BOC: Clubs vs. Arenas

[John A Swartz]

> As far as becoming a club band, BOC never did a stadium tour in
> New England for Ninja. I remember seeing them at the Kingston, NH
> fairgrounds twice between when I saw them at the Worcester Centrum
> for RBN, and post Ninja. To give you an idea, I saw them at the Centrum
> for ETL, and the place was jammed. For RBN it was maybe 2/3 full.
> They headlined at both of the Kingston shows, though no other big bands
> were there really.

I also was at the '82 Worcester Centrum show (my first BOC show - I got
a tape of that one too - the radio broadcast, BTW, left off 3 or 4 songs
from the show, although there is a lower quality tape, and audience
recording, floating around with the complete show), and yeah, the place
was jammed.  I missed the RBN tour though.  However, I caught them on a
"pre-"CN show when they played the now-defunct Channel in Boston in the
fall of '85 (October, I think).  The Channel was a large club which
probably held around 800-1000 people.  The gig was originally billed as
"The Soft White Underbelly".  As the gig date got closer, they started
letting out more "clues" for the unitiated (ads in the paper said - "You
know who they really are" with the letters B O C printed under a group
photo.  The week of the gig they were being advertised as Blue Oyster
Cult.  The next time BOC came to Boston was, I believe, January 1st,
1988, and they were billed as Blue Oyster Cult from the start.

I believe that BOC did still do some larger venues on the CN tour, some
of them probably being in Europe (just prior to Joe B.'s departure
from the band).  After that though, it was mostly clubs (with the
occassional festival thrown in).

John

"Late afternoon in the open air - a human sea made outta mud and hair.
Yeah, ain't nothing like a festival crowd.
There's too many people so we play too loud."
  -- Spinal Tap (Stinkin' Up the Great Outdoors)