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THAT UTTERLY OUTRAGEOUS BOUCHARD
WHEN A SERIES OF SCHEDULING HEADACHES THREATENED TO SQUASH HOPES OF BOUCHARD PLAYING IN HAMILTON ANYTIME SOON, A NEWLY MINTED BAND STEPPED IN TO SAVE THE DAY.
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by
Sean Palmerston
April 24 - 30, 2008 |
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One of the most successful US hard rock bands of the 1970s was Long Island, NY’s Blue Oyster Cult. Originally signed to Columbia Records at the advent of the seventies, and reportedly intended as the American answer to Black Sabbath, BOC soon gained a substantial international fan base thanks to their incendiary live shows, thoughtfully created albums and, especially on their first few albums, extraordinarily striking album artwork. Though the ‘US Sabbath’ tag was never something that stuck with the band, Blue Oyster Cult have long been heralded as ‘thinking man’s metal’ of the highest degree.
One of the members of the original BOC responsible for this tag is drummer Albert Bouchard. A founding member of the group who remained integral to the its most successful period (between 1972 – 1981) as both their time keep as well as one of its main songwriters, Bouchard eventually left the band, but continued to stay connected to music. He took his years of experience playing live before tens of thousands of fans every night and became a school teacher in New York, teaching music to eager students, while also maintaining a number of other bands.
The seeds for this week’s show were laid a few years back. Bouchard visited Hamilton earlier this decade with one of his other bands, the Brain Surgeons, who played a show at the Corktown. Local promoter Lou Molinaro brought them up to Hamilton, intrigued by the band’s BOC and Dictators’ connections (Dictators/Manowar guitarist Ross The Boss was also a Surgeon) and struck up a friendship with Bouchard that helped lay the groundwork for the unique gig that is happening Saturday at Hamilton’s Club Absinthe. “It really started with Lou Molinaro, who wanted to do this,” says Bouchard during a quick break from rehearsals earlier this week with his new Hamilton based pick–up band, Bouchard’s Outrageous Canadians. “Lou was figuring out different schemes to get me to come up here starting about a year ago.
“I have a bunch of different groups that I am playing with at this point and it was looking like it was going to be hard to book any of them, so Lou said ‘I have a bunch of great musicians here, we could learn your songs and you could come up and play with us.
“At first, my visit was just going to be a drum workshop at Long And McQuade, doing a drum clinic like I have done in the past. That’s a lot of fun and I said I would do that. We were trying to figure out when to do it and I have a week off now, so I thought maybe I’d drive up to Canada. Then it turned into a workshop and a recording session. That soon became a workshop, a recording session and a gig. Then one gig became a couple of gigs plus a couple of rehearsals, so now I am up here all week.”
Bouchard’s Outrageous Canadians is a sly twist on the BOC moniker that has been such an important part of Albert’s life. In fact, the band’s performance will be somewhat of a celebration of his time spent in said musical outfit. The material the group will be playing will span the drummer’s decade as part of BOC, starting off with early material such as ‘Stairway To The Stars’ and ‘The Red And The Black,’ including some of the band’s biggest hits (‘Godzilla,’ ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’) and even visiting some long lost album cuts such as ‘Sinful Love’ and ‘Revenge of Vera Gemeni’ off the band’s breakthrough album, 1976’s Agent Of Fortune.
“It was mostly Lou and myself who decided the songs,” says Bouchard. “I gave him a list and he came back with another and we kind of haggled over it. At first I was going to do about 50 per cent Blue Oyster Cult and 50 per cent other songs: originals of mine and other people I am working with. Somehow it came down to basically BOC songs and a couple covers.
“It’s cool though. A lot of these are songs that I have not played in a long, long time. Since I left Blue Oyster Cult basically. Thirty years of scratching the cobwebs off is making me realize that yeah, these arrangements are kinda cool!”
The band itself, which includes locals like vocalist Lisa Winn, keyboardist Greg Brisco and guitarist Sean Royle, had already been practicing for more than a month before Bouchard had the chance to step into a Hamilton practice space with them. The veteran drummer was pleasantly surprised with the band’s progression and thinks that Hamilton music fans are in for a really special treat.
“The band was already fairly tight and the vocals were ‘woah.’ It was especially neat to hear the women singing these songs that I have never heard a girl sing before. We’re supposed to record some songs this week and I have suggested to make it songs that the girls sing. I mean, come on, ‘Flaming Telepaths’ with a girl lead singer! It’s awesome and sexy too.”
It doesn’t matter if you are a longtime fan or only know the hits, you could do much worse on a Saturday night than make it out for this gig. Consider this your warning; don’t complain later if you missed it. V
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