BLACK SABBATH
Black Sabbath are an English rock band, formed in Birmingham in 1968, by guitarist and main songwriter Tony Iommi, bassist and main lyricist Geezer Butler, singer Ozzy Osbourne, and drummer Bill Ward. Black Sabbath are often cited as pioneers of heavy metal music. They were ranked by MTV as the “Greatest Metal Band” of all time, and placed second in VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” list. They have sold over 70 million records worldwide. (More from Wikipedia)
Bang coulda been contenders as it turned out: They were being touted as America’s answer to Black Sabbath at one point.
(March 2012)
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I told the story of seeing Queens of the Stone Age with my wife Peggy in my last post; but their third album in 2002, Songs for the Deaf is probably when I realized that something was really going on out there in the larger world: rock music with a modern sound but with garage-rock roots. The Queens had a rotating line-up of like-minded musicians and grew out an earlier band with similar sensibilities called Kyuss; while they didn’t sell a lot of albums, they were a pioneer of the stoner-rock scene of the 1990’s. As the Allmusic article (by Eduardo Rivadavia) describes the band: “[T]he signature sound [of] Kyuss [combined] the doom heaviness of Black Sabbath, the feedback fuzz of Blue Cheer, and the space rock of Hawkwind, infused with psychedelic flashes, massive grooves, and a surprising sensibility for punk rock, metal, and thrash.” The connective tissue between the two bands is multi-instrumentalist Josh Homme, who also founded the popular Eagles of Death Metal.
(January 2013)
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Another band that Man in the Woods brings up is Black Sabbath, whose fans generally use the much less sinister name Sabbath. Their debut album Black Sabbath is a harrowing venture into what he calls “the blues from hell”.
The website beliefnet.com has a Celebrity Faith Database and lists lead singer Ozzy Osbourne as a Christian. I have read other quotes where he rails against Satanism; and truly, you have to listen hard to find anything Satanic in the band’s lyrics – it is mostly the music that is very dark. The quote from beliefnet.com about Osbourne says: “Surprise! Ozzy Osbourne, AKA the Prince of Darkness, is actually a Christian, or in the least deeply connected to the religion. Despite references to Satanism and biting the head off of a bird, Ozzy found himself a member of the Church of England in 1992, saying that he prayed before every performance. He hasn’t spoken publicly about his faith since, but it has continued to be a subtle part of who he is. Ozzy’s marriage to wife Sharon Osbourne has certainly gone the distance; and his once wild, drug fueled lifestyle has tempered into a sober one. Ozzy was seen wearing crosses many times on his successful reality show [The Osbournes], even taking time to kiss the cross every now and then.”
(October 2014)
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I have never seen any of these local CD’s anywhere except at the place where I bought them. But lesser known and unknown albums accumulate with the hit albums, and record stores offering both new and used albums try to sell them also.
I guess I first learned of this when I would go into a record store and start flipping through the stacks. Many stores have separate sections set up for major artists like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Pat Benatar, the Band, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, the B-52’s, etc. Then at the end would be a section simply marked “B”; here would be found albums by other artists whose names start with B. Some would be well known – a stray Boston or Blind Faith or Jack Bruce album might be found there, say – but most were utterly unknown to me. I would kind of flip through them, but I rarely bought anything.
Now when I go into a record store that has major artists in their own marked sections, I usually pass those by and go straight to the plain “B”!
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Before Amanda Jones was formed, Amanda Brix and fellow Lame Flame Iris Berry started a band called Pink Sabbath. A website called www.theeyeshadows.com says that they are not a Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath cover band; that might be true of another band called Pink Sabbath that is still active.
(December 2015)
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The infamous Filthy Fifteen, along with the reasons for their inclusion on the list, follow. Not only is Prince listed first on the list, he was also the songwriter for #2, “Sugar Walls”; and Vanity, at #4, is a one-time Prince protegé.
2. Sheena Easton – “Sugar Walls” (sex)
3. Judas Priest – “Eat Me Alive” (sex)
12. Black Sabbath – “Trashed” (drug and alcohol use)
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Only a third of the songs on this list – “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, “She Bop”, “Sugar Walls”, “Dress You Up”, and “In My House” – were hits, and only the Twisted Sister number is really a signature song. Most of the Filthy Fifteen are deep album cuts that, even at the time, were likely unfamiliar to many of the fans of these bands and artists. For me, the Prince song “Darling Nikki” does not ring a bell; and the same goes for those by Def Leppard, Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest, and AC/DC. If this was intended as a resource to help out parents instead of just a publicity stunt, adding the album names would have saved everyone a lot of time.
Only 2 songs on the Filthy Fifteen are listed for “drug and alcohol use”, and as far as I can tell, neither talks about drugs. The list is laden with heavy-metal bands as might be expected, but the best they could do with Black Sabbath – whose very name promises lurid occult references – is a song about getting drunk? Really?
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The opening track on Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls by Coven is called “Black Sabbath”. Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, the opening song on the debut album Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath is also called “Black Sabbath”. The Allmusic article on this album by Steve Huey, which came out the following year, opens with: “Black Sabbath’s debut album is the birth of heavy metal as we now know it. Compatriots like Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple were already setting new standards for volume and heaviness in the realms of psychedelia, blues-rock, and prog rock. Yet of these metal pioneers, Sabbath are the only one whose sound today remains instantly recognizable as heavy metal, even after decades of evolution in the genre.”
Furthermore, the bass guitarist in Coven is Oz Osborne, having practically the same name as the best known bandmember in Black Sabbath, lead singer Ozzy Osbourne. But the similarities end there: Black Sabbath is a British band from the industrial city of Birmingham; Coven is from Chicago. From everything I have heard and read, Black Sabbath is anti-Satanic if anything; Coven had Satanic trappings in their concerts from the beginning.
(June 2016)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
June 2016 – 1980’s-1990’s gross-out/punk band THE GYNECOLOGISTS; Story of the Month on Dead Kennedys; also, Prince, Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), Tipper Gore, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister / Dee Snider, Cyndi Lauper, the Beatles, “Louie Louie”, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, Coven, Black Sabbath, Betty Blowtorch, Tommy Afterbirth.
(Year 7 Review)
