Its been a strange week. A couple of highs. A small act of kindness made me feel valued and appreciated at work today and my Grandkids seem to have got over their recent ill-health. A couple of big lows. A very close and elderly family relative is going downhill fast and Missus Moonbase is struggling greatly with it.
We have been torn as to whether to continue with our long-standing planned holiday this coming long weekend but have decided we might as well worry and fret in a beautiful place rather than stew in worry at home. Because of Covid restrictions internationally, worry and fret is about all we can do anyway so we are going to go away Tomorrow. Blue the Moonbase Mutt will be looked after well by our live-in dogsitter. The ancient castles nestling around the Northern English coast beckon from the far lands and the promise of newly re-opened restaurants will keep us true on our heading North.
In the meantime and prior to packing I am listening to Black Sabbath. I'm a huge fan of Sabbath and have been since I discovered Master of Reality in my older brother's LP stack in the mid -70's. Its only in the last ten years that I've come to appreciate their defining sound and place in rock history as the originators of heavy metal, the musical genre closest to my heart. I have come to love the groundbreaking debut Black Sabbath, the musical mother of metal and equally adore the following three albums, Paranoid, Master of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
In these three LP's we really do find the genesis of a genre which would eventually sweep the world and spawn countless imitators and sub-genres, which are still stomping round today. The pulsing leaden funereal riffs, banshee man vocals and doom-laden lyrics smashed through the beats of the late Sixties and created a sound so heavy that the world wavered on its axis as we stopped to listen to this nunataq of gothic magnificence.
But like all masters of the universe this single glorious vision couldn't last. Like my other great Muses Budgie and Rush the original furious fires in which they forged their majesty faded. It was inevitable. Black Sabbath 4, which came between Master and Bloody Sabbath is a pale shadow of their true coronations and the rot really sets in with what came soon after, Technical Ectasy - which I am currently listening to - and the later doldrums of the waning Seventies and Eighties. Heaven and Hell is a wholly new sound and hardly Sabbath at all and what with Ronnie James Dio at the mic it might as well have been Rainbow.
This dissolution of the true sound is a perpetual battle for all bands as they form, find fame and eventually fall apart. Sabbath's glory is early on and what dark empires we see in their genius.
What do you think readers?
But....not quite Hawkwind
ReplyDeleteha ha, Hawkwind were brilliant too Khusru I agree. I saw them at Glastonbury 1980. happy cosmic days!
DeleteSo, on the subject of Black Sabbath,
ReplyDeleteI saw them live once in Leeds, in the 70s.
All I can remember about the gig was the volume.
It was just deafening noise, not music at all.
So much so that the people in the epicentre of the venue began to collapse with concussion and had to be stretured out by ambulance staff (or paramedics, as we call them now).
The experience left me singularly unimpressed.
Oh, blimey. That's a shame Mish. Sounds like things went wrong at that gig for sure.
DeleteThe documentary "The Art of Drumming" covers the subject of Rock and particularly Black Sabbath, the song Black Sabbath actually has contains jazz and swing fills on the drums, a lesser drummer would turn this into a dirge while Ian Paice drives this along and makes you want to move
ReplyDeleteFascinating MJ. Fantastic stuff. I love the drums in SBS too. What a track!
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