I Need All The Peepers I Can Find

This New Year's Eve was the final barrier
Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.
We took you up and we put you in the back seat
Dominance! Submission. Radios appear.

You want a perfect song? You want a perfect song by a band at the absolute peak of their powers? You want a perfect song by a band at the absolute peak of their powers casting the British Invasion of the US charts in terms of an S&M act?

It’s rhetorical, I know you do, its why I love you so; you filthy little rats!

Welcome to another of my very favourite LPs, Blue Öyster Cult Secret Treaties.

Just when I think Blue Öyster Cult couldn’t get any more slinky and menacing, any more measuredly cynical and arrogant they sidle up to you clad head-to-toe in leather and slip a dog collar around your neck. I love it like the filthy little rodent I am.

---

As always Blue Öyster Cult’s weapon of choice is the poignard rather than the club, which is why I never understood them when I was young and stupid. There is also something oddly diffident about the band too, excellent players all, there is a total lack of the overt, flexing virtuosity that is such a intrinsic component of hard rock.

That also flows into the lyrics, not a single set of which was written by the band on Secret Treaties, instead they were supplied by Richard Meltzer, Sandy Pearlman and the keyboard player’s girlfriend. I find that such an odd submission, surrendering your voice, to almost become an amanuensis for another’s agenda*; maybe they just realised the quality they were getting outweighed their own capabilities at that point.

---

Secret Treaties slinks away from the starting blocks with the manly strut of ‘Career Of Evil’. Over a wonderfully melodic restrained organ driven track, Patti Smith’s lyrics give us some real tongue-in-cheek macho badassery, to the point where they had to be censored for airplay reasons**.

Next up those Öyster boys give us the gentle, flowing ‘Subhuman’. A perfectly poised tune, lyrically talking resignation in an underwater setting, it treads some of the same water as ‘Submission’ in my last review, they mean it (mer)man! Albert Bouchard’s drumming is incredible here, as it is throughout Secret Treaties, creating that scaffolding to support those intertwining guitar lines.

Then we get a wonderful cross fade into ‘Dominance And Submission’ and … I struggle for words here, I mean how many synonyms are there for ‘strut’, ‘slinky’ and ‘menacing’? It’s just so incredible the way the whole song is structured and changes, the way Albert Bouchard sings the final section where he (American youth? airplay?) is being dominated is just pure pervy genius. Add in some genuinely stinging guitar and I’ve truly just been forced to my knees.

No break, no let-ups and we’re straight into the jackboot biker boogie of ‘ME 262’, which is also deeply funny and rather arch; additionally it provides us with the LP cover image^*. Oddly enough, whilst sounding a bit like Hawkwind it treads some similar turf to Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, which also came out in 1974.

Göring's on the phone from Freiburg
Says "Willie's done quite a job"
Hitler's on the phone from Berlin
Says "I'm gonna make you a star"

Flipping Secret Treaties over I have to confront ‘Cagey Cretins’, which manages to discomfit me a little every time I hear it for reasons I can’t quite explain, maybe something about the register it’s sung in? In any case it’s a lesser track for me, the only one here.

Some days ‘Harvester Of Eyes’ is my very favourite song by Blue Öyster Cult, portraying the grim reaper as a weird necro addict ‘I need all the peepers I can find’ and referencing being ‘so high on eyes’. All of this contained in a restrained boogie and Eric Bloom’s vocal sung as though through a rictus smile, before descending into gibbering unintelligibility by the song’s end. Do I need to say how great the guitar soloing here is? the music box outro is pure Alice Cooper, leading as it does straight into …

‘Flaming Telepaths’ which is one of those songs that can simultaneously rock a stadium and move a lone listener to tears, ‘Well I’ve opened up my veins too many times’ and ‘I’m looking for rebellion, I’ll settle for lies’, Bloom sneers. How could I ever think BÖC weren’t heavy enough?! there’s none heavier!

Which allows us to move to Secret Treaties closer ‘Astronomy’ which is a decidedly odd fish indeed. Lyrically adapted from a poem by Sandy Pearlman it sounds like a grandiose song from the freakiest musical you can imagine*^. Dual guitaring abounds and as always the rhythm is utterly irresistible, especially as it heads to a magnificent juddering, umm, climax.

---

Have I told you yet how much I love Secret Treaties? maybe it is time for me to get off the fence here about it. It is nigh-on a perfect LP from a band of ravening sickos at the absolute height of their powers. I love how channelled and restrained they sound most of the time here, it really does sharpen the point of the knife.

Ladies and gentlemen, astronomers, subhumans, cretins, telepaths, harvesters, dominants, submissives and assorted filthy rats, I commend Secret Treaties to you all. Buy it now, if you don’t have it and join our cult.

1177 Down.

*Pearlman even writes the ambiguous line ‘Oyster boys are
Swimming for me now’ in ‘Subhuman’, almost flaunting it.

**down Patti, down I say!! ‘Do it to your daughter’ became ‘Do it like you ought to’ and ‘I want your wife to be my baby tonight’ to ‘I want your life to be mine, maybe tonight’. I rather like both versions.

^he’s such a precise, busy drummer. Really subtle by rock standards.

^*without explaining Eric Bloom’s rather alarming cape.

*^Drugsy Malone?