Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Dear James,

It's at least 72 hours since you last posted which means I get to post more heavy metal. Good news for me, bad news for our reader(s). When you bring me this turntable (weekly reminder) the first thing I'll do is go out and buy the first four albums of Sui Generis and Black Sabbath. The second thing I'll do is listen to the hundred-odd albums I bought and never listened to, starting with the 30 Years of Bossa album I claim to have listened to in the post below.

A brief history of Black Sabbath, cribbed from Wikipedia: In 1968 everyone liked flowers and listened to pretty music, so Black Sabbath were pretty revolutionary. In December 68 Tony Iommi left Sabbath to join Jethro Tull, appearing on the Rolling Stones' Rock n Roll Circus and becoming the first of many members to leave the band. Their first album, Black Sabbath, was released in 1969, recorded live in one take and described by Lester Bangs of the Rolling Stone as

discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitised speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters, yet never quite finding synch

Which sounds like fun. Paranoid was released in 1970. The title track was written in twenty minutes, although that includes the time taken to skin up. It reached number 4 in the UK, Sabbath's only UK top ten hit. Master of Reality was released in 1971, featuring marijuana paean Sweet Leaf, which you'll know from Ugly Kid Joe's cover. Lester Bangs described it as

naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel

Such a way with words, our Lester, though perhaps ignorant of the very essence of heavy metal. With the success of Black Sabbath Vol. 4 the band appeared on Top of the Pops, sharing a stage with Engelbert Humperdink and Diana Ross, though perhaps not at the same time. By now the band had more money and more drugs, which shows in the video to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, off the fifth album Sabotage, which featured 24's Rick Wakeman on keyboards. It was downhill after that.