St. Cecilia: The Elektra Recordings is a compilation album consisting of recordings by the American rock band Stalk–Forrest Group, who would later be known as Blue Öyster Cult. It is a combination of two albums recorded by the group for Elektra Records – one in 1969 and the other in 1970 – as well as the promotional single "What is Quicksand?" released in 1970. Except for the single, the tracks were not officially released until 2001, although bootlegs had existed and individual tracks had been released as bonus tracks to other albums.
St. Cecilia: The Elektra Recordings | ||||
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Compilation album by Stalk-Forrest Group | ||||
Released | 23 April 2001 | |||
Recorded | February - May 1970 | |||
Studio | Elektra Sound Recorders, New York City and Elektra Sound Recorders, Los Angeles | |||
Genre | Psychedelic rock | |||
Label | Elektra, Rhino | |||
Producer | Dennis Murphy, Peter Seigel, Jay Lee | |||
Blue Öyster Cult chronology | ||||
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The band (originally known as 'Soft White Underbelly') had recorded demos for Elektra Records in 1969 with original vocalist Les Braunstein. Elektra signed the group based on the demos with a $100,000 advance. When vocalist Braunstein left the band, the group re-recorded the songs in New York with new vocalist, former roadie Eric Bloom. The 10-song album was turned in to Elektra completed, mixed and mastered, ready for release. For reasons unclear, Elektra decided not to put out the recordings and ended their recording contract. Back to square one, the band then recorded new demos of several of the songs for Columbia Records in hopes of scoring a record deal. Some of these Columbia demos eventually surfaced as bonus tracks on the re-mastered version of the first Blue Öyster Cult album in 2001. After being rejected by Columbia as well, manager Sandy Pearlman convinced Elektra Records to give the band another shot, and the group traveled to California in February 1970 to begin reworking and re-recording the songs for a full-length album release. Meanwhile, the band had changed its name to Oaxaca, and would soon change it again to Stalk-Forrest Group. Ultimately, after being presented with the two different versions of the album (the one recorded in '69, and the one that featured the new re-worked Feb '70 arrangements), Elektra decided not to release it again, and dropped the band from the label (again).
The group's founder and bass player, Andrew Winters, was expelled from the band as a result of Winters dedicating significantly more time to his job instead of the band. This happened after Sandy Pearlman refused to allow Elektra to release the album that the band cut in California, leading to no gigs and poverty for many months during the spring and summer of 1970, after the band returned to New York. This resulted in the band being dropped by Elektra. The band renamed themselves Blue Öyster Cult, and finally secured a solid recording contract with Columbia Records in 1971.
The recordings surfaced as a bootleg in the late 1990s. Confusingly, the bootleg was titled Curse of the Hidden Mirrors, after a song on the Elektra album, but Curse of the Hidden Mirror was eventually used as the title of a Blue Öyster Cult studio album in 2001.
The untitled "California" Elektra album was finally released officially in 2001, along with the previously unreleased original '69 sessions, as St. Cecilia: The Elektra Recordings by Rhino Entertainment in a limited, numbered edition of 5000 copies. It is now out of print. This same release was reissued in 2013 by Wounded Bird Records and is also now out of print. Inferior "bootleg" versions of the album with a shuffled track listing are available as grey-area releases, such as St. Cecilia: The California Album on Radioactive Records (not the real Radioactive label, but a grey area label using the same name). These releases are not made from the original master tapes like the Rhino/Wounded Bird release.
The nicknames in quotes were given to the band members by manager Sandy Pearlman. Nearly all of the members hated the nicknames, with the exception of Donald Roeser, who continues to use "Buck Dharma" as his stage name.
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