Friday, July 11, 2008

Friday Flashback

Hey! It's Friday! Here's a little ditty some of you might know. Crank this one WAY UP while you're sitting in your office cubicle.

40 years is a long time, but the roots of this next band go even deeper if you can believe it. Originally The Polka Tulk Blues Band, four veteran musicians, formerly of Mythology and Rare Breed, and later named Earth, formed a hard rock blues band in the style of that popular rock sound of the late 60's.

As it turned out, there was already another Brit band called Earth (wonder what ever happened to them?), so inspired by a Boris Karloff horror flick, the band changed names again. Shortly thereafter their unique sound was developed, and was considered alternative and progressive at the time. It flew in the face of the established Peace, Love and Hippy movement, and retained the band's blues roots.

The rest, as they say, is the stuff of legend. While receiving little or no radio play circulation at the time, the band managed to sell over four million copies of their second LP. This second LP is perhaps one of the five most influential LPs of all time, in my opinion. It's big single, the bands only ever Top Ten hit, was actually written at the last minute based on a guitar riff, and recorded in it's entirety in about 25 minutes. Unheard of in this day and age. That single? Paranoid, which became the name of this second LP.

Here's a clip from 1970 in their stripped down, bare bones days, performing one of my favorite songs.



Ozzy Osbourne: Vocals, Tommy Iommi: Guitar, Geezer Butler: Bass, Bill Ward: Drums. Black Sabbath went on to sell over 100 million records worldwide, and they're far from finished at this point. To call them the greatest Heavy Metal band of all time doesn't do them justice. They created Heavy Metal.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

8 comments:

  1. Rock on, Sham. That's some great stuff right there.

    As you may have seen over at The Silver Key, I have Iron Maiden edging out Sabbath as the greatest metal band of all time, but obviously you can make a great case for Sabbath (and most do).

    I missed Heaven and Hell when they last came through but I'm still holding out hope for catching them at some point. I'm a huge fan of the Dio Sabbath years as well.

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  2. Sabbath is my personal favorite Metal band, but I'm honestly not well versed enough in the genre to name them the Greatest myself. I just know that many others do.

    I'm a huge Judas Priest fan as well, along with a lot of proto-Metal influences like Nazareth.

    Oh, and I enjoy Motorhead when I'm in the mood ;-)

    Yeah, many Sabbath fans prefer Dio-he certainly took the band to new heights with his vocal style. The Ozzy stuff just rings true with me. I enjoy thier older, somewhat tuned down sound.

    I could do a Sabbath Month-but it would all be songs from Paranoid lol.

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  3. Hey, hey... maybe a new poll idea there? Best singer in Sabbath: Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio, Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, or Tony Martin. I think most people are only familiar with the original band lineup, not realizing just how many changes they've had over the years. Not quite as bad as Deep Purple though...

    Eh... you know, I probably shouldn't suggest anymore poll ideas, should I?

    - Matthew

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  4. OK, so I have this idea...you take Dio, I'll take Ozzy. Oh wait, that's been done. :-)

    I wouldn't feel right hosting a Sabbath poll, the only songs I really know feature Mr. Osbourne on vocals.

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  5. Best "Friday Flashback" to date! I love Sabbath.

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  6. Glad you guys liked it. Personally, I'm amazed at how GREAT this live version sounds. It's a testament to minimal production; when you hear a band you like live, they actually sound like the studio version you went to see them perform. This is the real deal here, folks.

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  7. God, I love Sabbath, especially the first five albums. Sheesh.

    Great clip. I posted a couple in the course of my Tuesday Night Videos at one time or another, including a seriously F'ed up live TV version...

    ::checks YouTube favorites::

    Ah, here we go:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GkzL7ab8U

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  8. Just watched and enjoyed that vid, Sir Larkins, thanks for the link! Another example of how great they sounded live. I wish I could find my 8-track of Paranoid. That would make a great Junk From My Closet post.

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