David F Hallett is at present a Doctoral candidate in English on the University of Ottawa. J Robin Martin, a Canadian TSD member, writes recurrently about film. Both took undergraduate levels at Memorial University of Newfoundland.]

Errors, like straws, upon the surface circulate;

He who would search for pearls should dive beneath.

John Dryden, All for Love (prologue)

Perhaps the most dominant gothic literary motif is that of the vampire. Emerging within the 19th century, the vampire, or the Undead, has survived to saturate all media of well-liked tradition in the 20th century. The Undead, in an evolving mythology, proceed to stalk the pages of contemporary fiction and the screens of our cinemas, even materializing like Stokers Dracula as specks floating within the rays (90) on the pixels of our televisions. Rock music too, as much a creation of the twentieth century because the literary vampire was of the nineteenth, has been bitten by the lure and lore of the Undead, not only including its personal variations to the mythos but also reflecting the notion of the vampire in other forms of mass media, each critiquing and drawing inspiration from it.

The Blue Öyster Cult is conspicuous by its absence from the present surveys of images of the vampire in rock music. Amongst its large oeuvre, the Blue Öyster Cult has quite a few vampire-related songs -- some specific, many extra oblique. The band has, over a profession nearing thirty years, persistently explored in their lyrics what comparative literature specialist Roger Shattuck calls forbidden data. Their songs of the Undead kind part of a larger canvas that demonstrates humanitys capacity for darkness. Their literary antecedents include the foundations of the Gothic, with direct allusions to Shelleys Frankenstein, and contemporary speculative fiction, together with actual collaboration with writers akin to Michael Moorcock, Eric Von Lustbader, John Shirley and Jim Carroll. Songs from the bands canon have discovered their technique to the display screen in such horror movies as Halloween (1978), Heavy Metal (1981), Stephen Kings The Stand (1994), The Frighteners (1995) and the 1992 characteristic Bad Channelsfor which the band wrote the unique rating. Along with writing for the motion pictures, the band has additionally regularly written about them, displaying a fascination with pop tradition and the best way during which human attitudes are affected and mirrored by our chosen entertainment.

The Blue Öyster Cult exists inside an American cultural tradition of nay-saying, a tradition rooted in the impulse which led the Puritan founders to first board the Mayflower. However, the bands contribution to the panorama of American cautionary creativity is rarely recognized for 3 reasons. Firstly, they're a rock group. Despite the existence of forums such as the Journal of Popular Culture, scholarship incessantly assumes the popular is just not a topic for academic evaluation. Secondly, they are not a one-challenge group. Because their principal concern is the human propensity for darkness, they resist straightforward classification -- a shortcoming as far as many important perspectives are concerned. In harmony with forebears similar to Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, the Blue Öyster Cult delights in ambiguity. Songs are open to interpretation and debate, resisting discourses that pretend definitive readings to be possible (or even fascinating). Their oeuvre, like that of Franz Kafka, validates a thousand keys and authorizes none (Lynch & Rampton 494). Finally, their most well-liked material is forbidden. Various bodies of forbidden knowledge are proscribed due to the discomfort they evoke: their very existence conjures up denial. The majority of the Blue Öyster Cults catalogue suggests to the listener keen to confront the message that all of the bizarre, terrifying, despicable, or merely inconsistent things that we see out there are a mirror reflection. There isn't a them, simply us. As the title of one of many bands later songs suggests, I Am the One You Warned Me Of. That monster, mad scientist, addict, mutation, vampire -- it's not exterior but inside: We have met the enemy and he's us.

II

...there are issues that you already know not, but that you simply shall know, and bless me for realizing, although they don't seem to be nice things. Van Helsing (Dracula 250)

Extant criticism of forbidden knowledge as it's manifest in rock music tends to lump together artists and pursuits which ought to be distinguished from each other. This criticism often assumes that the presentation of an thought equals embracing and promoting that idea. Nowhere greater than in discourses of Satanism, such criticism usually seems to consider that rock musicians and writers are incapable of writing in character voices or of analyzing topics in an ironic or perhaps a detached tone. As rock critic Jonathan Cott wrote in a profile of Randy Newman (himself steadily on the receiving end of astigmatic criticism), listeners typically think about that the individual impersonating a personality in a track is equal to the individual singing it (488). The complete thought of a music is an actual state of affairs, says Newman himself (Cott 490), however the voice of the tune just isn't essentially the voice of the singer. Similarly, the commentary and recording of perceived reality isn't routinely promotion of it. Were Shakespeare subjected to related analysis, he would be seen to promote witchcraft, homicide, suicide, deception, and British intervention in Scottish politics -- all that solely in Macbeth.

Regrettably, the presentation of a character, perspective, or emotion in a rock song is usually unquestioningly accepted as confessional. The speaker of the phrases in any song is understood to be the singer/songwriter in his own persona. When the Blue Öyster Cult released their tune ME262 (Secret Treaties), sung from the attitude of a Luftwaffe pilot in April of 45, they had been quickly rumored to be Nazis, although two of the three songwriters are Jewish.

In most remedies of rock music which look at darker aspects of the human imagination, the presence and promotion of demonic values is assumed. Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds, for instance, in her article The Devil Sings the Blues: Heavy Metal, Gothic Fiction and Postmodern Discourse, makes two such undefended assumptions. She joins in her title two fairly distinct genres and, further muddying the mix, proposes the satan as vocalist, suggesting a Satanic component that isn't, until one reads male sexual posturing as inherently Satanic, found within the album she chooses as exemplar of the rise of Heavy Metal -- Led Zeppelin I. Equally odd is Hinds categorization of the Blue Öyster Cults Dont Fear the Reaper as a part of the overtly Satanic subdivision of Metal music (156). The assertion apparently equates loss of life with the devil; to not concern death is to worship Satan.

From a literalist reading of selected Scriptures, perhaps first filtered by way of Milton, it is likely to be doable to assemble the argument that humanity was born sinless, disobeyed explicit directions designed for its personal protection and, in consequence of its sin (the sin of acquiring forbidden data, one may recall), should now endure loss of life. Therefore anybody who accepts loss of life accepts the cause of it -- Satan and temptation. But this argument just isn't attempted by Hinds. She merely asserts that a track about facing the inevitability of ones personal demise with equanimity as an alternative of concern is a satanic song. Even Saint Paul doesn't equate demise with satan-worship: the wages of sin may well be demise (cf. Romans 6:23), but dealing with the inevitability of ones impending loss of life can't be read as Satanism. If it have been so, the conclusion Christ reaches at Gethsemane would also be satan-worship (cf. Mark 14:34-36; Luke 22:41-42). A part of the problem in any argument regarding spiritual matters is the significance of religion to perception. When one begins to debate the position and nature of the satan, one is inspecting territory that does not yield to empiricism. The devil can cite Scripture, or Shakespeare, for his purpose. Faith notwithstanding, nevertheless, to call Dont Fear the Reaper Satanic is as a minimum a misunderstanding of the tune.

Misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation is one weakness of extant criticism. Complete omission of significant information is another. In Susan Kagans entry on the vampire in in style music (The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead), some fringe groups are catalogued intimately. While these artists are undeniably part of the spectrum of vampire rock and definitely price knowing about, other artists, extra mainstream, are either mentioned with apparent material elided or not talked about at all. Alice Cooper, for example, is cited for Fresh Blood however not for his a lot earlier song concerning the actor whose portrayal of Renfield in the 1931 Dracula was uncomfortably close to not being appearing at all, The Ballad of Dwight Fry [sic]. The Blue Öyster Cult, with three explicit vampire songs and a number of oblique vampiric allusions, shouldn't be mentioned in any respect.

While Kagan strikes toward workable classification of vampire songs inside the rock canon, several of her five classes are both too broad or simply unnecessary. The first and second -- these with apparent reference to vampires, and those with oblique references (417) -- are helpful. However, categorizing songs with allegedly vampiric (417) references is redundant. An alleged connection with a vampire theme have to be provoked by at least an oblique reference. This definition is made no clearer by her scant illustrations. The ultimate two classes -- music that mentions vampires and music from vampire film soundtracks -- are also poorly conceived. The previous could also be an indicator of the latitude of the time period and idea vampire in our fashionable culture, and, with the whimsy of Hollywoods marketing practices, the latter may include any musical genre from George Jones to the Bee Gees, from Bachs oratorios to the hymns of John Wesley. If a tune doesn't already match into one of the initial two categories, it is of little use for scholarship. Accordingly, we have limited our categorization of Blue Öyster Cult vampire music to the obvious and the oblique.

III

Dear, beauteous loss of life! The jewel of the simply,

Shining nowhere but at midnight;

What mysteries do lie past thy dust,

Could man outlook that mark!

Henry Vaughan, The World

Blue Öyster Cult songs dealing with the vampire mythos tend to be the work of either Donald Buck Dharma Roeser or Joe Bouchard, although both Eric Bloom and Albert Bouchard, along with common co-writing companions of the band, have contributed some significant materials. Bolle Gregmar, chief officer of the B.Ö.C. fan club, keeper of The Museum of Cult, and acknowledged by the band members themselves to be the principal authority on all B.Ö.C. issues, means that the frequency with which Roeser and Joe Bouchard return to the vampire theme is, a minimum of in part, attributable to the fact that both men were born in early November and have a fascination with photos connected to Halloween. Bouchard and Roeser share their time of entry into the real world with Bram Stoker, and with the denouement of his Dracula.

Paying homage to Jonathan Harkers sluggish progression from consolation and confidence, making memoranda about getting recipes for Mina (28, 30), by way of the unease he feels in the meanwhile his coach is overtaken by the calèche within the Borgo Pass (41), to the sheer terror of finding himself alone at midnight, surrounded by silent wolves (45), Blue Öyster Cult songs regularly start with the mundane and construct through a gradual progression of darkish imagery toward the revelation of the skull beneath the pores and skin. Donald Roesers vampire songs tend to exploit audience expectations by suggestion, often invoking pictures associated with vampirism however leaving sufficient ambiguity to allow other interpretations. Joe Bouchards songs are, as Gregmar suggests, each about and for vampires, thus they are inclined to embed much more veiled references to the practices and wishes of the vampire within lyrics that do not, at first listening, overtly evoke the Undead. Each writer has produced one undisputable vampire song (the pair of tracks which close the 1977 album Spectres) and Bouchard has buried in virtually every little thing he has written at least a line or two which admit interpretation as being relevant to the vampire mythos.

The remodeling capability of the vampire has been interpreted as symbolic of human desire to transcend our physical restrictions, as a part of the quest for forbidden knowledge. From the earliest report of the Judeo-Christian myth, humanitys issues are traced to our inability to resist the temptation of forbidden data, or to accept our limits until we've tried to transcend them. The implications of this relentless transgression are also ambiguous. Many of the Romantic poets wrote positively of the knowledge to be gained by means of going past societys collective and individual boundaries. However, regardless of William Blakes assertion that The street of excess leads to the palace of wisdom (The wedding of Heaven and Hell, Proverbs of Hell l.Three ) many have found what was enough by pushing to the purpose of too much solely to be unable to make use of that data. Sometimes, the knowledge discovered is that it could have been better not to have taken the highway of excess. In Byrons words: Sorrow is information: they who know probably the most / Must mourn the deepest over the fatal truth, / The tree of knowledge is not that of Life (Manfred I.i.10-12). Blue Öyster Cult songs habitually construct on that paradox: we relentlessly search to know extra yet we are often disturbed, perhaps even destroyed, by the knowledge we acquire.

Joe Bouchards songs, individually- or co-written, are more possible than every other B.Ö.C. songs to evoke images of the vampire. Bouchards Screams (Blue Öyster Cult) has a night time setting and a voice in search of a protected level for seclusion. The second particular person, the addressed you of the track, is understood to be on the same quest for a hole (or home) through which to grow. Yet the seclusion and shelter sought usually are not these of standard security. The speaker is clearly not seeking protection in the same old sense -- not, at the very least, if the Satans bred trash of the town will provide enough cover. The concept of turning to big metropolis madness as shelter suggests a necessity for anonymity, or immersion within the mass of humanity. As Jonathan Harker realizes during his education in the ways and motivations of the Count, the city has its teeming millions (100); it is good not merely for anonymity, but additionally for proximity to recent provides. If the speaker is read as one whose needs for shelter are unconventional, a voice from darkness addressing certainly one of its peers, it's not difficult to imagine the voice of the tune to be that of a vampire seeking both shelter by day and sustenance by evening -- needing anonymity for the simple purpose that, traditionally, a vampire recognized is a vampire hunted. As Whitley Streiber recommended in his novel, The Hunger, the Undead survive by means of secrecy. Communication is coded and minimal. A vampire uncovered is a vampire in danger, a doable explanation for the ambiguity found in so a lot of Bouchards lyrics. If we perceive the voice of a lot of Bouchards songs to be that of a vampire, we immediately have a purpose for Bouchards characteristic suggestive abstraction. The vampire proceeds as survival dictates: through riddles, connotation, symbols, ritual -- just as humanity has at all times handled its spirituality.

Wings Wetted Down (Tyranny and Mutation) employs lyrics suggesting the transmogrification of the vampire; as van Helsings lengthy discussion of the type of enemy with which we need to deal (332-38) suggests, the vampire is ready to appear at will when, and the place, and in any of the varieties which might be to him (333), the types of nocturnal predators or nocturnal invaders of our sheltering homes (Stade v). Wings wetted down, [stumble] on the ground, the music states, but it all turns round in the air. The human body is earthbound, and when the human tracks the earthbound vampire (in Dracula, the vampire sleeps in consecrated earth), the human is ascendant. Provided he can conquer his own want (cf. Van Helsings memorandum, 499-503), the human can destroy the Undead. Everything reverses when the vampire is airborne. The music juxtaposes pictures, linking the mundane to the magical: Flights of black horsemen / soar over churches / pursued by an army / of birds within the rain. The unease created by the resultant picture is sustained by a musical association using a minor key, distortion and dissonance, and chromatic intervals.

Morning Final (Agents of Fortune) presents a determine who cast a burning shadow on the busy street and said he was a junkie. A motiveless murder is associated with this meandering determine, though it is unclear whether or not he's the sufferer or the perpetrator. The phrase morning final is drawn from journalism, and the track clearly operates on one degree as the aural equivalent of the newspaper, together with in the fade-out the voice of a avenue vendor hawking papers. But morning can also be final to the vampire, and the pursuit into the subway could suggest the tracking of a vampire to its lair. The voice of the music, which laments in the chorus After what I read / I can hardly really feel my heart... /my heartbeat could also be understood as the voice of an extraordinary New Yorker reacting to the ubiquity of violence in the media, but could as simply be heard because the voice of a vampire seeing one other of his type hunted and destroyed. One also recalls Minas response to her first studying of Jonathans journal (266) in addition to the overall importance of text to the comprehension of the vampire in Stokers Dracula -- a narrative composed nearly totally of secret data: the contents of individual diaries. Those passages which are not non-public observations are steadily drawn from newspapers. As effectively, just because the subway underlies the town, the concept of the vampire as symbolic of human sexual desire, suppressed and defined as evil, runs beneath the floor of the music.

Bouchards later songs make use of equally oblique imagery, admitting the potential for a vampire theme while refusing to name it explicitly. Moon Crazy (Mirrors) hints at secret rituals and transformation beneath darkness. Although largely eschewed by Stoker, the moon performs a major function in Polidoris The Vampyre (1819), in which Lord Ruthven is revived from death by the moons rays (Melton 409). Little question following Polidoris lead, James Malcolm Rymer employs a similar system in his serial Varney The Vampyre within the 1840s. Though within the larger canon of vampire fiction the moon is extra steadily related to the werewolf than with the vampire, one recalls that the native word Jonathan Harker hears as he boards the diligence bound for Bukovina he interprets as something that's both had been-wolf or vampire (36); the two may be thought-about blood brothers.

Light Years of Love (The Revolution by Night) evokes a relationship which seems to be a standard romance, but when one reads light years as a literal transcending of human limitations, the presence of the Undead is possible. A line similar to in your arms I will be anything continues Bouchards behavior of allowing for multiple interpretation; whereas the rhetoric is widespread to pop love songs, the line permits interpretation as a reference to transmogrification assisted by the ability of love (cf. Tam Lin for the same legend). Similarly, the apocalyptic rhetoric of When the War Comes (Club Ninja) is typical of many pseudo-navy splinter teams of the present era, yet concurrently reminiscent of Renfields habitual phrasing in talking of his Master. Because the listener hears in the final stanza the virgins come to set you free / on their lips the life of two, the echoes of the primary quarter of Stokers Dracula are fairly clear. In the Presence of Another World (Imaginos) straight evokes the reality of forbidden knowledge: in the promise of one other world /a dreadful information comes / how even house will modulate / and earthly things be done. The Promethean effort isn't without consequence and the Master who lurks in the background of the song is conscious of the curse of life eternal as lived on this decidedly temporal world. Your Master is a monster (cp. Renfields use of Master (168) and Minas use of monster (275) to describe Count Dracula) repeats all through the tune.

Imaginos traces the historical, economic, and social forces behind the outbreak of World War I. Its movement in direction of cataclysm is, as Harker says of the ladies wing of Draculas castle, nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance (77), yet is also informed by the information that the conflict to finish all wars in truth was merely the muse for holocaust. We're reminded by this later trio of Bouchards songs of the way during which our supernatural imaginings are figurative renderings of our pure traumas. What we have now achieved within the real world is much more terrifying and damaging than anything our fictions imagine. As Harker puts it, the previous centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere modernity cannot kill (77). The vampire is a human creation, even when we frequently deny what we see of ourselves reflected in it.

IV

Ah, it's the fault of our science that it needs to explain all; and if it clarify not, then it says there's nothing to clarify.

Van Helsing (Dracula 279)

There is a trio of songs in the prolonged catalogue of the Cult which deal explicitly with the vampire, and an extra pair which evokes a menacing revenant that might be -- given different imagery in every track -- a vampire. The latter pair are linked by the suggestion of a personality who exists over a passage of time past the normal human life span.

The first of these oblique but strongly suggestive songs treats a recurring, unidentified evil. Donald Buck Dharma Roeser's Harvest Moon (Heaven Forbid) is a masterpiece of slow accumulation. Threatening imagery builds till what at first appears dismissible as natural bad luck becomes decidedly unnatural; the harvest becomes greater than merely unearthing vegetables. In Harvest Moon, an unnamed Evil is tied to both particular geography and season. The land, settled traditionally by the Spaniards, who inexplicably burned the city and fields earlier than abandoning the world, is host to a cyclic evil presence. As history (measured presumably in centuries) unwinds and When the wind turns/ and blows the leaves from the trees underneath the harvest moon, unnatural dying befalls livestock and people alike. The killing of sheep and goats echoes references in both the literary and historic file of vampirism (Melton xxxv). The songs narrator brings the story to the current when he comments:

I sense the darkness clearer

I really feel a presence close to...

I really feel some Evil here

I hear some frightful noises

I dont go out at evening

since Bobrows youngest daughter

disappeared from sight

Vampirism is definitely considered one of a number of potential interpretations. The eternal, ageless nature of the Evil, the human and animal victims, and the fear of night time and its harvest moon observe traditional literary conventions, even if other facets of the lyric don't. However the mythology of the literary vampire has at all times been malleable, ultimately governed by the authors pen.

Also vital is that the narrative voice is implicated within the continuation of the problem. Just because the Spaniards burned all the things and the Cobys went south, exchanging farming for fishing, so the narrator repeats what the folks say as he sells his farm to a new owner: long time since theres been bother. The obvious clash between what is alleged to the new tenant and what is claimed to the listener reminds us, as Blue Öyster Cult songs so usually do, that we're what we're warned towards. The Evil continues as a result of human response to it, by centuries, has been to flee, to depart it to another person, and with out warning.

The bands other oblique vampire music strongly suggests the profession of a person who has slipped the bonds of mortality and time and who is perpetually engaged in a harvest of life, a harvest of dying. Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl), written by Albert Bouchard and Sandy Pearlman, concludes Tyranny and Mutation with each a transparent suggestion of a profession of harvesting which transcends human norms and, probably, allusions to Dracula. The listener is introduced to a girl who lurks in the backyard district and helps the plants develop robust and tall. The villagers name her quicklime girl. She sees that what's ripe and able to the eye can be rotten somehow to the core. One infers that the quicklime girl is on the very least facilitating the harvest, and that the vegetation flourishes in her district for much the identical reason that the timber in outdated city cemeteries seem to turn color later in the fall than do different metropolis bushes.

The song continues with menacing ambiguity. A harvest of life, a harvest of death / One physique of life, one physique of death suggests an embrace at once carnal and carnivorous. The bridge concludes with a 1st-particular person voice addressing an unidentified different in tones harking back to the first Clown and gravedigger in Hamlet: Ill prepare the quicklime, buddy / for your ripe and ready grave, for when youve gone and choked to death (recalling the strange and horrible gurglingof Mrs Westenra in loss of life (151)). The ultimate stanza suggests each the longevity of the quicklime girl and other attainable echoes of Stokers novel:

Its springtime now and cares subside,

The plantings almost carried out,

And fertile graves, it seems, exist

Within a mile of that juke-joint

Where coastguard crews nonetheless take their go away,

Lying listless in the solar,

And the quicklime woman nonetheless plies her commerce:

Reduction of the numerous from the one.

The repetition of still juxtaposed with the image of the coastguard crews on go away and the juke-joint suggests an period effectively after that evoked earlier by the use of villagers. The coastguard crews also echo Mina assembly with the coast guard on obligation in Whitby as the Demeter founders (78-9), a meeting which takes place in a cemetery. Similarly, the quicklime girls habit of lurking behind the bush (as repeated in the chorus of the track) recalls the description of Lucys first harvests as the bloofer lady (185-7, 208-9).

Of course the quicklime woman could possibly be interpreted as being nothing more supernatural than a prostitute. But if her actions are interpreted solely in carnal phrases, why is the picture of fertile graves in shut proximity to her workplace of significance? What about the listlessness of the crews who take their leave? And how do we understand reduction of the various from the one? The quicklime woman plies her trade however that commerce is probably not the first one which leaps to many minds. The bridge repeats before the song moves to its conclusion, introducing refined adjustments to the lyric: A harvest of life, a harvest of death /Resumes its course each day /As if by schedule ... Meanwhile, small creeping and flying creatures flip as if inclined to where the quicklime lady continues her harvest. Again, there is no overt, direct point out of the vampire, but the songs rich suggestiveness appears to beg the interpretation.

Finally, we flip from the oblique to the obvious. After Dark (Fire of Unknown Origin), I Love the Night (Spectres), and Nosferatu (Spectres) allow no ambiguity of interpretation and want no exegetical acrobatics to make their topic clear. This trio of songs stakes an undeniable claim for the inclusion of the Blue Öyster Cult in any examination of vampire music.

After Dark (Fire of Unknown Origin) is the latest of the bands specific vampire songs, and the only main excursion by songwriter Eric Bloom into vampire territory. After Dark shares with I Love the Night the framing gadget of a narrator initiated into vampirism by a supposed lover who then, collectively Undead, will share eternity with him. Because the title implies, the traditional motif of restriction to nocturnal exercise is invoked: After darkish -- I see you / After darkish-- I feel you /After darkish -- I need you. The lack of free agency as soon as under the spell of the vampire is evident in Long in the past and much away I heard your voice / And as soon as I heard you sing your track I had no alternative. Here again is exemplified the traditional literary and cinematic characteristic of a vampires skill to control a victims will over time and space. The second verse clearly illustrates the vampiric nature of the piece and additional reinforces classical traits attributed to the Undead: Of Age there is no such thing as a question. /Deaths shadow is undone. / We solely need each other /And shelter from the sun. In the songs ultimate verse, the narrator tastes true salvation by way of a fate ... traced in blood, both reiterating his earlier acquisition of eternal life and the means by which he should insure it.

Possessing a poetic lyric and an appropriately atmospheric melody, Roesers I Love The Night begins in the ruins of a relationship: That evening her kiss instructed me it was over. The narrator then walked out late into the dark, the place, in misty gloom, he's abruptly confronted with a lovely lady in white who remarks: Like me I see youre strolling alone/Wont you please keep? The narrator falls under her spell, unable to look away. The intercourse that follows outlines the inception and character of their relationship.

She mentioned I love the evening.

The day is Ok and the solar will be fun

But I stay to see these rays slip away...

Theres a lot that I can present and give to you

If you will welcome me tonight.

No mortal was meant to know such wonder

One look within the mirror informed me so.

Come darkness Ill see her once more

As with Stokers Dracula, the flexibility to exist in daylight is implied, however the vampires powers are amplified at night. Also developed from the normal mythology are immortality, the importance of the victims will in giving welcome to the vampire, and the absence of any mirror reflection. Like After Dark, I Love the Night is paying homage to the mythical Roman Lamia and echoes both Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Lamia.

At the centre of each the Blue Öyster Cults studio oeuvre and of Joe Bouchards contributions to the band is the song that the majority overtly offers with the vampire. Nosferatu recapitulates the Dracula story in lyrics using, in some cases verbatim, the title playing cards used in the early 1970s English re-situation of F.W. Murnaus 1922 movie, Nosferatu. The words are set in opposition to a characteristic B.Ö.C. musical association, redolent with menacing minor chords articulated in arpeggio, chromatic intervals, and accidentals.

The lyrics of Nosferatu are value reproducing in their entirety. They show how instantly Bouchard (and co-writer Helen Wheels) had been influenced by Murnaus movie. The track pares the plot to its essence, every verse concentrating on a serious plot level of the movie.

Deep in the guts of Germany

Lucy clutched her breast in fear

She heard the beat of her lovers coronary heart

For weeks she raved, in desires he appeared

From far off Transylvania

The ship pulled in with out a sound

The faithful captain long since cold

He kept his log till the bloody finish

Last entry read Rats within the hold.

My crew is lifeless. I worry the plague.

Pure in coronary heart, who will provide herself ...

Mortal terror reigned

Sickness now then horrible demise

Only Lucy knew the truth

And at her window

Nosferatu

So chaste, so calm she gave herself

To the pleasure of her dreaded grasp

He sucked the precious drops of life

Throughout the long and cold darkish evening

One last goodbye, he was blinded by mild

One last goodbye, he was blinded by love

Blinded by love

He screamed with concern, hed stayed too long in her room

The morning solar had come too soon

The spell was broken with a kiss of doom

He vanished into mud and left her all alone

Only a lady can break the spell

Pure in coronary heart, who will provide herself to Nosferatu

There is de facto no argument here to make. There isn't any ambiguity about both intent or interpretation. Nosferatu is at once essentially the most overt of the Blue Öyster Cults vampire songs and one of the best examples of the style in which the assorted writers in the band habitually turn to other genres of common tradition -- especially cinema -- for songwriting inspiration.

V

He will discredit our thriller.

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure III.ii.29

Nosferatu is most significant to our functions in that it predates most of what Susan Kagan lists in her survey of vampire music. Omitting the Blue Öyster Cult from remedy of the vampire as developed in rock music is slightly like discussing Murnaus film without reference to Stokers novel, or like crediting Stoker himself with the invention of the vampire. The Blue Öyster Cult were making gothic rock music long before many of the bands now well-known for the genre started to kind. Like Black Sabbath on the alternative aspect of the Atlantic, the B.Ö.C. have been writing songs in the early 1970s that were neither lyrically nor musically quite like what anybody else was doing. While we wouldn't wish to assert the band as the one fountainhead from which gothic rock derived, nor to recommend that our brief survey of their vampire-related lyrics is definitive, we do insist that they deserve a extra prominent place than that which has to date been given them -- typified by Hinds informal misinterpretation of their best-identified track as representing Satanism in heavy steel.

Blue Öyster Cult songs talk about forbidden data brazenly. Their music employs fantasy and thriller to challenge the pervasive complacency of human life, to show human obsessions by means of our common culture. David Hume wrote within the mid-eighteenth century that, as civilization advances, it's soon found that there's nothing mysterious or supernatural ... however that all proceeds from the usual Propensity of Mankind in the direction of the Marvellous (897). We consider what we choose, and name what we concern or dont perceive supernatural. Hume further recommended that this Inclination, although it might periodically receive a Check from Sense and Learning, will never be totally extirpated from human Nature (897). Blue Öyster Cult songs normally exist in that paradoxical human area between rationality and superstition, delighting in demonstrating humanitys usual Propensity ... towards the Marvellous -- as usually as not with a critical eye.

Donald Roesers most recent track (as of this writing) offers us with an ending that is also a starting. Amongst the principal writers in the band, Roeser is the most persistent and perceptive observer of the macabre in 20th century widespread culture (and, arguably, essentially the most profitable)a chronicler of the postmodern dreadful. With Godzilla (Spectres) and X-Ray Eyes (Heaven Forbid), he lightly satirizes the B-Movie packaging we regularly demand within the presentation of our fears and foibles without denigrating the all too actual horrors they illustrate: the post-atomic angst and anguish visited upon Japanese tradition within the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that spawned the immortal Gojiro and the Promethean hubris of Ray Millands surgeon in Roger Corman's X ( The Man With X-Ray Eyes) (1963). Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Agents of Fortune) addresses the UFO and alien abduction phenomena. But perhaps most vital of all Roesers songs, each for this transient analysis and for a more comprehensive understanding of the Blue Öyster Cults oeuvre, is Real World, from the band's most recent album Heaven Forbid. In Real World, Roeser summarizes his 30 years of musically observing our mediated culture. Opening with two verses full of occasions taken from the front pages of the tabloids, Real World evokes rains of fish and rains of frogs to arias sung by mongrel dogs and covers familiar territory with disks that stretch into cigars and its chorus: something beyond is reaching out to you. But as if to punctuate his career on this genre, Roeser turns in the final verse to the legitimate press whose stories mirror our empty lives/Tv changing children and spouse/Lives consumed with soapy talk/Lives lived in concern of taking a walk. His conclusion is each the beginning and ending line for the profession of the Blue Öyster Cult, condensed into one emphatic statement: the real world is bizarre enough for me. The tune reminds us that all our fears start with ourselves. Real World stands at the end of the 20th century in close thematic harmony with the place Stokers Dracula stood at the tip of the 19th: naming the unnameable and reminding the audience of its own function and responsibility within the creation of all our myths.

Works Cited:

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In E Talbot Donaldson et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Sixth Edition, The key Authors. NewYork: Norton, 1996. 1312-23.

Byron, George Gordon, Lord. Manfred: a Dramatic Poem. In David Perkins, ed. English Romantic Writers. New York: HBJ, 1967. 810-28.

Cott, Jonathan. Randy Newman: His Only Hero Was Roy Campanella. 12 November 1970. In Ben Fong-Torres, ed. The Rolling Stone RocknRoll Reader. New York: Bantam, 1974. 487-90.

Hinds, Elizabeth Jane Wall. The Devil Sings the Blues: Heavy Metal, Gothic Fiction and Postmodern Discourse. Journal of Popular Culture. 26.Three (Winter 1992): 151-64.

Hume, David. Section X. Of Miracles. Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Nature. 1748. In Geoffrey Tillotson, et al, eds. Eighteenth-Century English Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969. 892-903.

Kagan, Susan. Music, Vampire. Melton 417-26.

Keats, John. John Keats: a selection of his poetry. J.E. Morpurgo, ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953.

Lynch, Gerald and David Rampton. Franz Kafka (1883- 1924). Short Fiction. 2nd ed. Toronto: HBJ, 1992. 494.

Melton, J. Gordon, ed. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Detroit: Visible Ink P, 1994.

Shattuck, Roger. Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography. New York: St. Martins, 1996.

Stade, George. Introduction. Dracula, by Bram Stoker. New York: Bantam Classics, 1981. v-xiv.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Clive Leatherdale, ed. Bram Stokers Dracula Unearthed. Westcliff-on-sea: Desert Island Books, 1998.

Selected Discography

Blue Oyster Cult. Blue Oyster Cult. Columbia Records, KC31063, 1972. LP.

---. Tyranny and Mutation. Columbia Records, KC32017, 1973. LP.

---. Secret Treaties. Columbia Records, KC32858, 1974. LP.

---. In your Feet Or On your Knees. Live recording. Columbia Records, PG33371, 1975. LP.

---. Agents of Fortune. Columbia Records, KC34164, 1976. LP.

---. Spectres. Columbia Records, JC35019, 1977. LP.

---. Some Enchanted Evening. Live recording. Columbia Records, JX35563, 1978. LP.

---. Mirrors. Columbia Records, JC36009, 1979. LP.

---. Cultosaurus Erectus. Columbia Records, JC36550, 1980. LP.

---. Fire of Unknown Origin. Columbia Records, EC37389, 1981. LP.

---. Extraterrestrial Live. Live recording. Columbia Records, KG37946, 1982. LP.

---. Revolution By Night. Columbia Records, FC38947, 1983. LP.

---. Club Ninja. Columbia Records, FC39979, 1986. LP.

---. Imaginos. Columbia Records, CK-40618, 1988.

---. Heaven Forbid. CMC International Records, 0607686241-2, 1998.

The Ballad of Dwight Fry. Alice Cooper. Like it to Death. Warner Bros. Records, WS 1883, 1971. LP.

Tam Lin. Fairport Convention, Liege and Lief. A&M Records, SP 4257, 1969.

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