Blue Öyster Cult – "Before the Kiss, A Redcap" (1972)

Their tongues extend and then retract

A redcap, a redcap

Before the kiss

[NOTE: This post is a heavily-edited version of my 2010 post about “I’m on the Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep,” which was also released on Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous debut album in 1972.  I was a huge fan of BÖC’s first three LPs, and I can’t think of another group whose first three albums are a match for BÖC’s.  (Maybe Led Zeppelin?)  I should have already inducted a BÖC song into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME, but better late than never.]

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I discovered Blue Öyster Cult 47 or 48 years ago when I picked up a Columbia Records 3-record sampler album titled The Music People at a record store in Houston, Texas.

Record companies issued sampler albums like that one to publicize new bands or give a bit of a goose to more well-known musicians whose forthcoming albums weren't expected to do very well.  

The most famous of these sampler albums were the "Loss Leaders" series of mostly double albums produced by Warner Brothers/Reprise records and sold by mail order for $2. The musicians represented on The Big Ball, Schlagers, and others of that ilk included some very mainstream artists (like Petula Clark and Peter, Paul and Mary), but were dominated by crazies like the Fugs, Captain Beefheart, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

Columbia Records also issued several samplers, and Music People included cuts by superstars (Bob Dylan, the Byrds), cult favorites (Spirit, It's a Beautiful Day, Mahavishnu Orchestra), and utterly forgotten never-wases (Sweathog, Compost, Grootna, and Mylon with Holy Smoke).

The fourth cut on side one of Music People was "I'm On The Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" by Blue Öyster Cult (or "BOC," as I will hereinafter abbreviate it) -- and it impressed me sufficiently that I immediately ran out and bought BOC's eponymous first album, which led off with this song. (That's right, Columbia Records sucked me right in – I did EXACTLY what they hoped I would do.)

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BOC's first album cover – the artist was a guy named Bill Gawlik – got your attention. It looked like it definitely meant something serious and important, but who the hell knew what?

The cover featured the band's logo – that funny thingie right in the middle – like a cross with an upside-down question mark.  Here's the flag featuring the logo that was displayed at some BOC concerts:

Blue Öyster Cult is generally credited with being the first band to use the so-called heavy metal umlaut – that's the two dots over the "O" in "Oyster" – which was later copied by Mötley Crüe, Motörhead, Queensrÿche, and others.  Since umlauts are used in Germanic languages but not in English, its usage by such bands is presumably intended to add an element of menace and general nastiness. 

Of course, umlauts should be distinguished from diaereses, a diacritical mark graphically similar to the umlaut.  (If you want to know more about this topic, be my guest – just don't expect me to accompany you on your little side trip to Minutiaeville.)

The titles of the songs on the first BOC album were attention-getting, to put it mildly: "Transmaniacon MC," "Before the Kiss, A Redcap," "She's as Beautiful as a Foot," "I'm On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep,” etc.

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The lyrics of today’s featured song are obscure, but Buck Dharma (BOC’s guitarist) and Sandy Pearlman (the group’s manager) have explained the lines that are quoted at the beginning of this post.

According to Dharma, Sandy Pearlman witnessed a woman and a man exchange a “redcap” – slang for a psychoactive drug (possibly Dalmane, which is a trade name for the drug flurazepam) – while kissing during a BOC show at a Long Island bar. 

Pearlman told a slightly different story to an interviewer in 1974.  He said that he was approached that night by a man who had a redcap on his extended tongue, apparently offering it to Pearlman. 

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The second BOC album, which was released a year or so later, featured an equally portentous Bill Gawlik cover:

The inner sleeve of Tyranny and Mutation said you could write in for a copy of the lyrics, which I promptly did.  A few weeks later, I received the lyrics for the songs on both albums printed on old-fashioned 11" x 14 7/8" continuous-feed computer paper.

BOC lyrics are generally enigmatic and just plain odd.  Adding to my bewilderment concerning what the lyrics meant is the fact that whoever transcribed them was either careless, or high, or dyslexic, or had a very curious sense of humor – the text of the printouts was often quite different from what I heard when I played the corresponding songs.

For example, the lyrics for "Before the Kiss, A Redcap" took "Four and forty redheads meet/Come to doom, doom the dawn" and rendered it as "Four and forty redheads meet/Bold with soup and then the corn." 

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I saw BOC on August 7, 1974 in Little Rock, Arkansas (along with the Guess Who).  That was the summer before I went to law school, and after quitting my summer job (which was driving a water truck for a company that was widening US Highway 71 south of my hometown of Joplin, Missouri), I decided to go visit a high-school friend who had moved to Alexandria, Louisiana, and then say good-bye to my college girlfriend, who was spending the summer in Houston before heading off to Stanford Business School.

On the way, I stopped to visit a cousin of mine who lived in Little Rock, where her boyfriend (now husband) played baseball for the Arkansas Travelers, who were the Double-A minor-league affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. 

Richard Nixon's resignation speech

The reason I know I saw that concert took place on August 7 is that Richard Nixon went on television to resign from office at 9:01 pm on August 8, and I was at the Travelers game with my cousin that night. I had no idea he had resigned until the next morning, when I was driving through the wilds of southern Arkansas on my way to Alexandria.

[NOTE: It appears that this concert is a figment of my imagination.  I can find no evidence that BOC ever opened for Guess Who – those two groups played very different music, and would have made a very odd pair – despite my vivid memory to the contrary.  There’s no doubt about when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, so whatever concert I saw must have taken place on August 7.  Did I see the Guess Who perform with a different opening act?  Did I see Blue Öyster Cult but not the Guess Who?  I’m sure that I’ve seen both bands, and I can’t imagine when else that might have happened if not on August 7 – I saw very few live concerts in the seventies, so I should be able to remember each and every one.]

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I must admit that BOC did not always bring out my nobler side.  

I left my copy of the first album on the back deck of my 1970 Olds Cutlass Supreme (the smallest engine this two-door coupe came with was a 350 V-8) and the hot Houston sun warped it a bit.  So I went to the local record store and bought a new copy of the album.  

A 1970 Olds Cutlass Supreme

I then returned to the store a few hours later with my warped album and my receipt, claiming that the store had sold me a defective record and demanding a refund.  The store manager wouldn't give me a refund, but did allow me to exchange it for a fresh copy of the record.  (Curses – foiled again!) 

The summer after my first year of law school, I worked at a large Houston law firm.  I got chummy with one of the secretaries in the department I was assigned to and socialized with her a bit outside of the office.  ("Dating," unfortunately, would not be an accurate description of our relationship – much to my chagrin.)  

Sherry told me that M&Ms went very well with beer – I was skeptical at first, but she turned out to be right – and I responded to that kind gesture with a lie, hoping to impress this fair lady.  To be exact, I showed her the computer printouts of the Blue Öyster Cult lyrics, and claimed I had written them.

She probably saw through this pathetic falsehood, but even if she had believed me, did I really think that lines like "Lecherous, invisible/Beware the limping cat" or "Didn't believe it when he bit into her face/It tasted just like a fallen arch" would win her heart?  I guess I must have.  And that, kind reader, goes a long way to explaining my limited success those days with the fairer sex – even though I was super cute in those days.

Actually, Sherry did take a liking to "oyster boys," a term used in "Subhuman" – "Oyster boys are swimming now/Hear 'em chatter on the tide/We understand, we understand/But fear is real and so do I." (Say whut?)

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One final BOC story and then I must bid you adieu. (I know you wish this post would never end, but my well of BOC material is about to run dry, I fear.)

My favorite author, George Pelecanos, often mentions the names of song titles in his books. "Then Came the Last Days of May," a song from the first BOC album (it's about three friends who are murdered by the confederate who is driving them to Mexico to consummate a drug transaction) is mentioned a couple of times in his 2008 novel, The Turnaround.

The key event in The Turnaround (which takes place in 1972) is an ugly confrontation that takes place when three white teenagers insult three black teenagers who are standing on a street corner in a working-class black neighborhood in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.  The driver of the car (a Ford Gran Torino) is the one who precipitates the fight, and he is shot and killed.  One of his friends – who tries to prevent the trouble – is badly beaten.

Prior to the incident, there's a scene where the character who is later beaten was listening to the first BOC album in his bedroom, waiting for his girlfriend to call:

He was looking at the Blue Öyster Cult art now, while "Then Came the Last Days of May" played in the room.  The song was about the end of something, its tone both ominous and mysterious, and it troubled Alex and excited him.  The cover of the record was a black-and-white drawing of a building that stretched out to infinity, stars and a sliver of moon in a black sky above it, and, hovering over the building, a symbol that looked like a hooked cross.  The images were unsettling, in keeping with the music, which was heavy, dark, dangerous, and beautiful.  This was Alex's favorite new group.

After the incident, Alex goes home to recuperate after a long hospitalization and several reconstructive surgeries.

[H]e listened to his Blue Öyster Cult album incessantly, returning to the song "Then Came the Last Days of May" over and over again. "Three good buddies were laughin' and smokin'/In the back of a rented Ford./They couldn't know they weren't going far." It seemed to have been written for him and his friends.

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A couple of years ago, Pelecanos edited an anthology of noir stories set in Washington, and he a couple of the other authors featured in that anthology did a reading at a local bookstore/restaurant.

I bought a copy of the anthology for my older son, who is also a Pelecanos fan, and got all three authors to autograph it after the reading was over.  But I also got Pelecanos to autograph the jacket of one of my two copies of the first BOC album, which includes "Then Came the Last Days of May."  

I’m not sure if he autographed the one I paid for, or the one I exchanged the old warped record for.

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Click here to listen to “Before the Kiss, a Redcap.”  It’s like no other song you’ve ever heard.

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