THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Blue Oyster Cult: “Tyranny and Mutation” (Columbia). Bizarro critic R. Meltzer says: “This is really hard rock comedy.” Which isn’t just a laugh — in eight songs, Long Island’s only underground band manages to run through nearly every heavy music cliche with a finely-honed guitar neck.
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
by
Robert Christgau
Blue Oyster Cult: “Tyranny and Mutation” (Columbia). Bizarro critic R. Meltzer says: “This is really hard rock comedy.” Which isn’t just a laugh — in eight songs, Long Island’s only underground band manages to run through nearly every heavy music cliche with a finely-honed guitar neck. But like all the best rock, this works as what it takes off from, or anyway, as something almost indistinguishable. A plus cut: “CKD.’d on Life Itself.” A minus.
Roy Brown: “Hard Times” (BluesWay). I have been hearing about Brown for years, yet when I finally got hold of King Record’s “Hard Luck Blues,” which contains most of the seminal hits he recorded for DeLuxe between 1948 and 1954, I noted it dutifully and shelved it. It took these six-year-old sessions, a good portion of what he has recorded since semi-retiring in 1956, to turn me on to the master of the falsetto shriek, progenitor of both B.B. King and Little Richard. Most pre-rock bluesmen flounder through soul-styled uptempo arrangements, but Brown is so fluid he rolls right along on top. A find — as is “Hard Luck Blues,” if you can find it. A minus.