1970's Battle of the Bands: Blue Oyster Cult vs. Max Webster

[bobthedrummer]

Poll question: 1970's Battle of the Bands: Blue Oyster Cult vs. Max Webster

I love them both but gotta go with Max Webster, at one time Toronto's finest club band.

Who do you prefer?

[Reverend_Smitty]

1. Blue Oyster Cult...

Cowbell Baby!

[melnjones]

4. I'm all for that...

nothing like a good cowbell.

[MatrixEscape]

2. BOC!

Cities on FLAME with ROCK & ROLL!

[RevolutionaryActs]

3. I voted for Blue Oyster Cult for two reasons:

1) That SNL skit.. does it get any better?

2) Who the hell is Max Webster? lol :P

[Philostopher]

6. bob, you're going to get a lot of this.

There are lots of folks who have no idea who Max Webster is!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

9. You know what killed me about that skit?

They could have gotten the REAL BOC guys to do the skit. They all live near NYC and trust me when I tell you, it would have been just as funny.

I used to work for them. I know. ;-)

[Philostopher]

5. Wow -- somebody who's heard of Max Webster!

For all the Canucks on this site, I've only found a couple who knew who they were (or, maybe, they just didn't like them, I don't know).

Anyway, I think they're one of the most underrated bands ever.

[louis-t]

7. I am from Michigan. As a young man, I played in Ontario

many times in clubs from Windsor to Oshawa, Turkey Point to North Bay. I remember Max Webster. In 1976, I remember being in Toronto and going to a party at-I'm pretty sure-one of the members of that band's home. I remember the poster from their first album, not much about the music though.

[Philostopher]

8. My first husband was a big Rush fan.

He had all the Rush collectibles, including a copy of 'Universal Juveniles,' the album on which Rush and Max Webster did a duet on the song Battle Scar. I found, after listening to the album, I liked Max Webster much more than I liked Rush -- I was always more a mainstream rock fan than a progressive rock fan anyway, and Max Webster appealed to my tastes much more.

We bought all the albums, mostly in used record stores.

Most of the people I've run into here in the U.S. who know who they are either are Rush fans who bought 'UJ' for Battle Scar or were from up around Sarnia/Port Huron or Windsor/Detroit. I also had an interesting conversation with a guy who's now a Cincinnati musician (originally from Toledo) who said they used to cross paths with Max Webster in upstate New York in the late seventies and early eighties, playing spring break shows.

Max Webster also did numerous spring break shows at The Pavilion, in Myrtle Beach, SC. Some of the clubs down there still had autographed photos and promo slicks on the walls from when they'd been down in that area when I lived there, in the mid-to-late eighties. People my age (I'm forty now) remembered them pretty well.

[rbnyc]

10. Well, since I'm a Bouchard...

...I had to go for Blue Oyster Cult.

[flamingyouth]

13. Good answer!

:D

[AmandaRuth]

11. BOC BOC BOC

The Red and the Black!

They are going to be here in the PNW in the spring, and I got my "I need more Cowbell" tee-shirt and some tickets and I am ready to roll!

You can take the chick out of the 70's rock and roll, but never the other way...

[DiverDave]

12. Saw BOC in Portland, OR.

after 2 hits of windowpane.
When the drummer did a solo on "Godzilla" with a huge godzilla head on...well, it was a great show.
Oh, and, no, I didnt freak out.
Always had fun on the L.

[flamingyouth]

14. BOC

This Ain't The Summer of Love - classic.

[Squeech]

15. Another BOC vote

I've heard Max Webster-- had to check them out after "Tom Sawyer"-- but I never warmed to them.

BOC, depite how much of the time they were a cartoon, rocked righteously. They were in fact too smart for their own good, and there just aren't enough rock fans who get that degree of irony.

[AmandaRuth]

16. i think that the first 3 albums are

very under rated in history of rock terms

[Squeech]

17. Agreed

The first album isn't fully there-- there are a few songs that are silly (e.g. "Redeemed"), and the performances aren't up to what they could do when they were really rolling. I saw them around the time of Secret Treaties, and they did a version of "Stairway to the Stars" that rocked as hard as "7 Screaming Diz-Busters."

But Tyranny and Mutation is just about flawless, and Secret Treaties is close (I could live without "Cagey Cretins"). There's some really good stuff on Agents of Fortune too; besides the obvious hits, I think "Morning Final" and "Tenderloin" are brilliant-- although you can see the metal facade peeling away to their secret doo-wop roots. (Allen Lanier used to go out with Patti Smith, and "Tenderloin" was composed as a sort of valentine to her, I think. And of course he wrote "In Thee" for her after they broke up.)

Subsequent records tend to not measure up. (Not enough cowbell.)

[AmandaRuth]

18. I first saw them in Seattle in 1975

and it was a whole coming of age, growing up, rock and roll rebellion, stick it to the man type of thing. I was 16 and I think i even lied to my parents about where i was going that night.

Almost 30 years later, a good friend of mine gave me a CD boot copy of that same concert, July 5, 1975. It is one of my most favorite cds. Instantly takes me back to my youth, high school and all that.