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| More shaggable than Miss Michael Learned, anyway ... |
You'll know TV's comely yet capable Dr. Quim, Medicine Woman from the long-running series Little House On Walton's Prairie, but did you know she's a passionate advocate of large doses of Heavy Metal? "Most times," laughs TV's Dr. Quim, "dispensing my signature womanly wisdom is enough to set a pesky cattle baron arights, but if they're resistant to my moral authority I prescribe Black Sabbath's Paranoid album - it induces frenzied air guitar that makes the hornswogglers forget all about diverting the creek from the homesteader's, uh, homesteads."
As ever, the Doctor is right on the money! Paranoid is a sovereign tonic for the human condition. It is, in spite of everything the critics led you to believe, a massively powerful and positive booster vaccine against the blues, and not the bag of Quaaludes you might expect from the lyrics. Let's be clear here: the boys are saying war, and heroin, and whatever, are wrong. They're hippies. Not blood-gargling satanists. The title track is two minutes and forty-eight seconds of raw energy that prefigures punk. Take a hinge at the lads lip-synching it on Belgian TV (ignore the shitty "official" graphics at the beginning):
Paranoid took less time to write than it does to play. Ozzy gives off an authentic Nigel Tufnel charm, backed by various incarnations of Derek Smalls. It is fantastic. It is also very well-played. The entire album is a lesson in stripped-down minimalist attack. It rocks out. Then it rocks back in. Riff after riff, they nail the beat and hit the middle of the note. There are dynamic arrangements, and solos don't outstay their welcome. The tunes are as bone-headedly simple as the lyrics (rhyming "masses" with "masses" is a high point) but anything more complex and we'd land in a swamp of prog, or worse, jazz. Nope, this is perfection, and a metric shitload of fun. If you've ignored it for as long as I did (to my shame), now's your chance to dust off that air guitar ... duhduhduhduh duhduhduhduh DUHder DUH ...
Prof. Stoned's mix is the one to have, and I'm not going to insult him by uploading my crushed-down version of it, so hop over here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.profstoned.com/2023/03/black-sabbath-paranoidremixed-prof.html
This is the best version of Sabbath's Paranoid album, I've heard. Uranian Willy "the Heavy Metal Kid" would approve.
DeleteMany thanks to Prof Stoned for the wonderful remix, and to Farquhar Throckmorton III for pointing us towards it.
Here's a Sabbath boot from The Convention Center in Asbury Park, NJ, on August 5, 1975. This also has excellent audio.
https://workupload.com/file/EQQD4E2bkuW
"More shaggable than Miss Michael Learned, anyway ..."
Who could forget "Outhouse on the Prairie."?
I unfortunately can't forget Michael Landon's hat n' suspenders æsthetic.
DeleteAt some stage during the last century I sold my Sabbuff albums, believing they were a bit juvenile, (I was now sofisticated and needing the cash). However, I've since replaced most of them, I prefer Master Of Reality and Vol. 4, but each to their own.
ReplyDeleteProfStoned, did a great job on their early BBC Session and Live tracks too.
To unappreciate the early Sabs is a sin against the spirit of rock n'roll abandon, and helps to differentiate the wannabe rockers and The Right Stuff.
ReplyDeleteThe absolute best version of "Paranoid" is this. Possibly also the most memorable, for both right and wrong reasons...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwnFX0_H-rA
Ye-es ... thanks for this ... I think ...
DeleteI love this sort of thing, thanks OBG.
DeleteA good read. Thanks. I know the album well, & in fact prefer the PS version. - useo
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult describing mixes without coming off as a wine taster musing over licorice topnotes or whatever, but the Prof's mix sounds natural and real - organic, with no noise or clutter. Real music played in real time by real people. And played well, too.
ReplyDeleteThis is from the (Encyclopedia) Britannica site:
"Osbourne’s sullen vocals. Black Sabbath’s lyrics, soaked in occult imagery, and coarse musicianship were reviled by critics and shunned by radio programmers ..." I don't remember any press coverage at the time, but "occult imagery" is a little off the mark. And coarse musicianship? I don't hear that at all, nor the "sullen vocals".
Dame Roberta Christgau, doyenne of Rock Critics, grades Paranoid C- (can you imagine the mentality behind that minus?):
"I suppose I could enjoy them as camp, like a horror movie--the title cut is definitely screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, right? Well, depends on what you mean by serious. Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place ..."
This makes so little sense it qualifies as nonsense. Catharsize? Does he mean catharise? Who cares? And who screams at the title cut?
Allmusic's review is at least thoughtful and appreciative, but misses the essential point that this album is insanely enjoyable, rather than wrist-slashingly depressing. We should put as much thought into the lyrics as Ozzy did.
Christgau is a shmendrik. There, I said it.
DeleteAnd I googled it.
DeleteThese jaspers are the same folks who HATED the Monkees because they weren't "real." Why leave the question hanging as to whether "their audience can't take that Lucifer big seriously, RIIIIGHT?" but never wonder whether Mick Jagger's audience does the same?
ReplyDeleteI had this album. Most of my friends hated it. They were wrong.
I remember a friend having this at the time (when album budgets were managed with stock market keenness), but it passed me by, although I enjoyed idiot-dancing to it at college discos. Today, I can't not do some headbanging air guitar moves to it. Paranoid is dance music.
DeleteCirca 1974, I bought my first three albums: Paranoid, ELP's eponymous debut (skip the Ed. comment, 'eponymous debut' rolls off the tongue better'n 'self-titled first album'), and T. Rex's Zinc Alloy. By '74, T. Rex was no bueno anymore (the previous four albums by the mighty Rex are all stellar, however), and I still love Paranoid and ELP's first. When I met my wife, who wasn't even born when Paranoid came out, she had Paranoid, telling me she heard a song off of it on the radio and stopped the car to hear what it was. I no longer have the T. Rex album or the wife, and I can't believe anyone would have to be convinced of Paranoid's greatness. Shit, even that German vid posted above is great, such is the power of this album!
ReplyDeleteA better encapsulation of the album's greatness, however, is found here in this fierce 'n' feral performance, featuring lyrics that didn't make the final cut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3b6SGoN6dA
C in California
Oh, and amen to slagging on R. Christgau, who writes the most impenetrable claptrap of any critic I've seen. Even when he's right, he's wrong.
DeleteC again
That is a fantastic clip! Apart from anything else, it's very well shot (for the time) and edited, and Bill Ward's drumming is a revelation. A kit you could stuff into the back seat of a Ford Anglia, a couple of pit props for sticks, a pint of Johnnie Walker, and he was good to go. The criticism that the band couldn't play is as mystifying as the satanist tag. They are tight as Freddy Mercury's tights.
Delete(You brought this upon yerself, C, but "ELP's first album" are the only words you need. Shirt off, please, while Kreemé gives you twenty lashes with a damp pool noodle.)
Wow that is powerful.
DeleteIn 2007 I saw Heaven & Hell (Sabbath without Ozzy or Ward but with Ronnie James Dio), and my friend who was and remains a vicar took one of his children to the gig, my friend would have been a teenager when Paranoid came out and wasn't religious at the time. I doubt he told his parishioners though, because of the obvious prejudice.
The Sabs were as tight as a gnat's chuff and Christgau is a prick.
DeleteThe one time I saw Sabbath was around this time - great live show!!! - LOUD!!!
ReplyDeleteActually, I tell a lie!! I did see 'em a 2nd time - but very briefly as me and my mate were asked to leave the stage - quite politely, mind!! ..so. we left!!
DeleteBeing asked to leave the stage during a Sabbath gig?!?! If I had an award to give, you'd get it.
DeleteActually, I'll do you a 4/5g© trading card - keep yer mincers on th' sidebar!
Deleteout of topic, something for your rest r&r
ReplyDeleteBat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMs_baDWjJs