Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Summer '12: Get Yr Rawk On!

Black Sabbath in their heyday
There was a time many, many years ago, that I listened to tons of rock.  I am a product of the northwest, exposed to all the grunge music filtering throughout the region as teenager, so rock is in my blood.  Besides listening to old school rock like Jimi Hendrix, I loved the Seattle sounds of Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney in the early 90's, among others.  Over time, most of those grunge albums have been traded in for other albums.  Just recently, I decided to put on some Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin for the first time in years--I've been in a rock mood over this past weekend, and it felt right.  Really, if someone asks you who are the greatest rock bands ever, those are the two I would say immediately.  Beatles are more melodic pop, Rolling Stones can be rock, but also had a bluesy bent.  Velvet Underground could rock but were too arty to be considered a pure rock band.  As everyone knows, Zeppelin is blues inspired (or ripped off blues artists, depending on who you talk to), but they seriously rocked.  And of course, Black Sabbath rocked like no other.  While Paranoid is probably my favorite Sabbath album, Vol. 4 is highly underrated and may be the most interesting Sabbath album because there was a lot of musical experimentation on this album.  One of my favorite rock songs of all time is the track "Supernaut", off of their 1972 release Vol. 4.  It's up there with "War Pigs" as my favorite Sabbath songs.  "Supernaut" has everything you could possibly want in a track that seriously rocks--great guitar intro, face-melting guitar solo, and a cool drum-breakdown.  I played "Supernaut" in my car the other day with my 2 year old son in my back, and he went absolutely nuts for it!  Head bobbing and swaying all over the place, makes me wonder if all this 'high-brow' soul, jazz, and Latin that I regularly play for him isn't his thing--maybe he's a rock child after all!  Anyway, it was hilarious, and just to test, I repeated "Supernaut" at least three times on the car trip, and he reacted the same each time.  It's pretty apparent that the rock is in his blood as well, just as it is in his father's.

5 comments:

  1. aw yeah. Bring the Rawk. Dude, this prompted me to download some Rainbow. Like "Kill The King" and "Man on The Silver Mountain." Also, I think Judas Priest Live Unleashed in The East is a metal classic. Unfortunately, you cannot download old Sabbath on Itunes. I guess my Fairies do not Wear Boots.

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  2. Hate to say it, but I'm not too familiar with Rainbow. My rawk/metal knowledge is limited. I remember that Judas Priest album, that's a good live album. I like the track "Exciter" ("racing 'cross the heavens!")

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  3. Rainbow. Ritchie Blackmore started that band after he left Deep Purple. He got Ronnie James Dio as singer. A lot of the songs are 'fantasy metal' about kings, wizards, dragons & such. They don't always all out rock as much as Sabbath though. Yeah, "Exciter"...."stand up for Exciter!"

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  4. 'Fantasy metal about kings, dragons, wizards'=YES! It reminds me that the first Sabbath song I ever heard was "The Wizard" (what is it about rawkers and wizards anyway?) over 20 years ago (I was 15, I think), I was riding with this dude in high school after going to some high school party, and he puts the first Sabbath album on the tape deck, second track "The Wizard" comes on, he just cranked it, and it blew me away...Dude, you should just get the first four Sabbath albums and then you are set with rawk for life! I've been flipping through their first four albums a lot recently and even though I wrote that "Paranoid" is my favorite, I also love that first album because it was the first time I ever heard them.

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  5. I might have to take a listen to The Wizard. Anyway, I've been jammin' out to Rainbow for the last few days.

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