about Ozzy dying

I am a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan.

 

I attended a Catholic school and wore a uniform through eighth grade. So I remember how bold I felt wearing a “Diary of a Madman” t-shirt to public school in junior high. The front was the album cover, which I was okay with, but the back featured a closeup of Ozzy bearing vampire teeth and wearing a cape—a silly picture, I knew, and I worried the other kids wouldn’t appreciate the spirit of 1982 Ozzy.

 

I also hung an Ozzy poster in my bedroom—Ozzy in a tough-guy pose, a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. I didn’t like the poster, but it was the only one at the store. Ozzy was not a tough guy, and being tough wasn’t part of his music, his message, or him.

 

His wife and manager Sharon, who really is tough, astutely marketed him as the Prince of Darkness, capitalizing on the Sabbath fame. But when I think of Ozzy, I think of a guy who was resilient and wild and free. He loved performing live. He seemed so happy on stage. That was real joy. Fans could see that was all he wanted to do.

 

Life offstage must have been a bore, and drugs and alcohol helped him cope while feeding whatever predispositional craving lurking within.

 

Ozzy was real. He voice was true, his delivery, true—a crazy train, a silly guy who went on stage and sang. The guy on stage in Paris, 1970, was the guy in the late 1980s and on into the 2000s. His confidence grew during those Sabbath years, and he brought loads of enthusiasm and appreciation to his solo career. Watch him live, clapping, cheering on the band, the music, and the crowd, throwing the fans all the love he had in him.

He was the Prince of Darkness, but the world is darker without him.

a bit of the old wit

When someone tells me how smart their dog is, I think of how dumb the person must be.

 

about a hard rock/metal band's debut (with a decent music video)

This band sounds like it will steal your tools

The band photo shows three guys wearing ugly masks, studded arm bracers, and chain mail as they pose, let's say, in the side yard of someone’s wood-shingled duplex in Nassau County, New York. With those costumes, you’d be forgiven for lowering your expectations. But Rotgut’s debut, “24 oz Cantrip,” features five songs of excellent, heavy rock n’ roll amped up with death metal, black metal, and thrash influences.

Opening song “Bonemelter” is fine—thick guitars with hot leads, bass and drums tight as hell, and good momentum.

But I took interest in the EP when I heard “The Hunger.” Rollicking from the first, the song’s fast thrash riffs burn amphetamine energy. This sounds like driving with your eyes closed, racing down the freeway shoulder, sending cars spinning in all directions.

“24 oz Cantrip” isn’t beer-bash partier thrash. Rotgut trends darker. The single, posted below, is “Return of the Dead Without Eyes.” Just get passed the group-shout chorus and focus instead on the splashy cymbals after 1:25 and thereafter as the song revels in black-metal-influenced passages. It wraps with beautiful patience at about 3:20 with an inspired payoff led by the vocals, “Blood of the maiden, blood of the priest, blood of the mason, blood of the thief / A beggar to Caesar, a flame to the cloth, sixes in triplicate, salt to the north / A clarion call to the dead without eyes to lead us to darkness and swallow the skies!”

I love the agile bass on this album. It's always on the offensive. It looms and lifts the whole composition.

The album goes by fast. The songs, each 3 or 4 minutes long, make for a loud and enjoyably intense listen. The music sounds a little like The Crown, Midnight, and, at a vast distance, Converge. The Seattle-based band self-released “24 oz Cantrip” on streaming platforms June 20th, 2025.

Those costumes are a fun, cheap way to get your attention. But this band’s sound deserves to hold it.

 

 

notes on relitigating the p(odc)ast

The Smashing Pumpkins hit mainstream success during the early 1990s grunge/alternative rock era. The rock band Bush came soon after.

Breakout bands and artists, especially when they offer something fresh, are soon followed by similar-sounding bands and artists. Bush, one could say, came in the slipstream of The Smashing Pumpkins and the first wave of grunge and alternative rock.

Billy Corgan of the The Smashing Pumpkins recently interviewed his counterpart, Gavin Rossdale of Bush, on Corgan's podcast.

 

I enjoyed the 90s look-back.

Corgan tried hard to sound admiring, tried to make a point of his respect for Rossdale. I thought he tried too hard.

During the interview, Rossdale said he wished the widely admired recording engineer and producer Steve Albini would have given him more direction on the songs while recording the second Bush album, "Razorblade Suitcase," instead of just engineering the sound.

I also learned that people think Bush's debut sounds like Nirvana's "Nevermind" and that the follow-up sounds like Nirvana's follow-up, "In Utero," which Albini also worked on before the label and Kurt Cobain pushed him out. This clearly led to insinuations at the time that Bush was aping the hot bands.

Throughout the interview, Rossdale seemed thoughtful and very normal. A family guy. And as they compared their lives as parents, Corgan admitted being selfish and disconnected.

Note:

- Breakout bands and artists being followed by similar-sounding bands and artists is the music and entertainment business. Look at all the country-themed albums coming out. Ridiculous.

- Rossdale still has Cobain's haircut. Bush was seen as sort of a mashup of Nirvana and Pumpkins.

- My memory is grunge predates "alternative rock" as a genre label.

 

fictional note A47

I walk around town and observe homeless activity. The city deploys staff to calculate my next movements. I confronted one staffer and said, "This is gonna be rough if you want to follow me over here and see this for yourself. I am the one having to go into these situations." He did not say anything, but we shared an understanding.