BOC: Couple O things

John A Swartz jswartz at MBUNIX.MITRE.ORG
Fri Apr 3 15:03:28 EST 1998


>At the time of Harvest Moon's release, I was reading a novel called
>'The Church of Dead Girls' by Stephen Dobyns. What is the book about?
>It's about a sleepy, rural town in Upstate New York where one young
>girl, then others, disappear.

Of course, Harvest Moon is probably about a more southern area - don't
think the Spaniards had too many settlers in upstate New York...

>The first time I heard Harvest Moon, it immediately put me in mind of
Imaginos. Music styles were a bit different, but I just thought it would
sound soooooooooooo nice nestled warmly in there, perhaps between
DelRio's song and Frankenstein.

Very much Imaginos-esque.  Maybe the Magna of Illusion (or some other
relic) was buried in the ground in this area and poisoned it much as
it did to Europe before the outbreak of WWI (as told by the Imaginos
liner notes).  By the way, Sandy Pearlman commented in the GOLDMINE
interview that he thought that this was one of Buck's best songs ever.

This story sounds also a little similar to Stephen King's "The Tommyknockers",
were an ancient spacecraft, which presumably crashed to earth many years
before, lay buried in the ground, poisoning the town (newspaper reports
from the past revealed many cases of people going mad, mass murders, and
the like).

>Also, I hope everyone enjoyed my "review" of Heaven Forbid. Someone here
was kind enough to forward it to the AOL BOC Forum and yesterday morning
I received a short message from Buck himself saying how much he enjoyed
reading it.

That story was incredibly cool.  Buck was mentioned very positively in it,
so I'm not surprised he liked it.  Of course, it did sort of touch on some
other realities that other members may not have wished to deal with (the
absense of "the Brothers", the fact that "the Shaded One" was sounding a
bit tired, and the fact that "the Smoking One" is somewhat silent on the
disc), but of course "Lord Dharma has never been more powerful".  I
enjoyed it tremendously - how 'bout a follow-up to describe the songs?

>One last tidbit. People have mentioned the relative shortness of HF.
Even with the Bonus Track it still weighs in at under 45:00. Considering
how "Buck heavy" the album is, it would have been nice had they included
the Bad Channels songs on this album as well. Would have given both Eric
and Buck six songs each, plus the bonus track. Would have added more
balance to the album IMHO. Not trying to say that the BC songs are as
good as HF (well, I think Horsemen is), but overall they would have
worked well on there.

I agree with this.  The Bad Channels songs, being more John Shirley lyrics
(and that is both good and bad to some people), would have fit well with
Heaven Forbid - perhaps remixed, but even if left as originally appeared,
that would've been fine.  Someone mentioned on another online forum that
Moonstone Records owns the rights to them, and didn't want to allow BOC
to re-use these tracks.  If that's true, I find it rather stupid, since
I doubt they are going to make too much more money on future sales of
Bad Channels, especially seeing how it is becoming harder and harder to
obtain (then again, maybe they'll re-release it if HF sells well?).

I've got one more suggestion, but again it involves some legal issues,
and getting permission from other copyright holders.  If the band wanted
to put a live track on of an older song, sort of "just for the fans"...
do you see where I'm going with this one?  They should've put "Wings of
Mercury" on it.  This song, while it's quality may be debatable, is
something of a legend in BOC's history.  It's a question that pops up
rather frequently - people have heard of it, or maybe heard it in '85/'86,
and keep thinking that since it didn't make Club Ninja, maybe it would
be on Heaven Forbid -- of course, the band has not played it in 12 years.
Some suggest that it might appear on the possible-upcoming King Biscuit
release, but Bolle (who thinks his release may come out around October)
doesn't think so, since it was written by Karl Percoda, and therefore the
band would have to get permission to have it released.

So, if you had added those 3 to the current HF, you'd have 14 tracks,
half sung by Eric, half by Buck.  You'd have the hard-to-find Bad Channels
tunes, which lyrically fit well.  And you'd have the fabled "Wings of
Mercury".  The disc would then clock in somewhere between about 50
and 55 minutes, perhaps a bit more typical of CDs in the 90s.  Would've
been a good idea.  Maybe if I didn't already have these 3 tracks on CD,
I would've complained about this...

John



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