Happy Birthday Buck Dharma

The Blue Oyster Cult, Soft White Underbelly, Stalk-Forrest Group alum turned 58 today, and this seems as good an occasion as any to trot out the old BOC concert story, which may not be as good as the one the Drive-By Truckers tell in "Let There Be Rock", but hey, it's the only one we have.  The year was 1979, we were moping around the decaying house we were living in in happening Shippensburg, PA, when who should barge in but our old pig farmer buddy William "Bill" Harrison.  He announces we're going to a Blue Oyster Concert, produces the de rigeur bottle of Jack Daniels, a ton of fatwa, and some kind of punch spiked with LSD, and off we go.  We should have given the acid a wide berth, but we had zero willpower and the punch was good, and so things were already getting weird before we even got to the ancient airplane hangar cum farm show arena where the show was being held.  We have no idea who opened.  Indeed, the very first thing we remember is BOC playing "Godzilla".  We were totally freaked out, especially when we saw the drummer had suddenly sprouted an actual Godzilla head.  Part of the act, as it turned out, but in our afterschool special freakout state how were we to know?  We bolted, in a sudden lizard-brain fight or flight panic, pushing our way the entire length of this awful cigar-shaped, concrete-floored monstrosity until the crowd thinned and we were the whole way in the back, against the rear wall, against which we saw huddled all kinds of other freakouts, burnouts, trashedouts, and space cases, blubbering, and shrieking, vomiting and staring, and generally making like a late-seventies recreation of the Woodstock freakout tent about two hours after the "don't take the brown acid" announcement went out.  We knew we were home, plopped down, prayed for death.  We were just getting less uncomfortable when we heard, amid the faux-satanic strains of one of the many faux-sinister songs BOC produced during its faux-career of evil, a phone ringing.  We ignored it.  It kept ringing.  Finally we looked up, and realized we were sitting right beside a phone booth, one of the walk-in, folding-door kinds you used to see on the streets of America.  So we did our civic duty and went in to answer the phone.  We said Hello.  The voice at the other end said, "Is Blue Oyster Cult there?"  "Yes, they are!" we answered.  "We'll go get them!"  Seriously.  It was probably somebody calling to find out whether BOC had gone on yet, or something of that sort, but we never gave them the chance to explain.  They obviously needed to talk to BOC for some very important, perhaps even life and death reason, friends or family of the band no doubt, and by God, we were going to go get BOC for them or die trying.  So we dropped the phone, strolled back into the crowd, and commenced pushing our way forward, intent on climbing the stage if necessary to alert the band that they had a phone call, damn it, when lo and behold we found ourselves at the sound booth.  We knew what we had to do: we commenced shouting at the people doing sound, who were elevated above the floor, and continued to shout until finally this guy said, "What? What do you want?"  We said, "There's a phone call for Blue Oyster Cult!", gesturing madly back in the direction of the phone booth.  He just stared at us.  "A phone call!  Back there!  They want to talk to BOC!"  He gave us, then, a look of such pity mingled with disgust and aggravation, a look that said, "Jesus, another drug-doomed idiot come to bother me",  that we've remembered it ever since.  Finally, knowing that we'd never give up, that we'd be with him forever, following him from show to hotel to plane into eternity if he didn't tell us something, finally he looked at us and said:  "Ask them what they want." 

Comments

[wi11iam13]

oh i love this story. having found myself in that same golden tinged state on occasion i can empathize with the sudden epiphany of purpose, the breakthough of 'knowing', as the clouds of doubt and confusion suddenly part revealing that finger of god pointing out the goal and with deep humility taking up the mantle of the mission. it speaks of the human triumph, of man facing down the odds and doing his altruistic duty despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!

[Mommy Complete Failure]

I get this way without drugs. Is that bad?

[Ben]

What a great Wm. C Harrison encounter!

For the benefit of the UF Nation, pig farmer Bill was infamous for showing up unannounced with big plans, the wherewithal and the stash to complete his mission. Bill wouldn’t accept “no” as an answer, not that UF or anyone else on Bill’s list would utter the word even if notion crossed their mind.

The Farm Show “Complex” is a large indoor agricultural Mecca located just north of downtown Harrisburg and the site of the famous Pennsylvania Farm Show, an event that draws tens of thousands of all manner of 4-Hers—young and old—an otherwise bastardized version of what others would recognize as a state fair. Bill Harrison loved the Farm Show and he loved visiting the Farm Show Complex. Despite its position on the Central Pennsylvania events calendar, the Farm Show Complex never losses its taint of agricultural use whether it be at summer gun show, spring RV show, autumn auto show, or winter rock concert, it doesn’t matter, the air maintains a hint of HVAC processed manure stink. Add that to your mental picture of UF’s excellent adventure. The place also maintained a strong hint of 1940s technology and a labyrinth-like connection of buildings surrounding the aforementioned concert venue, which if it took place in the area known as the “arena,” it resembled a poorly lit, poorly ventilated earthen pit, several stories deep, surrounded by an indoor concrete version of a modern roman coliseum, but at the core of this sprawling brick complex. Even being lightly buzzed in this place on a crowded night would stress the senses to the verge of delusional paranoia. I can’t imagine enduring UF’s level of inebriation because it was more than likely hot and somewhat humid amid the masses of freakouts—the kind of place where just hitting the fresh air beyond the arena spontaneously brings your buzz down to ace a sobriety test level.

[UF]

Ben: A most excellent addendum to the record. It's nice to know that it wasn't just the acid, pot, whisky, Rolling Rock, goddamn drummer with lizard head, and my own general paranoia and delusion at work that night. That place, in my memory, was poltergeist-filled--or maybe they were just pig farmers--BOC's core audience.

[bob]

OK, this sounds like I'm making this shit up, but I actually met BOC after a show in 77, and yes, I was high on cheap acid. They are short, every one of them. I drank beer with them and watched Buck wipe his guitar down and I was like this is so cool. And it was.

[UF]

Damn! You are, like, the shit! We met their replacement drummer, a little fat man in execrable spandex, a few years ago, during a DC show. But 77--that was the Golden Age of Leather, friend.