Tag: Ozzy Osbourne

All Hail The King

Posted on by Mike

Remember this?

 

Well…unless you were under a rock or in a coma over the last few days you already know that the most unimaginable actually happened.  God himself died this past Monday.  What a shitty way to end the year, losing the legendary Lemmy Kilmister, the Metal world’s King Badass, as the year is coming to a close as well just four days after the son of a bitch celebrated his 70th birthday.

My girlfriend read the news while I was playing my guitar that night.  She came over to me and told me to take a deep breath, that’s when she told me the news.  I initially outright refused to believe it, like I’m sure everyone else did.  Lemmy Kilmister?  Dead?  Yet Keith Richards still lives?!?!  As Mike Portnoy said on his twitter account, this was without a doubt the moment everyone feared would come yet never thought would actually happen.

For those of you who really were under a rock or in a coma; Lemmy thinned out at an alarming rate in the course of the last year, maybe even more than that, clearly a result of his lifestyle.  The guy only did speed for decades and he even told Rolling Stone in April 2014 that he still was doing it – he just lowered the dosage after being fitted with a pacemaker.  He also decided to switch out the Jack Daniels for Vodka because “vodka has less sugar”.  Oh Lemmy, you funny guy.  But you still had to respect the motherfucker because even with his declining health he still kept a grueling tour schedule with Motorhead.  No one else would do that now.

That alone leads me to speculate about his “sudden” cancer diagnosis.  According to the press he was diagnosed with aggressive brain and neck cancer just two days after his birthday and was given “two to six months” to live…only to die two days later in front of his favorite video game which the guys at The Rainbow were generous enough to transport to his condo that night.  I don’t buy it.  I think he knew “two to six months” ago that he was fucked and decided to pull a page out of Freddie Mercury’s book and keep the truth under wraps for as long as was feasible, but not for the same reasons Freddie did.  Freddie was to be the Rock world’s first ever AIDS casualty – that clearly had to be pretty scary to admit back in the late 1980’s.

So why would Lemmy choose to keep this under wraps if my theory is right?  Simple (while still stupid!)…he didn’t want us to worry about him.  Lemmy was a warrior, his home was the stage and he couldn’t be Lemmy fucking Kilmister and NOT go out with a fucking bang!  He was a man of no regrets and he knew his lifestyle had finally caught up with him; he must’ve known “two to six months” ago that there was no way chemo was going to help in anyway so he probably just said fuck it and finished what he started.  You can’t do that from a hospital bed with your hair falling out, right?

That’s why we will always remember Lemmy.  He ALWAYS delivered for the fans no matter how fucked up he was.  He ALWAYS delivered for the fans when he “peers” didn’t want to be bothered hanging out with fans after a show or on the street somewhere.  Honestly…I don’t think he really had any peers.  I was going to write about this in a future post but I got the honor of meeting Lemmy almost eleven years ago when my friend’s band Arctic Flame opened up for Motorhead and he invited me to go with him.  What did that mean to me?  Well…I got to see the band do their soundcheck….holy shit they were LOUD.  The fucking PA monitors were tied together and the floor was shaking!  I was deafened instantly and the actual show wasn’t to start for another two hours.  It was beautiful.  When they finished their acoustic encore of “Whorehouse Blues” I cheered them enthusiastically along with this 15 year old kid who was with us.  Lemmy thanked us and when I yelled out “Lemmy you’re a fuckin’ GOD!!” his reply had me dying.  “No no no – God’s a lot taller!”.

Lemmy was a pioneer.  His bass tone is undeniable and will most likely NEVER be duplicated.  Thanks to him Motorhead was most likely the first ever crossover band bridging the gap between Punk and Metal, they were fast and they were so loud.  Even the punks wore Motorhead t shirts and had patches on their vests. If it wasn’t for Lemmy no thrash metal band would EVER exist.  This especially goes for Metallica, a band you won’t always see me refer to here.  But if there’s one thing I’ll always be grateful to Metallica for it’s introducing us all to Motorhead.  If I never bought their covers album Garage, Inc., I would’ve never heard “Overkill”, “Damage Case” or “Stone Dead Forever”.  If you were a kid in the 90’s like I was you probably didn’t know who the fuck Motorhead were until you bought that CD – and don’t you lie and say otherwise.  Lemmy also wrote amazing songs with other people outside of Motorhead.  Remember “Mama I’m Coming Home” by Ozzy?  Ozzy just wrote the title, Lemmy wrote all those beautiful lyrics.  Just too bad Ozzy and especially $haron decided to shit all over him and just give him a flat rate instead of just royalties.

But more important than any of that….Lemmy NEVER did what other people wanted him to do.  He was a trailblazer and when you’re trailblazer you listen to no one.  He lived his life on his own terms.  No one could drink like him or handle the effects of speed like he could.  Even more important than that, no one before or after him kicked ass like he could.  Scott Ian said that his death leaves a huge hole that will “never be filled” and he’s absolutely right.  It’s also a bit of a financial loss for the Rainbow.  Oops.

So in ending this all I can really say is thank you Lemmy.  Thank you for the gift of your music.  Thank you for the gift of your badass attitude which will NEVER be duplicated.  Thank you for Motorhead.  Thank you for the influence you’ve had on EVERY true metal musician worth a shit including myself.  If you call yourself a metalhead in any way and you aren’t a Motorhead fan you’re just a phony and should go fist yourself while listening to Adele or the faggot bitch who sings “call me on my cellphoooooone” or whatever that shit song is.  Your music and your life will NEVER be forgotten Lemmy.  I dedicate this song – which was my pre-workout song just yesterday – to you and everything you stand for.  Thank you Lemmy!

Ian Fraser Kilmister

December 24th 1945 – December 28th 2015

Upcoming Show’s I’ll Be Attending

Posted on by Mike

So here’s a short list of the next few show’s I’m going to in either New Jersey or Manhattan within the next week and again in February.

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King Diamond w/ Exodus live at PlayStation Theater, New York, NY  – Friday, November 20, 2015

This was very last minute.  I wasn’t counting on seeing this show because this date in particular is sold out but a co-worker of my girlfriend offered her his tickets.  Sucker!  This is going to be amazing.  I love King.  She can’t stand him but is willing to go see him out of respect, knowing that there’d probably never be bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax or Slayer had it not been for Mercyful Fate, King’s pre-solo band.  Being that this will be my first time seeing King, it’ll also be interesting to hear how he sounds after years away, having recovered from back AND heart surgeries.  I also know I’m absolutely going to jizz myself silly when I finally hear Andy LaRoque solo his brains out for the first time ever!  Not looking too forward to Exodus.  I’m probably one of the few would cannot stand Souza’s voice…at all.  What the fuck was Gary Holt thinking when he got rid of Rob Dukes?  Was he even thinking at all?!?!  You dumb fuck.

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Angel Vivaldi live at Dingbatz, Clifton, NJ – Sunday, November 22, 2015

Since I last wrote about Angel Vivaldi this YouTube sensation has been on the road for the last two months, promoting his most recent album, Away With Words, Pt.1.  This show will be his homecoming show, bringing that tour to an end.  If you haven’t heard him yet I suggest you go to Dingbatz on the 22nd to see why he gets namedropped by peers such as Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss.

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Black Sabbath live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY – Thursday, February 25, 2016

Well, here it is.  And more important than that, it’s for real this time.  Tony Iommi himself has gone on record saying that he finally cannot handle it anymore.  It’s incredible he was able to hang on for as long as he has, all things considered.  But it was going to happen eventually – I’m just grateful that their last show wasn’t an Ozzfest gig in Japan!  What really got me mad was finding out after I bought the tickets that they’re playing another show at the Garden two days later – on a Saturday.  But I honestly don’t mind taking a day off from work the next day – especially with the jackasses I deal with on a day to day basis!  They’ll also be playing throughout the summer including dates at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ.

I just hope that Ozzy doesn’t fuck this up.  The two times I tried to see Sabbath he was sick, but I’ll definitely get into those times in future blogs, trust me.  I know for a fucking fact that I’m not the only one who’d LOVE for Bill Ward to be a part of this last tour.  But I guess it’s up to Bill in the end; but hell, he should be a part of this, if not even for us at least for himself!  I’d love to see the classic line up that started it all just once.  C’mon Bill!  Ozzy fucked it up for me twice – don’t you be the one to fuck it up this time!

My First Taste of Pure Evil in Music

Posted on by Mike

20130104_black_sabbath_paranoid_91 So, in the spirit of my recent rant on Black Sabbath’s final concert announcement, I couldn’t help recently but begin reminiscing about my first true taste of them…and that would obviously be their second album, Paranoid, released originally in 1970.  What an eye opener that was – and not just because the picture of the colorful looking, sword welding soldier on the cover made me think I was buying the soundtrack to some early 70’s low budget sci-fi movie!

I first heard of Ozzy Osbourne when he released Ozzmosis in 1995.  I was 11 at the time and MTV News did a story on him and then a week later  I saw his video for “Perry Mason”.  But it was two years later, when I somehow joined the “rocker clique” in my school, that my friend Elan Bochbot educated me on Ozzy’s beginnings.  What was ironic was this now was the year that Black Sabbath were to reunite (I think without Bill Ward) to headline Ozzfest.  But it wasn’t until a year later that I finally bought my first Sabbath CD – and this was AFTER I bought Blizzard of Ozz so I think you can imagine how thrown off I was bound to be when comparing Randy Rhoads’s playing to Tony Iommi’s!

Oh, I also had an obstacle or two when listening to Paranoid.  I was living with my dad when I got it back in the summer of 1998 and I didn’t have a radio in that bedroom so all I had was some shit CD walkman.  Yeah, about that shit walkman; it was so shitty that for whatever reason it would not read the CD.  And if it did read the CD I had to make sure not to skip tracks because it wouldn’t read and the fucking CD would just spin around aimlessly.  You can’t make this shit up!

Now for the music!  The first time my shitty CD player was able to read the CD I was smacked in the back of the head by the first low E strum and slow as fuck groove of “War Pigs”.  That groove, the unusual way Tony Iommi played his guitar – a far cry from Randy Rhoads and “I Don’t Know” for sure! – Geezer Butler’s walking bassline, Bill Ward’s loose drumming.  Those sirens!!  I already couldn’t help but anticipate what was to happen next because I knew it’d be a while before my CD player would be able to do this again!

Then it got quiet, all you could hear was Bill’s hi-hat.  Then it came.  “Generals gathered in their masseeeeeess!”  Whoa!  Is that really Ozzy?  Is that the same guy that I just heard a month earlier singing “Crazy Train”?  Oh yeah it was.  But this was a much rawer Ozzy.  At that moment I understood that this was going to be nothing like those other two Ozzy CD’s I had.  This shit was going to be fucking RAW.  This would be the first time I wouldn’t hear a rhythm guitar track during any solos, this would be the first time I’d hear the guitar and bass intertwining together as one, swinging drums in a much more aggressive environment.  I was listening to the origins of Heavy Metal – and it sounded pretty jazzy.

After being blown away by “War Pigs” “Paranoid” came next.  This is one of the simpler songs on the CD.  It’s perfect.  Short, fast paced, the lyrics fit perfectly and that gnarly, dissonant solo totally fucked with my head.  I can listen to it now and I can’t help but imagine the face of a crazy person.  “Planet Caravan”, the lone mellow track here.  This one threw me off for sure, especially with Ozzy’s voice going through a rotating speaker, which I wasn’t aware of at the time.  I didn’t even think it was him!  As he creepily spoke about sailing “through endless skies” as “stars shine like eyes”, I felt like I was watching a cartoon, and in it all four guys in the band when on some boat riding through space, then as Tony played the ending solo the four of them faded away in to the darkness.  As it turns out my interpretation of the song wasn’t too far off from what Geezer had in mind after all.  What makes me laugh is my rap loving brother heard this song the one time my dad let me play it in his truck and decided “You’re a poser and I’m gonna tell all ya friends!”.  Yeah…good luck there buddy.

Then came that bass drum, then came the bending E string…”I am Iron Man!”.  This was just fun as hell because while this wasn’t based on the comic book I read comics so this is another song where I couldn’t help but see a cartoon going on in my head, regardless that it turned out to be the ultimate rejection song and the same goes for “Electric Funeral ” too!  But Tony’s use of the wah pedal on “Electric Funeral” made the riff that much more fucked up sounding and I loved it.

“Hand of Doom”, that is just pure groove.  I wasn’t ready for that yet but I totally appreciate it now, especially when I gets faster in the middle before slowing down again.  It’s an exercise in jazz improv, but of course as evil as they could get.  Same thing goes for “Jack the Stripper/Fairies Wear Boots”.  Upon my first several listens the lyrics made absolutely no sense at all.  I didn’t think they were supposed to because I knew everybody and their mother did drugs like there was no tomorrow back then but later on I discovered the meaning behind it.  But Geezer, I’m sure that not all skinheads are afraid to fight bud – you just got lucky that night!

The album, or at least my version of it, ends with “Rat Salad”, or as I like to call it, the Bill Ward Special!  He is such an underrated drummer.  He was to Black Sabbath what Ringo was to the Beatles.  He had rhythm but he could swing to and it added such flavor to the groove.  But unlike Ringo he could do drum solos.  Was this John Bonham?  No.  But it fit perfectly with the tune.

And just like that not only was it over but I’d probably have to wait a while before the stupid CD player could read the CD again.  This was nothing like what I was listening to at the time.  Ozzy’s voice was raw and nasal as hell throughout the whole thing.  Tony’s guitar playing was primitive but he undeniably had such a huge sound and I could finally see where so many guys stole their tricks from – myself included.  It was filed with anger, it was dark, gloomy, nothing flashy or shrederrific about him.  What you heard was what you got but it was real and you FELT IT.  Geezer turned out to be such a player on that bass and Bill was more than an anchor.  He was the perfect jazz drummer – he knew when to keep it tight but he also knew when to let it fly.

In the end it was the perfect historical piece for metal historians, not just because of the music.  The artwork, the lyrical imagery, the themes of war, rejection, mental illness and again, how raw it all is.  Paranoid will always be the perfect introduction to the band that started it all.  I knew I was hooked and I wanted more.  Now.  Yesterday.  Then I found Master of Reality, which I consider to be THE heaviest album of all time.  But that’s another story.

$haron ruins everything…again.

Posted on by Mike

blacksabbath2013smaller_638Over this past week Sharon Osbourne proved once again why she’s an out of touch, clueless, money hungry piece of shit.  Five days ago she released a short promotional video announcing that Black Sabbath will be playing their final show when Ozzfest goes to Japan in November.  There’s a lot wrong with this picture already.

Now before I go into that I’d like to quickly acknowledge that just maybe this was a decision made by Tony.  The poor guy’s been fighting Lymphoma for three years now and I’m sure that it’s got to be taking it’s toll on him lately, especially when you factor in the touring schedule, how often he has to fly back home for treatments, and of course, the man is 67 years old.  Therefore, I have no choice to respect that, that is if this was his decision.  He’s the godfather of Heavy Metal – no one else can say that, I don’t care what anyone thinks.  Without the sound HE created there is no Heavy Metal and he deserves all the respect in the world.  I’ll forever be grateful to Tony Iommi.  He was one of my biggest inspirations as a guitar player because he was and is as real as it gets.

Now for what I hate about this!  It all boils down to the fact that their final show is to be at the very festival bearing their burnt out lead singer’s name.  If that alone isn’t an ego play on Sharon’s behalf then I don’t know what is.  There’ve been many times where I felt Sharon did certain things to Sabbath just to spite them for firing her future husband back in 1979.  She helped Ozzy’s solo career take off and many of his solo albums in the 80’s surely outsold Sabbath’s post-Dio output without question.  So therefore she must feel she has the upper hand against Tony and Geezer and she’ll do anything to rub it in their faces every chance she gets.  And of course, Ozzy’s so burnt that he’ll do anything his puppeteer wife tells him!

Next….Japan??  Really?  Really?!  Some of you might think “hey good for Japan.  They get to see Sabbath’s final show ever!”  Me?  Fuck that!  I say a band like them, with a legacy as incredible as theirs, should be playing a home coming show in Birmingham, England, where the band was born.  It’s only fitting.  It started there?  They should end it there.  This is where they came from, that tough as nails steel town where four kids with no hope got the fuck out of there and accomplished things far beyond what they could’ve ever imagined!  Yeah, they did a few Birmingham shows in 2012 while Tony was beginning his Lymphoma treatments but so fucking what?  This is supposed to be the end this time, right?  This is the good thing about Motley Crue – and no I’m not a fan of them.  They all chose to end their tour – and career – at the Whiskey A Go-Go, where it all began for them back in 1981.

Now let’s talk about this Ozzfest lineup, since this last show is already set.  In the video announcement for Ozzfest Japan, moneyb – oops, I meant Sharon – also mentions that Korn are also on the bill.  I’m not against diversity in music or festivals;  but Korn are the originators of the entire shitty nu-metal movement that DESTROYED real heavy metal for a long time.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that those assholes are still breathing – why would anyone put them on a bill with BLACK FUCKING SABBATH, a band who’s one guitarist with two missing fingertips can wipe the floor with Korn’s two seven string guitarists, who bend down so low when on stage that they look like they’re sucking their own dicks?!  And most importantly it just doesn’t fit musically.  Sharon and her son Jack are notorious for pushing really bad, trendy, sound – alike bands on Ozzfest in the past. I think they only time they got it RIGHT was in 2004 when the co-headliners with Sabbath were Judas Priest featuring a newly returned Rob Halford and the next year when they took Iron Maiden with them.  That was fucking awesome!

What really made me laugh was when Ozzy said recently that after Sabbath splits he plans to go back to his solo career.  Ozz…please…let it go.  You used to have an incredible voice; but that was a long time ago and it’s gone now.  Oh wait – you can’t do that because $haron won’t let you.  I’m guessing this is all revenge for that time you got drunk and tried to kill her.  Whoops!  That bitch is gonna work you until you die and then STILL make money off you when you go.  If I were you – and if you still had a mind of your own! – I’d call it quits after the last Sabbath show.  Buddy I’ve seen clips of the band playing “Children of The Grave” at the Barclay’s Center and you alone were AWFUL.

It’s a shame, really.  It’s a fucked up way for Black Sabbath, the band that invented the music I love so much, to go out.  I feel like it’s a royal slap in the face to their entire legacy.  No, this is not their first Ozzfest, not by a long shot.  But this is their FAREWELL.  Sure, they’ve said this before; but I feel like this really can be the end for real because of Tony’s health problems.  They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…that’s the fucking truth when it comes to Sharon Osbourne.  She’s just like the one guy she hated the most in her life – her father!