1977’s “Race With The Devil” must have surprised quite a few of BLACK OAK ARKANSAS followers, as that album began and ended with borrowed songs, so there’s no reason to be staggered by the band’s forthcoming platter which consists almost solely, save for bonus cuts, of covers – especially given the record’s title. Bearing the legend “The Devil’s Jukebox” and scheduled for release on September 1st, it features rather unexpected – on both interpretative and conceptual level – choices.
Even though BLUE ÖYSTER CULT didn’t get to sculpting a fully fledged concept album during the band’s classic era, there was a common thread running through many of their records: a string of ideas derived from “The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos” – a collection of poems and scripts by Sandy Pearlman who would go to find musicians to bring those to life and, thus, masterminded BÖC and became their manager and producer. And while commercial motives limited the collective’s handling of Pearlman’s mythos, drummer Albert Bouchard – a co-writer of many numbers in the ensemble’s repertoire and composer behind such perennial as “Career Of Evil” – never let it go.
It started out sensational and it ends sensational: while the issue of JOHN MAYALL’S BLUESBREAKERS "Live In 1967" in 2015 seemed a one-off release of rare recordings by one of the greatest line-ups of the British blues institution, turned out to be a short series that saw a second installment out a year later and will be brought to a close on September 8th, 2023, when “Live In 1967 – Volume Three” is to see the light of day.
It didn’t seem possible to see Geoff Downes form another creative partnership on par with one which he and the late John Wetton used to enjoy, yet it’s been a bit more than a decade since the esteemed ivories driver first ventured into a collaboration with pop-hitmaker Chris Braide and the two set on a course that will find DBA release their fifth studio opus in a few months.
While STATUS QUO‘s studio platters can seem to demonstrate a bit of sameness – how varied can guitar boogie be, anyway? – the ensemble’s concert albums, from 1977’s “Live!” onward, have always been irresistible thanks to their raw energy. That’s why the veterans’ new endeavor, titled “Official Archive Series” and bringing the best of their previously unissued recordings to the fans, should be interesting.
