Black Sabbath to reunite for one final benefit show July 5

[Terry]

I've been a fan of his music since I was a kid, been to see him many times but some of this stuff is a bit incongruous.

https://www.peta.org/news/rest-in-peace-ozzy-osbourne/

PETA don't know about this but the Hindustan Times did?

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/when-ozzy-osbourne-shot-dead-his-17-pet-cats-in-a-drug-fueled-frenzy-101753219956406.html

I've said this before about some Hagar or Roth things over the years but if seemingly accurate stuff can be so wrong when you actually know about it what does that mean about the 98% of stuff we absorb each day that we know less about...?

So many more stories about the accidental bat biting than the deliberate dove publicity stunt.

I guess even Bob Daisley has said how sad he is about Ozzy's death so maybe we should just let it all go at this point....

Even with the bat/dove thing, I have a vivid memory from back in ...I suppose it would be the early fall of 1982. I was just starting 7th grade, which was when Junior High School began back then in my town.

The urban legend of Ozzy Osbourne that was spoken about in the school halls was that Ozzy worshipped Satan, Ozzy bit the head off a live dove onstage during a performance (rather than offstage in a conference room at an Epic Records office, or wherever it was), Ozzy was going to bite the head off of a live bat onstage but the bat bit Ozzy's tongue JUST before Ozzy could bite its heads off and as a result Ozzy had rabies AND Ozzy sacrificed bats, goats and doves onstage as part of his live act.

Then MTV aired that Ozzy concert from ...was it shot at the Meadowlands? The Irvine Arena? Or was said Arena in California? Whatever it was. That concert with Brad Gillis (where Ozzy's vocals in retrospect had CLEARLY been re-recorded post-performance but at the time at 12 years old when I still thought KISS Alive was an actual live album thus I thought Ozzy sounded pretty good live vocally). I think that Speak Of The Devil concert was aired either on Halloween or around Halloween weekend in 1982. I remember watching it and thinking/expecting to see some ritual animal sacrifice and nothing short of Lucifer Himself being magically conjured in the flesh by The Prince of Darkness Ozzy himself.

Keeping in mind that with the run up to that 1982 MTV concert I'd never seen Ozzy by way of any actual moving footage. TV back then not being a case of you could see whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to. MTV wasn't exactly playing old Black Sabbath videos around the clock. So, I'd seen pictures of Ozzy but had never seen any footage of him.

I watch the concert, and I see this guy, a bit pudgy, longish bleach blonde hair, shirtless with some tight purple jogging pants on, walking around singing. No goat's blood. Nothing really outrageous happening onstage.

After the concert aired, THEN the urban legend was "they cut all the really gruesome stuff out" or "Ozzy didn't do anything shocking that night because he knew it was being filmed for tv" ...

It wasn't until about a year and a half after that when I saw Ozzy on the BATM tour - and it was basically the same Castle Stairs stage production - and nothing particularly outrageous happened at THAT show, either - that I began to suss out the bullshit of the Ozzy Urban Legends.

[Terry]

But the early/mid-1980s was when all sorts of Urban Legends were being spread via word of mouth.

Jerry Mathers aka Leave It To Beaver had died in Vietnam.

Razor blades were being put into apples and being handed out to kids on Halloween.

Rod Stewart passed out onstage, had to have his stomach pumped and in his stomach was a gallon of cum.

Billy Idol, Rob Lowe and David Lee Roth all had been tested positive for AIDS.

The kid who played Mikey in the Life cereal commercials had drank a can of either Coke or Jolt cola after he put a bag of Pop Rocks in his mouth and the combination made his throat explode.

Michael Jackson was heterosexual.

Marijuana, marijuana, LSD, LSD, Jimmy Carter makes it, Ronald Reagan takes it, why can't we, why can't we?

[Seshmeister]

Looking back now though all the Satanic Panic and preachers screaming about Ozzy and a few of these other bands was just a huge big money making venture for everyone. Ozzy got masses of free publicity, ticket and album sales and so did the evangelists.

The PETA post is just funny though because it shows a real lack of memory or knowledge.

The chicken story @ 14 minutes in this good interview from 25 years ago is funny but I'm pretty sure if it's not PETA compliant....

[Kristy]

Well, fuck me...

Look, I know Slozzy was a hero to you cretins and your ruined suburban dream. As for the rest, yeah, I don't give a shit.

[Kristy]

Billy Idol, Rob Lowe and David Lee Roth all had been tested positive for AIDS.

No that one was true. I mean, they all knew Freddy Mercury.

[Terry]

Well, fuck me...

Look, I know Slozzy was a hero to you cretins and your ruined suburban dream. As for the rest, yeah, I don't give a shit.

Back when I was 14 years old in 1984, yeah, I thought Ozzy was crazy and cool, man!

Come the 1990's, when you get a bit older and start learning how Ozzy couldn't write lyrics worth a damn and the lyrics he sang that were decent were written by either Geezer Butler or Bob Daisley, and the reality of the aspects of the music business (realities right in line with any other type of business) vs. the childhood fantasies of what a 'rock star' life is and the realities of drug and alcohol addictions ...I mean, by the time that Osbournes show was televised in the early 2000's, Ozzy to me came off as a doddering, befuddled, drug and alcohol addled aging rock icon who had no purpose beyond perpetuating whatever his 'brand' represented to his aging audience. Doubtless his by then benign public image wasn't necessarily reflective of his life offstage or off-camera, in spite of whatever his 'reality' tv show portrayed.

When I heard he passed, I personally didn't feel any sadness, because how much sadness can you really feel for someone you never personally knew?

The only aspect of any of it that matters to me now is the stuff he sang on that I still enjoy listening to now and then. Most of that being the earlier Sabbath albums and his first two solo albums. Yep. I still enjoys me some old timey Ozzy now and then. Anyone else has a problem with that, sounds like exactly that: their problem.

[Terry]

No that one was true. I mean, they all knew Freddy Mercury.

What the hell did I know? Back then, I wouldn't have believed it if whoever said Freddy Mercury was gay.

Keeping in mind that I also thought Kristy McNichol and Joan Jett liked men back then and that Michael Jackson and Brooke Shields were a functional heterosexual couple.

These days, it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out Roth was gay all along. I always thought Bruce Dickinson was.

[Kristy]

I don't know. Metal fans to this day still refuse to believe Rob Halford is gay

[Kristy]

These fucking rock stars, make Slozzy's death all about themselves

[Kristy]

It was inevitable

[Terry]

I don't know. Metal fans to this day still refuse to believe Rob Halford is gay

The irony of it was back in the early 80's, the real burner, stoner, macho tough guys in junior high and high school - the dudes who took mostly vocational tech classes and called everybody 'faggot' - THOSE were the guys who were, like, THE most vocal Judas Priest fans.

"Fuckin' Priest, man!!"

15 years later or whenever it was, Halford comes out of the closet. Doubtless, those wood shop stoner males who were by then in their late 20's, upon hearing the word of Halford's queery queerness yelled to the heavens, "I never knew he wuz uh fag!! That don't make me queer now jus' cuz I liked their music then!" After creaming at the skies, said aging grease moneys polished off a 6-pack of Bud, went in their shitty apartments/ranch houses, smacked their wives around and passed out early so they could make their opening shift at Pep Boys.

I mean, clearly it wasn't their fault. How could anybody know? The song/album titles were so subtle (Ram It Down, Point of Entry, Hell Bent for Leather). And that swishy hippy dancing Halford used to do onstage. And the riding crop. And the leather biker outfit. And him never being publicly linked with a woman.

Hey, who am I kidding? I had no idea, either. Then again, I thought Paul Stanley was the paragon of masculinity.'

And so what if I STILL like Priest?! I ain't no fuckin' queer!!!!

Although I am a compassionate power bottom ...

[silverfish]

...

[silverfish]

How to Livestream Ozzy’s Funeral Procession in Birmingham

The Black Sabbath bench website is planning to provide an ongoing livestream on Wednesday where you can keep up with the procession. It's expected to begin at approximately 1PM BST. That's 8AM ET and 5AM PT for those in the U.S.

ultimateclassicrock.com/how-to-livestream-ozzys-funeral-procession-in-birmingham-this-wednesday/

[FORD]

[Seshmeister]

I don't know. Metal fans to this day still refuse to believe Rob Halford is gay

I didn't realise that Freddy Mercury was gay for ages back in the day