Concert review, Blue Öyster Cult, Manchester Life Cafe, 11 Jun 2003

Last year, after playing little more that a few one-off shows over more than a decade, BÖC played an extensive UK tour of smaller clubs. The reception was so good that they returned, after just a year, to play another ten-date tour. Last time I saw them at the Astoria Theatre in London, this time I saw them up north, in the Life Cafe in Manchester.

The present-day lineup still includes three of the original members, guitarist and frontman Eric Bloom, who's sadly lost his Jeff Lynne style-perm, lead guitarist and vocalist Buck Dharma, who now looks like a middle-aged accountant rather than a yuppie accountant, and keyboardist and guitarist Allen Lanier, who I'm half-convinced is now some kind of vampire. The replacements for the original rhythm section of Albert and Joe Bouchard are Danny Miranda on bass, and one time Rainbow and Black Sabbath drummer Bobby Rondinelli.

There's something about seeing an established band in an intimate small venue with an audience made up mostly of hardcode fans. I met several people that had been to every gig on the tour, even to Aberdeen, and the band clearly fed off the enthusiasm of the audience.

They decided to vary the setlist a lot on this tour, resting several of the usual standards and dusting off some less well-known numbers that they haven't played for years. I was told that they'd played 37 different songs on the tour so far, and attempted to play one or two others that got abandoned when Buck Dharma realised Eric Bloom had forgotten the chords! Some of the surprises were "Tattoo Vampire", "Unknown Tongue" and the funky "Shooting Shark". We even got two songs from the often-reviled 1979 album "Mirrors", although I found the atmospheric epic "The Vigil", a song about a whacko flying saucer cult, one of the highlights of the show.

All in all, a great show from a band that prove they can still cut it live, 32 years after their first album. Just about the only fault in the whole show was that they didn't play what I think is their best song, "Astronomy".

Setlist

Dr Music
OD'd on Life Itself
Pocket
Flaming Telepaths
Unknown Tongue
Tattoo Vampire
Shooting Shark
Divine Wind
The Vigil
Lips in the Hills
And Then Came the Last Days of May
Godzilla
(Don't Fear) The Reaper

Burning for You
Cities on Flame
The Golden Age of Leather