Black Sabbath at the United Center, 01/22/16

I don’t think before tonight I had realized just how much Black Sabbath mean to me.  Three months ago, I saw Clutch in concert, and for a while now, I have been saying that Clutch is my favorite band.  And really, they are!  And it was a great show, the Clutch show!  But this?  This was so, so much better.  This was something religious.  There is something transcendent about Black Sabbath to me, something primal, like it is the sound of, I don’t know, the ineffable or something, coming into the world of the here and now.  It’s all in that guitar tone, really, that ringing, leaden, drone, that can nonetheless take off like a butterfly at a moment’s notice.

While I was standing in line, waiting to get into the United Center, a guy next to me mentioned that Tony Iommi had cancer.  And, maybe it was under control, or something.  Right now, I still don’t know if it’s true or not.  But this show was billed as the end, and that possibility, that there might be actual death hanging over the band, over Tony, hadn’t really occurred to me.  I thought, if anything, saying it’s the last tour was just a sweet marketing gimmick! Now there I was thinking about that show, this tour, might actually be the end,  like the band knew they wouldn’t be able to do this again, and that gave it a kind of momentousness I hadn’t been expecting. 

For the weeks running up to this show, I realize now I didn’t totally buy in that it would happen.  I didn’t think it would happen.  I kept thinking I had forgotten the date, and the show might have already happened.  I thought Ozzy might die, because if Lemmy is going, then Bowie, geez, who else is next?  (Tony?)  I thought I wouldn’t be able to find parking (I did, on the street 1000 feet down in a residential area, on my way there, no sweat).  I thought I would have car trouble (I stopped and topped off my gas tank and put air in my tires on the way there).  I thought I would be late.  I thought the show was going to suck, that it was called The End because the band could barely play, and everyone was garbage now. 

And then the lights went down, and they starting playing Black Sabbath, the song, and I thought, ‘oh, shit, I’m really here,’ and suddenly nothing felt real, precisely.  I couldn’t actually be here seeing Black Sabbath play, could I?  And then it dawned on me that I was really watching Black Sabbath play.

And they sounded like Black Sabbath.

I mean, Bill Ward wasn’t there, so that was bittersweet but the drummer who played was amazing (he even got a drum solo!  They actually played Rat Salad!).  But Geezer and Tony were, well, they were perfect.  And Ozzy was in strong voice!  And on key!  And hyping the crowd!   It was four guys, just four guys, making the most colossal sound you could imagine.  Honestly, the way they played it might as well have been 1970. 

They played Fairies Wear Boots!  After Forever!  Into the Void!  Snowblind!  And Behind the Wall of Sleep into NIB!  Hand of Doom!  War Pigs!  Iron Man!  Paranoid and Children of the Grave!  There were more, including three songs towards the end I wasn’t familiar with, God is Dead, Under the Sun, and Evil Women, and you could feel the energy of the crowd lagging during those, but Under the Sun had some of Tony’s best soloing of the night, and I appreciated them pulling out some deep cuts.  Maybe they are pulling out a couple random deep cuts at each show.  It could be the last time they play any of them.  For all I know, I might have just seen the last performance of Under the Sun. 

And I did appreciate that, getting to see those solos.  Tony Iommi is my favorite guitarist.  I love what he does.  The reason I love Black Sabbath?  It’s really Tony.  There were several times during the night, after Tony was playing some inhumanly perfect passage of a solo, that Ozzy was just pointing out how incredible the guy was. 

There was a jumbo screen behind the band, and sometimes it would focus in on one of the players, and there was a camera down front that allowed them, sometimes, to show Tony’s fingers on the fret board, and you could actually make out, if you knew to look for them, the place where Tony’s fingers ended and the false fingertips began, and then you would realize again that this guy was playing this amazing music and he is missing his fingertips.  Tony isn’t just my favorite guitarist; I think he is actually the closest thing I have to a personal hero.  To think that someone, a guitarist, could lose the tips of his fingers?  On his fretting hand?  And somehow bounce back from it and create the sound of Black Sabbath?  Birth Heavy Metal? 

Black Sabbath doesn’t sound like other metal bands.  The same way Black Sabbath failed to play the blues, Heavy Metal is really just bands failing to play like Black Sabbath.  No other band has figured out quite how to sound like that, because no other band has Tony Iommi.  Tony’s guitar isn’t harsh.  It’s heavy, and it’s menacing, but the tone has so many layers, he can go from punishing brutality to soaring beauty in moments.  And it’s all there, all the time.    And he composes these passages.  Nobody solos like him.  His solos aren’t noodling, they are instrumental passages.  And I got to be there while he played them. 

So, yeah.  I hadn’t realized going into that how much it would mean to me.  That wasn’t just a rock concert for me.  It was like the completion of a circle, one that started all the way back when Andrew played Iron Man for me for the first time on a tape cassette, and it sounded unlike anything I had ever heard before.  Twenty some odd years later, I actually saw those guys play that song.  I had never, ever, thought I would see that.  Music from the 60’s was something that had come and been.  Even then.  But there they were, doing it.  I got to be in a room and watch Black Sabbath play.  Maybe it was the last time, the only time.  I hope it’s not.  I hope Tony lives for years and years.  I hope they come play again, and I get to go.  I won’t mind the false advertising!  But at least I got to see it, at least once.  At least I got to overlap with it. 

I really don’t think I will ever see a concert that will mean as much to me as that one.  See music played live that means as much to me as that.  And that’s ok.  It’s wonderful to just to have such fleeting moments.    Time passes, people die and we go our separate ways.  But sometimes, we can show up, in the same place together and witness Beauty. 

The Greatest Album Of All Time.

I spent like around eighty minutes writing this to post elsewhere, so figured I would post it here, just for a sense of completeness: 

Have the day off, since I'm working Saturday, so have been sitting around doing nothing, surfing the internet listening to the Beatles. Listened to all of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper straight through, among other stuff.
I can definitely see the appeal of Revolver as a choice for best Beatles album, especially if one prefers earlier Beatles. It's definitely the best record the Beatles had produced up until that point. Sure, none of the songs are bad, but none of the Beatles songs are really ever bad (well, maybe some of the later avant garde stuff). It's that all of the songs are really, really good (except Dr. Robert), and some are among the finest works of recording art ever produced. Taxman. Eleanor Rigby. For No One. Tomorrow Never Knows.
But I still think Sgt. Pepper is just ultimately a better work of Art. I already mentioned its sense of continuity, which Revolver lacks. Perhaps it's just that I am resistant to proclaiming Revolver the best, just because I feel it's so interchangeable with their earlier stuff. Really, it was! Revolver was released in the U.S. with track on it from Rubber Soul. Sgt. Pepper was the first record that was significant and defined enough that the songs on it could not be split up and repackaged on their way across the Atlantic. Sonically, it was just too different, the real inauguration of "later Beatles." I feel that the greatest record off all time should have been more clearly recognized as such in it's own time, as Sgt. Pepper was.
Which of course is part of the problem, I think. Sgt. Pepper was so immediately hailed as a work of genius, the beginning of Albums as Artistic Works that people don't want to think that it really could be the best of all time. That reputation is stifling, somehow, but of what I don't know.
For my part, Sgt. Pepper was both the first Beatles record and first CD I ever got (and for Christmas, natch). So I am probably just as biased as anyone else, since Pepper has certain nostalgic underpinnings for me. But a part of me suspects that, though nostalgia may have some impact, my early acquaintance with the album may also have shielded me from the backlash, allowed me to be free to see it on its own merits, and not in terms of whether it really is the "Best" or not.
People talk about the weird production on the songs, but I don't really understand where that comes from. Most of the sonic experimentation seems pretty effective and often unnoticeable, like how they raised Paul's voice on When I'm Sixty Four. The standard arrangement of most of the songs on the album is still the rock music staples of guitars, bass (this is truly an excellent bass guitar album), drums and piano. Some songs include, say, harpsichord, or eastern instruments, or string backings, but all of that stuff started appearing much, much earlier—the strings as early as Help!, the eastern instruments and harpsichords or whatever are on Rubber Soul. And really, there isn't a single song on Sgt. Pepper that is as sonically experimental as Tomorrow Never Knows. The only really significant change on this one is that they brought in a full orchestra for a couple of songs, but I don't really see how that can be that much of a knock on the album, given that the main orchestral song is A Day in the Life, which no one has anything bad to say about.
I think what really sets Sgt. Pepper apart is not the production—although it is quite complex, and many of the recording and arrangement techniques that popped as gimmicks on the earlier records (like the sitar) are now merely parts in a larger canvas—but the incredible depth of the songs. Earlier albums, even Revolver had a surplus of songs that just amount to "silly love songs." Though to Revolver this is too a much lesser extent, there are still songs like, Here, There, and Everywhere, Got To Get you Into My Life, or I Want To Tell You.
Sgt. Pepper, on the hand, while it often touches upon love themes, gives most of it's songs over more esoteric considerations. Probably the two songs closest to being straight love songs are When I'm Sixty Four and Lovely Rita. But When I'm Sixty Four is as much about aging and mortality and the fear of loneliness as anything, and Lovely Rita is almost an anti-love song: you can see edges of darker impulses creeping into the lyrics. On top of that, there is a certain level of craft, of actual poetry in the lyrics, like John and Paul's songwriting had advanced several levels between albums. Can anyone name a couplet as evocative as "What do you see when you turn out the light?/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine"? on Revolver? Or how about "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away"? Probably the least lyrically complex song on the album is Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite, which a piece of found art (all the lyrics are adapted from an old poster John bought) who's ambiguity and mood are like a kind of musical Rorschach Test. This is a very, very sharply focused set of songs, and they all work flawlessly together.
When I listen to Revolver, I feel like I am listening to the work of excellent, excellent pop songwriters, better songwriters than have ever worked on Tin Pan Alley or for Motown. When I listen to Sgt. Pepper, I feel like I am listening to songs with just as high a level of songcraft, but with the literary heft that, say, a Dylan brings to his work, and with the musical arrangements to match that complexity.

Deep Thought

Three of the four original Ramones are dead.

All four of the original Sex Pistols are alive*.

Whenever I remember that, it always strikes me as weird.

*Sid Vicious replaced Glenn Matlock, who co-wrote the majority of the songs on Never Mind the Bollocks.

The Pogues

Holy living Fuck do I love the sound of the tin whistle. It's like a bag pipe, but pretty and mournful instead of blaring and mournful. I want one. If anyone is wondering what obscure gift to get me for a birthday or Christmas that would convince me you love me, well, there you go.

The body of an American

This song has been helping get through this weeks doldrums. For some reason, it just soothes me.

In other news, I am finally learning how to whistle. At twenty-six, I know! So early of me! I just figured out how to do the Bogart on Bacall today. Two days ago I had gotten the "call the dog/children back in" down. Hopefully I'll be on melodies by some time next week.

Both whistling and the song are things I became interested in through the Wire, by the way. Funny that I haven't actually finished the last season yet, though I suppose that's in part because I don't want it to end.

Things I have learned about setting up your drum kit

1. Don't Frankenstein your kit. Drums kits are tuned to themselves; you start using parts of other kits, the drums will make ringing sounds in odd places. Adding a new brand of drum is like detuning one string on a guitar. It throws everything out of whack. Likewise, use one brand of cymbals. That one cymbal from a different brand will stick out like a sore thumb every time you hit it. However, allowances can be made for hardware, since it doesn't really effect tone, so you can use Tama Iron Cobra Double Bass Drum Pedals with your Pearl bass drum.

2. Get a Tama Iron Cobra Double Bass Drum Pedal. They're sweet.

3. Make sure your legs are directly aligned with your foot pedals, so that your foot and leg bones are along the same axis. Don't sit bowlegged. If you do, you spend too much energy and time moving your thoughts down from your brain to your foot, navigating the twists of your body, and thus lose on not just speed and power, but finesse as well. This means you also are going to want to angle your hi-hat/double-bass pedals out from the bass drum slightly. Don't make your pedals parallel. Accommodate the natural triangle of your legs positions comfortably at rest and place your pedal(s) where your other foot happens to be. Speed, power, and finesse are just as important for your hi-hat foot as for your bass drum foot.

4. Keep the floor tom positioned low and flat. If you angle it, you lose the force from your stroke, and bounce strokes become almost impossible to keep up. The mounted toms, it's alright to angle, since you will be playing them at an angle, (unless you're really tall) but try to keep them as close to the angles of your sticks as you can.

5. Don't mount anything on top of your hi-hat, like cowbells or tambourines. The extra wight throws off the clasping mechanism, and whatever novel little sound you get out of it isn't worth the loss of finesse on what is probably your most-used instrument. Doohickeys, if desired, can be mounted from clasping mechanisms attached to cymbal stands and other drum hardware, just nothing where pressure and weight are essential to function.

6. If you're short-sighted enough to have become a left-handed player at a right-handed kit, the easiest way to use your ride cymbal is not by placing it behind the floor tom, as right-handers do, but in front of it, so that you can play it cross-armed, the way right-handers play their hi-hat. This is a lot easier than trying to reach diagonally across the floor tom whenever you want to play ride. you don't have to twist your back or extend your arm or anything. Of course, it does make it almost impossible to play the ride with your right hand, so it's harder to do super-fast sixteenth-note patterns on it. There's always learning to drum ambidextrously!

Mass produced junk

The last track on that Decembrists CD won't play. Straight out of the case, into the computer, it skips like a drug dealer's ten-year-old Metallica album. What the shit is that?

Throwback, Part 1; or, I can haz sugar?

So, Pepsi has released some new products called Pepsi Throwback, where they use sugar instead of corn syrup as the sweetener, just like back in ye olden tymes. It just came out today, and I bought some of the Mountain Dew version. It's chilling in the fridge as I type, and it will be tried shortly. I am kind of curious to see if the taste is noticeably different.

Also bought the Decembrists The Hazards of Love after listening to "The Rake's Song" over and over again after listening to it at Cogitamus. I just had to possess it. About halfway through it now, most of it is very...relaxing. Not like "The Rake's Song" at all, but still quite good. I think it made my headache go away.