaties' is the third and final installment of their 'black and white' period after their eponymous debut and 'Tyranny and Mutation'.   The album was recorded at  CBS Studios in New York City with Eric Bloom on lead vocals, stun guitar, and keyboards;  Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser on lead guitar and backing vocals;  Allen Lanier on keyboards, rhythm guitar, and synthesizers;  Joe Bouchard on bass and backing vocals;  Albert Bouchard on drums and lead vocals on 'Dominance and Submission'.  The Bouchard brothers and Bloom share lead vocals on 'Cagey Cretins'.  Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman produced the sessions.  

Bloom says:   “['Secret Treaties'] is my personal favorite. We had a band house in Eatons Neck, New York. I lived there by myself. By this point, everybody else had their own apartments or lived with girlfriends, so when the band left, I’d be there with all the guitars and equipment. I would work on ideas and tunes, some of which became songs like ME 262.  'Secret Treaties' has been the basis of our live act since it came out. A lot of the fans love the songs on it, and it’s an album we feel very strongly about. It’s held up beautifully.  The record has been called a blueprint for a lot of metal, but I can’t really speak about labels. That’s something somebody else thought of. When you write an album, you don’t sit there and say, ‘I’m going to write a proto-metal record.’ You just write what you write ...  I believe the ME-262 on the cover of 'Secret Treaties' was a tribute to technology rather than any kind of political statement...I think the umlaut [in the band's name] had a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor about it plus it made the band’s name look cool in a way."

Roeser reflects:   "I was personally schooled by our early lyricists, Sandy Pearlman and Richard Meltzer. When I was a kid I barely listened to words at all. I was very much into the music and very much interested in musicianship and less about lyrical content  as it was typically some teenage love song. But I got to appreciate lyrical content in our early days with the original band. That's carried through as an aesthetic with Blue Öyster Cult to where we couldn't write trivial songs. (laughs) It wouldn't suit us at all... Through Sandy's words, we considered ourselves a literary band. That and cinema is what we shoot for. We try to really create a picture so we are always mindful of that, of creating an experience for the listener...When we first met Patti [Smith] she just about to make the transition from poet to performing artist. There was actually some talk of having Blue Öyster Cult be her band. Now obviously that didn't happen and she began to work with Lenny Kaye and the band that she has developed out of that. We never actually wrote songs together as an intentional project, what we would do is Patti would give us a lyric or we would go in her book of writings and take a section of something and create songs from it...As a listener I really like melody. One thing I notice is that the older I get the more melodic I like to be as a listener and as a player. The energy and the angst of heavy music is appealing to youth but it seems like the older I get the more melody I want to hear. If that makes me a fuddy duddy, so be it.  Melodically I have to have that to satisfy myself and my playing in general. I always want to please myself and entertain myself. Okay, you can play fast or play a lot of notes, but for me everything you do has got to have a reason...'Secret Treaties' is really like the culmination of the first three records which sort of link conceptually in my mind. 'Secret Treaties' is Sandy Pearlman's concept of what the band was and us really feeling our way creating what it was."

'Secret Treaties' went to fifty-four in Canada and fifty-three in the US.  It was named one of the albums of the year by NME and was voted  "Top Rock Album of All Time" by a Melody Maker critics poll.  It has been certified gold.  





http://www.blueoystercult.com/

 'Secret Treaties' 
full album:

Side A :

00:00 - Career of Evil (Patti Smith Albert Bouchard)

04:00 - Subhuman (Eric Bloom)

08:38 - Dominance and Submission (Bloom, A. Bouchard)

14:02 - ME 262 (Bloom, Donald Roeser)

Side B :

18:49 - Cagey Cretins (Richard Meltzer A. Bouchard)

22:05 - Harvester of Eyes (Meltzer, Bloom, Roeser)

26:47 - Flaming Telepaths (Bloom, A. Bouchard, Roeser)

32:06 - Astronomy (A. Bouchard, Joe Bouchard)