In the latest issue of Road Crew, Brazil's most popular metal magazine, the editor defended the image of the country of being a place for aging rockers collecting their last run of paychecks. Fair enough, as the editor claims proudly, the country does recieve some acts in the youth of their careers (erm, Avenged Sevenfold!?), but the percentage of gigs played by international artists that are over the age 50 is significantly higher than in Europe or North America. My gig calender reads to confirm this - Iron Maiden last week, Ian Anderson on 15th May, and in between Ozzy Osbourne.
Say what you want about Ozzy appearing in multimillion dollar adverts with Justin Bieber or Sharon's seemingly sovereign control of his career, if he can keep getting the reaction he did from the Brazilian crowd on Thursday, he can keep touring "until he dies" (as he said he would in a recent interview). The Citibank hall was packed full of punters who, like at Iron Maiden last week, pogoed around to the tunes and sang each and every lyric almost without fail.
The setlist was a pure nostalgiafest, only one song from the last twenty years worth of studio albums was played, the gaggingly commercial single off the latest record, Let Me Hear You Scream. This made for pleasent listening, seeing as songs like "Bark at the Moon" and "Crazy Train" are classics, but personally I was disappointed at the total dismissal of the "Diary of a Madman" album - one of the two albums recorded with legendary guitarist Randy Rhodes.
Anyone who's still interested in Ozzy's career (a gradually diminishing number) will be keen to see how Ozzy's new backing band are doing, particulary the most revered spot, lead guitar. It seems fairy ironic that former guitarist Zakk Wylde's much maligned use of pinched harmonics was one of the reasons fans were happy to see the back of him, yet Gus G is fairly liberal in his usage too. Other than that, the Greek guitarist stays faithful to the Rhodes/Lee/Wylde originals, with the exception to the occasional fill to give his own spin on the old songs.
On stage, Ozzy, nearly 45 years into his career, still acts like a child who's eaten too many haribos, but for him it seems hardly incongruous. The man still has an puerile grin on his face throughout the show and took great pleasure in dousing the crowd in water at regular intervals. Although it has to be said, Ozzy really needs to learn more stage banter - "I can't fuckin' hear you!!" in between every song grates after a while. His voice held up for most of the gig, partially aided by an extended instrumental jam, including a rather tedious drum solo (90% of drum solos are boring for me, admittedly).
Overall, a good night's entertainment, not sure quite worth another £45 spent, but as is the standard in South America, you pay a lot of money for musicians 20/30/40 years past their peak. A final note - the playing of War Pigs and Fairies Wear Boots made me realise again how important a Black Sabbath reunion would be...fingers crossed.
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Ozzy rules! Who said rock and roll or the masters die with age. We're the generation writing the fucking book. I'd love to see a Sabb reunion too. Ozzy!!!!
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