Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#232) Ozzy Ozbourne/Black Sabbath - You listen to Black Sabbath's early stuff, you realize, first, that it's fucking fantastic. In the early 1970s, the four members helped invent the sound that would one day become "heavy metal", but before it became a stereotype (as I knew it, growing up in the 80s), it was just a form of rock and roll that no one had ever heard before. I've written similarly of Metallica in southern California in, say, 1982 - oh to have been a teenager or someone in their early 20s and heard something like "Whiplash" for the first time.

And before he too became a walking stereotype - biting the heads off bats, pissing on the Alamo, ratting out his hair, pretty much letting Maybelline become the official eye liner of the "prince of darkness" - what better ambassador for Tony Iommi 's dark music and Geezer Butler's matching dark poetry could there have been than pasty, slightly pudgy Ozzy Osbourne, with a crazy smile and a voice that could, in certain moments, dismantle the sky?

You realize, also, as you listen, that there's a lot going on in Sabbath's music, much more than "devil worship" - heady lyrics about social injustice and war and peace and politics gone awry ("War Pigs", for instance, is hardly about Satan...), all of it strung, like society's dirty laundry, across intricate rhythms and guitar hooks that, truth be told, aren't really just a "wall of sound". There is some airtight musicianship in a lot of their old stuff.  Bill Ward's drumming, alone...

In later years, Ozzy would fall victim to drugs and alcohol, leave Black Sabbath, and embark on a solo career, which, like so much in the 80s, became more about the image, less about the music. (Although I do like 1991's "No More Tears", and 2002's "Dreamer").

By the 2000s, of course, he let himself become a reality TV punch line - schlepping around his Beverly Hills kitchen, struggling to figure out how to change a garbage bag - and that's where I start to agree with Ted Nugent, who at the time, very rightly maligned The Osbournes as "soulless".

But early on, Ozzy and Sabbath were the motherfucker, full of soul, and vigor, and anger, with a lot to say about how messed up everything is. Between Ozzy's vocals (again, who else...??) and the band's compelling musicality, they were ahead of their time, and as a result, their music is still relevant today. 

As I do in situations like this, I've chosen my five favorite songs. But there are countless others that could, and probably will, come along for the side on 1/48/50.

"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"

"War Pigs"

"Black Sabbath"

"Changes"

"The Wizard"

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For my money, THIS is "Ozzy"...not the flowing robes, jeweled crucifixes and big hair that became part of his 'image' in the 80s...and sure as shit not anything that transpired on The Osbournes: