i just got back from the thanksgiving dinner at bev and joel’s (i really enjoy thanksgiving, as has been reported previously). i have two items of note:
i overheard my cousin justin say “zakk wylde” and then i couldn’t hear what he said, but THEN a few seconds later i heard “…way better than black sabbath”. what i didn’t do was pause whatever i was doing and storm over and tell him authoritatively that NOTHING is better than black sabbath, so when justin, aged 17, turns to a life of white-collar crime or casual living, consider me complicit in his ruination.
already ruined but in the awesome way is cousin KC- we were playing charades on opposite teams and he was attempting to overhear our strategy sesh. i said “KC, it’ll be less fun when we’re playing if you cheat” and he said “yeah, but it’s more fun now for me to cheat.”. i was floored! i turned to his mother to tell her that her son was absolutely right and god bless her she was rightfully proud. age 13 and really, since day one, he’s been “in play” with no breaks, fives, or time-outs. also he had cool charles dickens hair and wore a scarf indoors!
i also saw freedom cage play in providence at as220 (i was guestlisted! thanks!). MT, aylie (sp?) from dreamhouse, and mikey hotsauce in shit-rip mode- drums guitar and secondary percussion. loved it… they don’t have any recordings yet but they look great and they have this cool logo already…
Black Label Society, featuring Zakk Wylde, is much better in my opinion than Black Sabbath
justin, again, nothing is better than black sabbath. i’m not asking anyone to have respect for their forebears– we can strike from the record the fact that without black sabbath, black label society would have nothing, not even the word “black”. forget that they invented heavy metal. in the moment, right now, devoid of all history, i am fully confident in saying that black sabbath has better riffs, better (dumber) lyrics, better album covers, better tone selection, better drums, better bass, a better singer, and a better font. the recordings sound better, everything is better. zakk wylde may be able to play faster than tommy iommi, but so what? the production on BLS might be more compressed, making it sound louder on your ipod than black sabbath, but there’s much to be said for dynamic range.
NB: i have edited your name down to first name last initial, because i don’t want someone googling you in a year to see you make this embarrassing claim which you will hopefully see the light on.
Geezer Butler!!!