We've entered the doors of the performance where Backstage Passes no longer need to be worn like knife scars or Duct taped to a beautiful woman's ass. The Internet is Jules Verne's Time Machine physically capable of taking you anywhere anytime there's video.
The rate of the age race is based on passion and until your heart can no longer keep up, the final destination is always a firm grip on memories that can't slip.
I stopped feeling guilty about watching YouTube video's when then digits below the Motley Crue moving pictures tallied beyond a million. That's all the permission I needed to relock and load my Rock.
We really have hit that part of the game when those following us will begin to ask, "What was it like to see Springsteen after RollingStone Magazine declared him the future of music?"
The first thing you're gonna do is whip out a Smart Phone or IPad and cascade the child with an avalanche of homemade videos. But you know deep inside that ain't s*** compared to being there live.
As dangerous as it was to fight for your right to stand in the front row of Ted Nugent, Marshall Tucker or to fall witness to Tom Shultz and Brad Delp in Boston...I've yet to find enough space on a memory stick or hard drive that truly embraces what it was like when the roadies at a Jethro Tull show set those huge balloons free to be bounced back and forth by out of control Rock fantasies.
No webpage can repaint the night we sat inside the Billings Metra with Seals and Croft whose show had been canceled due to a snow storm yet they were level enough with their egos to make music without bright lights and fog machines. Or hanging out with England Dan and John Ford Coley back at the hotel. They were there to preach the word of God and all I wanted was to talk about bass guitars and amplifiers.
I didn't get to see The Electric Light Orchestra or Freddie Mercury. Nor did I get to rub up against hot drunk chicks at California festivals featuring The Doobies, Stones, Joplin, Hendrix or Clapton. Lord knows I've watched enough Rock video to put porn out of business though.
I challenge you not to instantly run to the nearest computer but find a local record store where the younger steps of a newer future can relive what it was like to touch black vinyl before it made love with a diamond tipped needle.
The scent of the inside sleeve, paper cuts that stained front and back album covers, musicians that took up shop in the veins that carry blood from my junk back to the heart and brain. The impression of what music once was will never match who they are today.
I wanna see the shot of Taylor Swift flooded with sweat so thick it melts the paint on Gene Simmons face. KISS Alive II, Frampton Comes Alive and crap even a little John Denver stoked the spokes of my two wheel fuel injected Schwinn Stingray. Setting up the ultimate graveled alley bike jump to soar beyond the clouds like Evil Knievel didn't require just any loud sound but music the Master's of Gravity felt challenged to compete against. so I gave them extremely early AC/DC, Van Halen and Steppenwolf on 8-track.
Nobody does this s*** any more. But one day you're gonna have to explain the mark on your leg, arm or across the chin and forehead.
"Son...let me tell you how stained I became when the vibration of metal ripped itself free from the heart of a music maker... I've never been the same..."
So...in the same out of tune way I present things... here it comes compliments of RollingStone Magazine an incredible 1970 Black Sabbath TV broadcast was taped. For many years bootlegs have claimed it was recorded on December 20th, 1970 at the Olympia in Paris, but knowledgable fans have pointed out the venue is way too small to be that theater. Some think it might be from Belgium in October of that year, but it's very hard to say for sure.
It hardly matters. The pro-shot video captures Black Sabbath at the absolute peak of their powers. Paranoid presumably had only been on shelves for a matter of months (or even weeks), and the material is still fresh and shocking. Within a few years drugs, infighting and ego would start tearing the band apart, and the work suffered immeasurably.
"We've got a number now called 'War Pigs,'" Ozzy says midway through the show. "It's a number off our new LP. Hope you like it, thank you." They proceed to tear though a nearly eight-minute version of the song that is absolutely explosive. Interestingly, the second and third stanzas of the song differs from the recorded version, perhaps providing evidence this show was cut before they finished the song in the studio in June of 1970.
Pay attention to Bill Ward's drumming on the song. It's absolutely amazing, proving how vital he is to their sound. It's a tragedy that a lame business dispute kept him off the road this summer. If he's not playing drums on the new album and tour, the whole project will be tainted. So many classic bands are forced to tour today with partial lineups because members have died. Tony Iommi had a cancer scare this year, but he seems to be on the road to recovery. The band is exceedingly lucky all four members are alive and in playing shape. Imagine if Keith Moon were alive but he wasn't touring with the Who because they couldn't agree how to split the money. It would be the height of insanity, and an insult to the fans.
The Sabbath camp should also put this "Paris" show out on DVD. It would be even more amazing with cleaned-up sound and picture.
The Video
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