So it’s now 6:30AM, fresh off of writing “First Blog is a Nice Early Morning Rant.” That was fun to write and let's keep this train rolling! The idea to recount the origin of Buck Bloom has been sitting on my brain for a while now. And it’s time to share it. So. Here. We. GO!

For those of you who have been guessing, and likely guessing right, Buck Bloom is my pen name. My real name is [REDACTED] and I’m from the planet of [REDACTED] here to take over the [REDACTED]. All joking aside, I thought a pen name would be cool. And the seeds of Buck Bloom were planted many, many years ago. Back after I upgraded from dial-up.

Dial-up, with its cacophony of cyber screams and web wails. It was like some techno wizard came into our lives and shot lightning from his fingers and ZAP! A whole new world! And down the rabbit hole I went, looking up innocent things like video game cheat codes and useless movie trivia.

I was fresh out of high school and on my way to college. By then, my family upgraded to DSL internet, which was at least a step up from Dial-up. At some point, I learned of the concept of “File Sharing.” [Cue dramatic music sting!]

Anyway, I was driving home one day and was playing The Rolling Stones’ CD collection of Forty Licks and made the decision to look up other bands and songs. Look them up on file sharing, GASP! Now, I grew up not listening to much music. If it was from a movie, I listened closely and tried to remember it to play it in my head later.

Stan Bush’s “The Touch” and the Back To the Future theme will forevermore occupy space in my brain.

After high school, and yes that is how long it took me before I got into music, I began to browse my family’s CD collection. And Forty Licks was the first rock album I ever listened to. And I wanted more.

Like a sugar addict looking for their next cookie fix, I looked up rock artists and popular songs I’ve heard from movies and shows. Now, as a child of October, Halloween is inescapable and I love many weird things that are associated with the holiday. The music of rock was something fresh and new and desirable, I looked up any music appropriate for Halloween.

I discovered a list on one humble website. Someone out there made a list of songs perfect for Halloween and I want to thank them for doing so. I have no idea what became of the site. Not even sure how to look it up with the plethora of information to browse through these days. But I found a list of music to feed into the file sharing beast. And I got many, many in the process.

One band’s music appeared frequently on the Halloween list: Blue Oyster Cult.

I never heard of them before and believed I never heard their songs before. It was likely, in hindsight, that I did hear their music before but did know it at the time. There were many songs by them on the list. But which one to start with? And then the title of the song caught my attention:

“Veteran of the Psychic Wars”

Such an epic title. It spoke to the sci-fi nerd within me. And that name, Blue Oyster Cult, had this magnetic draw I could not deny. I listened to the song with such an epic title by this mystical mystery band. I stared into the media player’s animation and as “Veteran” blasted through my speakers, I was transported to another world.

Ever since then, Blue Oyster Cult has been my number one favorite band. I went out of my way to get their music, I wanted more and more. I bought their CDs, still collecting their vinyl albums and they remain the one band I have seen live in concert. I could go on forever on how much BOC means to me. But I will save the gushing and fanboy rants for future blogs.

Now what did any of this have to do with the origin of my pen name, Buck Bloom?

Well, Donald Roeser, aka Buck Dharma, is BOC’s lead guitarist. And Eric Bloom is their lead vocalist. Buck Bloom. Not as epic as getting bit by a radioactive spider, but it gave me a chance to share a little of my musical interests.

And I am at 7:20 AM and probably should have breakfast. In closing, thank you for reading and hope you come back again soon.

Good luck and ROCK ON,

Buck, 10/11/24