Rock, in all shapes and sizes (26 Viewers)

[GordoDeCentral]

Hey, I also saw them at the Chicago Ampitheater for the Mob Rules tour with Ronnie James Dio in '82

So what album would you say was their best?

But the core band at the good times... I love this cut from Don Kirschner's Rock Concert in 1975. It was a late night TV concert show every couple of weeks in the 70s. This one is Black Sabbath on their Sabotage tour.

For instance, there are kids who preoccupy a cameraman throughout the show wearing custom T-shirts that say how Black Sabbath and Ozzy are back and saving rock and roll, and they scream like Hannah Montana fans

See:

But one of the best parts is when they play "Snowblind". By 1973's Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, the band knew they were being ripped off by their manager and a lot of the music press wanted to move on from them after their first four albums. They were pissed: both angry and doped out of their minds. So the Sabotage tour was something of a comeback as their next album.

And then from perhaps my favorite Sabbath album, Vol. 4, is "Snowblind", documenting their times where they moved to California and did tons of cocaine and don't remember much. Mid-way through the song, talcum powder starts reigning down from the rafters on the band. It's so ridiculously over-the-top and funny they even get Tony Iommi to start laughing:


You also have to remember that while this was on late night television, it was still open airwaves TV from a big broadcaster. People were uptight about being perceived to promote drugs back then. And here Sabbath is celebrating a cocaine party on television.

What a great post and a nice stroll down memory lane. Best album probably their debut, but for me heaven and hell is their best song

 

Buy on AliExpress.com

[swag]

What a great post and a nice stroll down memory lane. Best album probably their debut, but for me heaven and hell is their best song

Most impactful was probably their debut. Even my mom bought that album. (True story, RIP Mom!)

I'm a biggest fan of the middle-era Ozzy stuff (Vol 4 / Sabbath Bloody Sabbath / Sabotage). Just as amazing but not nearly as overplayed.

Though it does dumbfound me that Ozzy sold 100 million records and yet it was once impossible to find Black Sabbath on the radio, MTV, or any "popular" music distribution channel prior to around 1990. The thing about heavy metal in the 70s & 80s is you had to work to find it, it didn't find you.

But Ronnie James Dio gave Black Sabbath a creative spark they lacked after years of a drug haze, no question.


Side rant... As a card-carrying member of the Insane Coho Lips and veteran of Chicago's Disco Demolition night in 1979 -- something I joke that I share with our current Pope -- I resent the recent historical revisionism that painted that event as purely racially motivated against disco.

Oh, there were Chicago racists alright. The following year The Blues Brothers movie lampooned the Nazi march attempted in Skokie but performed in Marquette Park, next to where my mom grew up. That was real.

But so many rock fans were sick of the vapid intrusion of disco everywhere: radio, clubs, parties, and even co-opting by artists like the Rolling Stones, Kiss, and Rod Stewart:
https://bourbonandvinyl.net/2023/04...d-dance-all-the-way-to-the-top-of-the-charts/

I argue that Disco Demolition Night traced direct parallels to what Black Sabbath aimed to do: to kill disco the way that first Black Sabbath LP put the nails in the coffin on the flower child hippie rock crap of the late 1960s.