Ken at Fifteen Redux
Dudes,
Lately I've been listening to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" a lot. We own it in two formats in my household--vinyl and CD. I listened to it four times the other day when I was walking around the City.
I guess I'm trying to make up for lost time. I suppose the optimum time for being introduced to "Paranoid" is when you're fifteen, but to be honest, when I was a fifteen year-old hard rocker, I was intimidated by it--too doom-laden and sludgy--despite my friend Hard Rocking John IV's best attempts to convert me. My tastes in the hard rock category (we didn't say "Heavy Metal" or "Metal," to the best of my recollection) tended toward the more heroic and swaggering: Led Zeppelin; Thin Lizzy; Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Ever since those days I always felt a vague sense of guilt that I was not more familiar with the Sabbath canon. Smart people that I respected liked them. Henry Rollins loved them (come to think of it, I was too intimidated to listen to Black Flag back in my "punk" days). Back in the early 80's I thought it was against the new wave rules to like "Dinosaur" rock. I was mighty confused.
Craven coward that I was, I had sold all my Zeppelin albums when I cut my hair short and started buying Clash albums. I was an either/or sort of guy. Later, I traded in the Clash records for bluegrass records, but you've heard that story before.
So anyway, I've spent the past few years buying back all those Thin Lizzy, Zeppelin, Skynyrd and Clash albums.
I also got around to listening to The Stooges about six years ago--yet another band I'd always been afraid of. So why not, finally, Black Sabbath (Ozzy era)?
A couple of years ago I bought "Paranoid" and just tried to inject some bravery into my fifteen year old self as I listened to "War Pigs" and so forth. More recently, I bought a copy of the first Sabbath record--"Black Sabbath"--for two dollars at Green Apple. The young surly lad behind the counter told me that this copy once belonged to Mike Bordin, the drummer from Faith No More. We tried to imagine the traces of body fluids and drugs (and probably teenage desperation)that might be encrusted in the grooves of that platter. Oh, if vinyl could talk, what a tale it would tell! Unfortunately, when I got it home it told no tales--it was absolutely scorched, unplayable, despite the fact that it looked okay (suspiciously okay, as it turned out). Still, it's a nice keepsake.
Not to be deterred,I bought a new vinyl copy of "Black Sabbath" the other day, pressed on very cool looking clear vinyl. I also bought--rebought, I should say--Gang of Four's Solid Gold, which is a kick ass album that I traded in during the bluegrass years. A nice symbolic buy, my hard rock past and my post punk past now happily residing in my ever more democratic record collection.
Lately I've been listening to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" a lot. We own it in two formats in my household--vinyl and CD. I listened to it four times the other day when I was walking around the City.
I guess I'm trying to make up for lost time. I suppose the optimum time for being introduced to "Paranoid" is when you're fifteen, but to be honest, when I was a fifteen year-old hard rocker, I was intimidated by it--too doom-laden and sludgy--despite my friend Hard Rocking John IV's best attempts to convert me. My tastes in the hard rock category (we didn't say "Heavy Metal" or "Metal," to the best of my recollection) tended toward the more heroic and swaggering: Led Zeppelin; Thin Lizzy; Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Ever since those days I always felt a vague sense of guilt that I was not more familiar with the Sabbath canon. Smart people that I respected liked them. Henry Rollins loved them (come to think of it, I was too intimidated to listen to Black Flag back in my "punk" days). Back in the early 80's I thought it was against the new wave rules to like "Dinosaur" rock. I was mighty confused.
Craven coward that I was, I had sold all my Zeppelin albums when I cut my hair short and started buying Clash albums. I was an either/or sort of guy. Later, I traded in the Clash records for bluegrass records, but you've heard that story before.
So anyway, I've spent the past few years buying back all those Thin Lizzy, Zeppelin, Skynyrd and Clash albums.
I also got around to listening to The Stooges about six years ago--yet another band I'd always been afraid of. So why not, finally, Black Sabbath (Ozzy era)?
A couple of years ago I bought "Paranoid" and just tried to inject some bravery into my fifteen year old self as I listened to "War Pigs" and so forth. More recently, I bought a copy of the first Sabbath record--"Black Sabbath"--for two dollars at Green Apple. The young surly lad behind the counter told me that this copy once belonged to Mike Bordin, the drummer from Faith No More. We tried to imagine the traces of body fluids and drugs (and probably teenage desperation)that might be encrusted in the grooves of that platter. Oh, if vinyl could talk, what a tale it would tell! Unfortunately, when I got it home it told no tales--it was absolutely scorched, unplayable, despite the fact that it looked okay (suspiciously okay, as it turned out). Still, it's a nice keepsake.
Not to be deterred,I bought a new vinyl copy of "Black Sabbath" the other day, pressed on very cool looking clear vinyl. I also bought--rebought, I should say--Gang of Four's Solid Gold, which is a kick ass album that I traded in during the bluegrass years. A nice symbolic buy, my hard rock past and my post punk past now happily residing in my ever more democratic record collection.
posted by ken at 6:29 PM
<< Home