So I'm not alone, finally. I have the 17 CD CBS Years box on delivery (even though I have all their regular CDs already). Thinking man's hard rock and Donald Buck Dahrma Roeser is such a fluid player.
Generally, whenever you mention BÖC here you either get polite disinterest (the band doesn't seem to elicit any emotion, good or bad) or someone digs up the "More Cowbell!" SDNL spoof.
Secret Treaties, Spectres and Fire of Unknown Origin are my favorites, yet people seem to remember them chiefly for their laser show in the late seventies and Godzilla.
BÖC were harmonically a lot more adventurous than many hard/heavy rock bands, but got no credit for it, they were as clever as Midnight Oil in that field. And I always appreciated the breadth of their songwriting when the Bouchard brothers were still with them. They went downhill when Joe and Albert left, not just musically, it killed the heart of the band.
Oh, and btw, I still think that James Hetfield, once he decided to learn singing after all (a process of many years and still work in progress to some ears), patterned his vocal approach after Eric Bloom.
I saw them comparatively recently. They have become pretty much a Buck Dharma solo show, he sings 80% of the material and Eric Bloom, who once ruled the stage, has become a sideman who plays a lot more keyboards than he used to. Now I do like Herr Roeser's voice, but all the Sci Fi stuff, Veteran of a 1.000 Psychic Wars and all that lovely nonsense, was carried by Bloom's voice. These days, they downplay that part of their oeuvre, for whatever reason.
PS: Is that Bobby Rondinelli drumming in that vid? My gosh, he's still constantly ahead of the beat, just like he was with Rainbow.
