Over the course of five weeks in late Summer 1978, BOC did a string of dates with UFO and British Lions. In all, 18 dates were scheduled, but only 17 were actually played by UFO as they had to cancel a gig in Spokane when their truck broke down.
However, for many, many years, an internet rumour has continued to persist that "Strangers in the Night", UFO's landmark 1979 double live album, was recorded during this BOC 1978 tour...
I'd always had a major problem with this idea because the logistics of being a support act on a BOC tour would work against that as a realistic possibility... you really need to be headlining a gig if you're going to try and record it for a live album...
But the rumour just won't go away - it's even mentioned on the LP's wiki page, although that isn't saying much... anyway, I thought I'd better look into it and see if there could possibly be any truth to it...
Despite constantly coming across all these unsubstantiated reports in forum posts, articles, blogs, and the aforementioned wiki page, I asked myself - could it even have happened as described? Could a support band have been physically able to record a live LP during a tour with BOC - I mean, would they even have been allowed to?
Don't forget, the majority of these particular dates was a three-band bill - with British Lions opening many of the shows, thus reducing the time available for the second act on the bill to play their set...
What's more, at that time, BOC had a complicated and "fussy" laser system to test and set up at every show - support acts were often given short shrift even on matters of sound-checks etc
When you look at just how many songs there were on "Strangers", there's no way UFO could have done them all in a single support slot - to be fair, I think there was never any secret that the original version of the record was culled from two gigs - Chicago and Louisville KY - so it was vaguely possible they could have played half the tracks one night and the other half at the second gig... but, frankly, that sounds a bit mad...
My usual first port of call with these sorts of matters was always roadie Sam Judd. Now keep in mind, Sam had a BOC hiatus between 1976 and Sep 1978 - he rejoined in time only for the last gig on the run with UFO, Kalamazoo MI (10 Sep 1978) and so missed the bulk of the tour, but he'd have heard about had it happened. Here's what he told me:
It would have been nearly impossible for an opening act to record live with all the checks and rechecks that have to be done for live recording... the set change would have been prohibitively long as well...
There's no telling when the UFO stuff was really recorded*, or even if it was actually recorded "Live" (the best selling Live album of all time (Frampton Comes Alive) was NOT recorded in front of an audience... it was actually recorded during the day, before the punters were in the building... crowd added later... the BOC Bootleg album with the live stuff from the Pizza Parlor was NOT recorded in front of an audience... the audience on that is from the Edgar Winter's White Trash Live album...
* Since Sam said this, we've had the Deluxe multi-disk version come out with full disclosures on venues and dates, but more on this in a minute...
During the first half of 1978 (and very end of 1977) the recording trucks were at quite a number of BOC gigs, gathering material for September's "Some Enchanted Evening" release, and I wondered if any potential support bands who were planning a live LP could have made arrangements to avail themselves of the recording facilities that were already set up for BOC in such a case...?
Sam said that "would have made big sense", but none of those recorded gigs featured UFO anyway, as it was all earlier in the year, so it wasn't a viable suggestion.
OK, with all that looked at, it's now time to talk geography... and chronology!! All that used to be known about the main Chicago gig where the LP was mainly recorded was that it took place in October.
But here's the thing. As mentioned above, BOC finished their tour with UFO at Kalamazoo MI on 10 Sep 1978. After that, they played 7 more dates, finishing up with 3 nights at the Palladium in NYC with Thin Lizzy, their final gig of 1978 occurring 01 Oct 1978.
They then had four months off to write and come up with demos for Mirrors, and didn't go back out on the road again until 14 Feb 1979.
So although I always realised that they couldn't have been playing any October gigs with UFO, I was pleased to come across the following short gig preview on page 23 of the Chicago Tribune from Mon 16 Oct 1978:
Concertgoers had their fill over the weekend with Neil Young and Billy Joel shows at the Stadium (Joel's fans sure can scream), Grace Jones with her taped backup music and wild stage antics at the Park West, Genesis in two extraordinary shows at the Uptown and Ashford and Simpson with Michael Henderson in two electrifying sold-out Arie Crown shows, and UFO and the sensational City Boys at the Amphitheatre.
So there you go - a date and a named support act. No BOC in sight...
Recently, the "deluxe" version of "Strangers" came out and we finally got some more details - but wow - what an amazing release. A complete six night run of full concerts included in the package. Imagine if BOC did that for OYFOOYK...!! They have the tapes, so why not...?
Anyway, once I had the dates for the six gigs, I was able to do some online newspaper research to try and pin them down and find out any support band info if possible...
Fri 13 Oct 1978: International Amphitheater, Chicago IL [with City Boys]
Sat 14 Oct 1978: Carthage College Fieldhouse, Kenosha WI [with Molly Hatchet]
Sun 15 Oct 1978: Tomorrow Club, Youngstown OH
Mon 16 Oct 1978: Agora, Cleveland OH [with Molly Hatchet]
Tue 17 Oct 1978: Agora Ballroom, Columbus OH
Wed 18 Oct 1978: Louisville Gardens, Louisville KY [with Faith Band]
I couldn't find out any support info for Youngstown and Columbus - if you know, please get in touch and I'll update.
So there you have it - it was just as we already knew, nuffin to do with BOC at all...
Just a somewhat tangential word about online searches and band names... it's always been a bugbear of mine, but I really wish bands would take more care before choosing their band names...
When doing text searches for "Blue Oyster Cult", all is fine and dandy. Make sure it's enclosed in quotes and you can be reasonably sure that every result you get back will concern the band.
There's always the problem that many returns concern record stores promoting the latest album etc, and there's no getting round that problem that I can see, but still, it's an accurate return so I can't really complain.
When searching for "Soft White Underbelly", that's not so straightforward as it's a well known expression and I'd say most of the returns I get back will be irrelevant to the band. Bummer...
But just try searching for "UFO"!! It's a nightmare - who'd have thought there'd be so many flying saucer reports each day... also there were two TV shows "UFO and "Project UFO" from that time period that combined to completely flood the search results also... yikes!!
Then again, I've had a lot of experience of tearing my hair out whilst trying to do newspaper searches for Eric Bloom's college band "Lost and Found"... I mean, "Lost and Found" is a really uncommon phrase, you'll never come across that in any newspapers... yeah, right...
I'd like to see it enshrined in law that bands cannot choose common words or phrases for their names... we need more Strawberry Alarm Clocks, Camper Van Beethovens, Lynyrd Skynyrds and Echo and the Bunnymen etc etc, and fewer names like bloody UFO, Journey, Ghost, Cars, Foreigner etc etc.
If you still don't believe me, try looking up Joe and Albert's band, Blue Coupe... :-(