AGENTS OF FORTUNE

My introduction to BOC, and I believe many of my contemporary mates, Agents Of Fortune is IMHO one of the most over-rated album in rock's history. Actually I'm glad to see that most progheads rate it much lower than the general public. Marred with a clumsy gambling/magician artwork, but still played by the original line-up, produced by the original Pearlman on the original Columbia label, AOF received excellent review and achieved massive sales, and is probably still their best-selling studio album.

Obviously having the massive (but again over-rated) hit Don't Fear The Reaper in its tracklist was a reason for those healthy sales. By all means, Reaper is a good track that should've achieved moderate success one of those consolidating tracks to vastly superior tracks like Astronomy and such, but certainly not this emblematic track that symbolizes BOC, even nowadays. As for the rest of the tracks, besides the now-obligatory Patti Smith collaboration, most of the other tracks are either pointless or brutally mediocre (Ain't The Summer Of Love), with only ETI pulling its longer straw from the pack. Rumours has AOF was a conceptual album, but I never cared enough to find out what this might be about.

Coming in recent reissue with a bunch of unrelated bonus tracks (except for a Reaper alternate take), most of them coming from ulterior albums, they certainly don't add anything to the original album.