Stalk Forrest Group’s “St. Cecilia”

stalk forest group cover

I finally got around to ordering the Rhino Handmade Records release of the thirty-something year old recordings of the Stalk Forrest Group. Most of the folks involved went on to become well-known as Blue Oyster Cult. These recordings, though, were done while they were signed to Elektra Records, and for unknown reasons Elektra declined to release this album at the time of production. I’m still on my first pass through the material, but I’m liking a number of the tracks.

There are two releases of this material, and of the two, the Rhino Handmade Records one offers, it appears, two versions of most of the songs plus the mono versions of “What is Quicksand?” and “Arthur Comics” that were released at the time as a promotional 45RPM single.

As I have been writing this post, most of it has been done during a hypnotic guitar break in “A Fact About Sneakers”. Pretty cool, and just about worth the expense all on its own.

This isn’t, though, simply early BOC-like stuff, despite the inclusion of “I’m on the Lamb, But I Ain’t No Sheep”, versions of which appeared on the first two BOC studio albums and innumerable live albums and make-a-buck “greatest hits” albums. It’s still a progressive rock sound for the early seventies, but not the flat-out heavy metal that they would later achieve an, ahem, cult following with.

Wesley R. Elsberry

Falconer. Interdisciplinary researcher: biology and computer science. Data scientist in real estate and econometrics. Blogger. Speaker. Photographer. Husband. Christian. Activist.

4 thoughts on “Stalk Forrest Group’s “St. Cecilia”

  • 2007/11/10 at 7:08 pm
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    A must have for the purest of BÖC fans!
    One must wonder, what if..had this stuff hit the music world in the late 60’s it could have tilted what was on it’s axis.
    ‘Cap

  • 2008/01/28 at 1:13 pm
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    Wow, where did you find this?!? I’ve had it on order with an Amazon associated seller who claimed he had it back in June of 2007 and every 2 months he sends me a note asking if I still want it and I say I do but of course I never get it! Right now a seller wants $77 on Amazon which is quite out of my reach.
    Did you get it from an independent dealer elsewhere? Let me know. Thanks!

    David

  • 2008/01/28 at 2:21 pm
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    I got mine via Amazon at SmogTown. I had no delays, and in fact had to correspond to fix up the shipping address, which went smoothly. They had one that they were selling for $38, which is the most I’ve ever paid for an album or CD. However, it was significantly cheaper than the prices I’m seeing on Amazon now.

    Rhino should sell an unnumbered, unlimited edition of this album, maybe with just the top lineup of songs and not the alternate version. 5,000 copies is way too few for a release… or given the $77+ current pricing, it may have been exactly what they were aiming for.

    There is, of course, the Radioactive release of this album with one version of each song. I didn’t really dig into tracking that down. Amazon doesn’t show anybody offering that version.

  • 2008/01/28 at 2:45 pm
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    Epinions says that an outfit named DeepDiscount is offering it at the original $20 price; their rating system also gives the retailer a 2/5. Sounds like a gamble.

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