The "Influential Records" Game Addenda, Part 4

My first two years of college were squandered at Baylor University in Waco. My dad, the Baptist preacher/theologian (remember him?), had grown up in Waco and graduated from Baylor. So he bribed me into going to Baylor because the Vice President in charge of Financial Assistance had been his Sunday School teacher. I didn’t know any better (yet), so I went there. And promptly majored in Art. Hah! The Art Department was a joke, little more than a hobby area for sorority girls waiting to marry a doctor or lawyer. There were a couple of us who took it seriously; we all transferred out after our second year.

My first year there, I lived in a dormitory, and the record I remember playing the most that year was Zuma by Neil Young. I was and am a huge fan of his electric catalog. I love his knife-sharp guitar tone and crazy improvised leads. And the songs tend to resonate more with me than much of the acoustic stuff. “Drive Back”, “Stupid Girl”, “Danger Bird”… and “Cortez The Killer”. I’m sure I already had After The Gold Rush, which I also loved, and I have loved all the “Ditch Trilogy” records as I’ve come across them, especially Tonight’s The Night (which I got early). But Zuma really felt like the pinnacle.

Angry Neil Young got me through. And being a longhaired freak on the Baylor campus, you immediately spotted the five other people on campus like you and formed close friendships, much like hostages or battle-hardened grunts. One of those friends introduced me to Todd Rundgren. The first record I heard was Something/Anything. Of course I had heard the singles from it on the radio, but the rest of the record seemed a little “light”, most of the time. There were a few tunes I could relate to: “Black Maria”, “Little Red Lights”, “Couldn’t I Just Tell You”. But they seemed more intent on proving that he could play all the instruments and mix the record than actually adding up to a full-sounding presentation. And A Wizard/A True Star, while having a full band, just seemed to jump around from one short idea to the next until reaching the final, and awesome, song “Just One Victory”.

But then I heard the double LP Todd. For starters, that was probably the first time I had ever seen anyone with pink and green hair. And the songs generally tended to be either powerful and exotic anthems, psychedelic guitar heroics, heavy rockers or electronic experiments (plus the few sappy love songs). If it hadn’t been for those sappy love songs, this record might have ended up on my top ten list. It was a revelation that a recording artist could produce an album with so many different feels and sounds and still all belong in the same place.

That friend left Baylor after the first year, and the second year I moved off campus and got a job at a pizza shop and bar. The kid who made the pizzas with me was into music called Heavy Metal. He proselytized it just as relentlessly as the Christians on campus pushed their agenda, but I gotta say, I was much more inclined toward the former! However, I wasn’t a “true believer”; not all of it struck me as vital. I could appreciate Mahogany Rush, but it sounded a little too much like turning Hendrix into a gimmick. And I had no time for the screechy vocals and all-over-the-map prog of Rush. But a few things he sent my way stayed with me: Bridge Of Sighs by Robin Trower, and Blue Öyster Cult.

Yes, Trower had the Hendrix tone down cold, but he also had a very distinctive songwriting style, and his band at the time was on fire. The slower tunes had much the same effect as Joe Walsh’s slide playing: it was the sound of pot smoking! I finally got to see Trower a few years ago, at BB King’s in NYC (a birthday present from my son and my ex); he had a very young band, but he still had “it”!

I could go on for a while about Blue Öyster Cult. I immediately got “the joke”, an early instance of meta rock, poking fun at itself while at the same time living up to the pretensions as well. It ROCKED! There seemed to be a kind of “coven-ish” story line going on, but you knew it was all a wink and a nod. I started with the first one, I liked Tyranny And Mutation even more, but then came Secret Treaties! There was a “forbidden-ness” lying just behind the curtain of those weird lyrics and snarky vocals, but the soloing of Buck Dharma and the keyboards were keeping it vital.

I saw Blue Öyster Cult in the summer of 1976 at Moody Coliseum in Dallas. Opening bands were Starz and Rush (touring 2112). The show was a blast, not least due to the use of high intensity green lasers! A few weeks later, the FDA made them stop using it because of the fear that it could blind people! YAY! BLIND ME!

Shortly after this show, the radio began overplaying their encore song from that night, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”, and I started moving on to what would soon become Punk Rock.