Description

Double album on black vinyls

The Asbury Park, New Jersey show from August 5th, 1975 is the best live recording there is of Black Sabbath from their glory days. This was at the start of the Sabotage tour, the band was Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. The original and best version of Black Sabbath. Asbury Park was a triumph in many ways. Black Sabbath was different from the heavy bands of the ‘70s in that they traded in Satanic images and invited the glare of the guardians of public morality. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were mild compared to the “hidden message” of Black Sabbath. The band doesn’t disappoint either. During Sabbath shows you can hear Ozzy shout a couple of ‘fucks’, hardly ever heard on a Led Zep, Uriah Heep, Free or Deep Purple concert from that period. For good measure, Ozzy even calls for a ‘muthafucker’, something accepted in movies today and also in gangsta rap but this was ancient 1975 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where Bruce Springsteen was honing his skill as the man born to run. By Ozzy’s own account, there were countless times they had a hard time while touring the American heartlands with an act that enraged Christians. Like proto-punks, Black Sabbath lyrically was anti-war and anti-authority. It is to their credit that they survived the ‘70s long enough to establish heavy metal as something beyond just loudness, guitar riffs and posing. Children of the Grave and War Pigs were message songs and Black Sabbath’s satanic image was a mirror that reflected the anti-war message. No other metal band from that period took such risks with message-laden songs. Try to imagine wearing black in Singapore, playing heavy metal and saying “muthafucker” on stage while playing anti-government songs and you will know what Black Sabbath had to go through for their music to be accepted. It’s a pleasure then to hear Ozzy work the crowd for the encore, a classic rendition of their only hit, Paranoid. The amazing Asbury Park show emerged only in 2001. It says that this was how the show surfaced: A highly respected Sabbath collector contacted King Biscuit to inquire about the full release of their 1975 show, which was thought to be from Philadelphia by most people at the time. King Biscuit had been taking requests for future releases, so this was a completely legitimate request. Their initial response was that the show ‘wasn’t good enough’. But once the KB engineers had a listen to the tapes, they quickly discovered how wrong their assessment was. One of them even asked the collector to identify a song for them. It turned out to be ‘Spiral Architect’ Also, the tapes were identified as being from the Asbury Park show, NOT Philadelphia as previously thought. [Note: However, the engineer did claim the date was still 8/6/75, although the Asbury Park show has been proven to be a day earlier. Sabbath performed in Philadelphia on 7/31/75]. The King Biscuit kindly sent the collector a complimentary copy of the show, since there were now plans to release it officially. But when he tried to follow up on this release a few months later, the King Biscuit employee no longer worked there and the release was apparently nixed. And it was from this ‘advance promo’ that the current slew of Asbury Park bootlegs originated from. Okay, let’s hear Ozzy say “muthafucker” one more time because you will never hear him say it with the same meaning ever again.

Track list:
1. Killing Yourself To Live
2. Hole In The Sky
3. Snowblind
4. War Pigs
5. Symptom Of The Universe
6. Sabbra Cadabra
7. Supernaut
8. Iron Man
9. Black Sabbath
10. Megalomania
11. Spiral Architect
12. Embryo/Children Of The Grave
13. Paranoid