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Live At Last
Let them have their little toys
Cornucopia (Originally on Vol. 4)
Matchbox cars and mortage joys
Exciting in their plastic ways
Frozen food in a concrete maze
I stole the Live at Last LP from my best friend, who stole it from his uncle’s collection. The album was a high-quality bootleg of Ozzy-era live Sabbath shows. The material was probably recorded between the Vol. 4 and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath albums, I could tell because some of the lyrics on the newer songs were unfinished. I listened to this album constantly. I wanted to be Ozzy. The music was so heavy and the lyrics (by Geezer Butler) spoke of the nightmare realities that plagued the modern world. Just the thing for a twenty-something with no real hopes and dreams for the future.
NOTE: This is the only footage of Sabbath I’ve ever seen where Tony Iommi is without his trademark moustache.
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Great Connection
This was a CD I bought for my dad for Christmas one year, but I ended up borrowing it frequently enough that it spent more time in my room than anywhere else. It is one of the few CDs I still own. Oscar could play lightning fast, and there are a few flashes on this record, like the stellar On The Trail, but what really holds it together is a lot of great melodies and a solid rhythm section. Louis Hayes drums swing all the way through and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen bass can rip through a bass line like he was trying out to replace Steve Harris in Iron Maiden.
This album also made a great impression on my friends. One summer I took it along to the cottage at Minaki, ON where we were privileged to get a week’s vacation. Along with the standard fare of Classic Rock, and then contemporary albums like The Black Crowes’ Shake Your Money Maker, Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual de lo habitual and U2’s Achtung Baby, Great Connection was a staple of that week–especially in the morning, after having hit the Labatt 50 and Canadian Club hard the night before.
Sickness will surely take the mind
From: Amazing Journey
Where minds can’t usually go
I got the Tommy LP when I was about 14. I was already a really big Who fan. My Uncle had a green jacket with a Who back patch on it he’d gotten from a concert in Minneapolis in ’82. I thought it was the coolest jacket ever. He had also left a few records at my house including Quadrophenia and my absolute favourite Who record of all time Live at Leeds.
Beyond Pinball Wizard—and the parts that were included in the My Generation jam on Live at Leeds—I was not at all familiar with Tommy or it’s status as a rock opera. It was a double album, and my dad was buying, so I went for it. It actually took me many years to appreciate everything about the album, but I did identify with Tommy right away.
I felt isolated from people at that age, and a bit afflicted. Inside a shell that was hard to come out of. I was mercilessly taunted by my peers for being different, although I was not really all that unusual on the outside, beyond being a bit overweight and near-sighted. Just a kid who was shunted around between parents who were too busy with work to really notice me. My inherent lack of sociability and athletic prowess made me an outcast, and the mid-80’s were not that dissimilar a time to when Tommy was a boy and his cousin Kevin decided there was a lot he could do with a freak.