I love all types of music but I LOVE, three minute pop songs, I mean The Beatles in 1966 and everything you can imagine, figure buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck berry on one side, Motown, British Eplosion and everything else in the moment. As long as it has a catchy melody and a good back beat, chances are i am gonna love it.
That is the template that lead me to Motown, and a little later on to James brown and then the world. And it is certainly the template that made me a hugh UK punk fan.
But it kept me away from the heaviness that is metal and only really late in life, I would say since I started rock nyc and was forced to listen to it, did I begin to take metal seriously.
The result was I never saw Led Zeppelin (though I did see Page and Plant) and I never saw Black Sabbath… not even Ozzy. Ozzy played in New Jersey loads of time, but not in the city in the past five years, not even last year on the Sabbath 13 tour. he played the dreader NJ Arts center on that one, and on a Sunday, so ‘scuse me but I think no not as such.
Black Sabbath are not the areligious controversial English boys of their youth but they aren’t the bloated heavy weights of their mid period either, older now, they are pro practioners of hard riffs and hooky melodies.
On March 31st (a Monday) Black Sabbath are performing at Barclay Center and I must admit, the years have mellowed me. Not only did I appreciate “Is God Dead?”, I also loved oldies like “Ironman” -possibly heavy metals most heavily metal song of them all, and “Paranoid” -indeed, I know the latter as a pop song not metal at all.
So, yeah, I ended up at Stubhub and ponied up a hundred bucks for a nosebleed and recommend you do the same!